“And what’s to come o’ Eve? Are ye gaein, like him, to say, ‘The wuman thoo giedest til me—it was a’ her wyte’?”
“Ye ken weel I’m takin a’ the wyte upo mysel!”
“But hoo can ye tak it a’, or even ony fair share o’ ’t, gien up there ye stan’ and confess? Ye maun hae some care o’ the lass—that is, gien efter and a’ ye’re gaein to mak o’ her yer wife, as ye profess.—And what are ye gaein to turn yer han’ til neist, seein ye hae a’ready laid it til the pleuch and turnt back?”
“To the pleuch again, mother—the rael pleuch this time! Frae the kirk door I’ll come hame like the prodigal to my father’s hoose, and say til him, ‘Set me to the pleuch, father. See gien I canna be something like a son to ye, efter a’’!”
So wrought in him that mighty power, mysterious in its origin as marvellous in its result, which had been at work in him all the time he lay whelmed under feverish phantasms.
His repentance was true; he had been dead, and was alive again! God and the man had met at last! As to how God turned the man’s heart, Thou God, knowest. To understand that, we should have to go down below the foundations themselves, underneath creation, and there see God send out from himself man, the spirit, distinguished yet never divided from God, the spirit, for ever dependent upon and growing in Him, never completed and never ended, his origin, his very life being infinite; never outside of God, because in him only he lives and moves and grows, and has his being. Brothers, let us not linger to ask! let us obey, and, obeying, ask what we will! thus only shall we become all we are capable of being; thus only shall we learn all we are capable of knowing! The pure in heart shall see God; and to see him is to know all things.
Something like this was the meditation of the soutar, as he saw the farmer stride away into the dusk of the gathering twilight, going home with glad heart to his wife and son.
Peter had told the soutar that his son was sorely troubled because of a sin of his youth and its long concealment: now he was bent on all the reparation he could make. “Mr. Robertson,” said Peter, “broucht the lass to oor hoose, never mentionin Jamie, for he didna ken they war onything til ane anither; and for her, she never said ae word aboot him to Mirran or me.”
The soutar went to the door, and called Isy. She came, and stood humbly before her old master.
“Weel, Isy,” said the farmer kindly, “ye gied ’s a clever slip yon morning and a gey fricht forbye! What possessed ye, lass, to dee sic a thing?”