When Cosmo rose from his knees, he looked his father in the face with wet eyes.
“Oh, father!” he said, “how the fear and oppression of ages are gone like a cloud swallowed up of space. Oh, father! are not all human ills doomed thus to vanish at last in the eternal fire of the love-burning God?—An’ noo, father, what’ll we du neist?” resumed Cosmo after a pause, turning his eyes again on the heap of jewels. The sunrays had now left them, and they lay cold and almost colourless, though bright still: even in the dark some of them would shine! “It pleases me, father,” he went on, “to see nane o’ them set. It pruvs naething, but maks ’t jist a wheen mair likly he got them first han’ like. Eh, the queer things! sae hard, an’ yet ’maist bodiless! naething but skinfu’s o’ licht!”
“Hooever they war gotten,” rejoined the laird, “there can be no question but the only w’y o’ cleansin’ them is to put them to the best use we possibly can.”
“An’ what wad ye ca’ the best use, father?”
“Whatever maks o’ a man a neebour. A true life efter God’s notion is the sairest bash to Sawtan. To gie yer siller to ither fowk to spread is to jink the wark laid oot for ye. I’ the meantime hadna ye better beery yer deid again? They maun lie i’ the dark, like human sowls, till they’re broucht to du the deeds o’ licht.”
“Dinna ye think,” said Cosmo, “I micht set oot the morn efter a’, though on a different eeran’, an’ gang straucht to Mr. Burns? He’ll sune put ’s i’ the w’y to turn them til accoont. They’re o’ sma’ avail as they lie there.”
“Ye canna du better, my son,” answered the old man.
So Cosmo gathered the gems together into the horse, lifting them in handfuls. But, peeping first into the hollow of the animal, to make sure he had found all that was in it, he caught sight of a bit of paper that had got stuck, and found it a Bank of England note for five hundred pounds. This in itself would have been riches an hour ago—now it was only a convenience.
“It’s queer to think,” said Cosmo, “’at though we hae a’ this siller, I maun tramp it the morn like ony caird. Wha is there in Muir o’ Warlock could change ’t, an’ wha wad I gang til wi’ ’t gien he could?”
His father replied with a smile,