“I’m not saying we haven’t, Archie, I’m not saying we haven’t. We have worked; and I say shame on the sheep who huddles down in a corner and nurses himself, and thinks that Heaven will give him every blessing for the asking. We must work as well as pray.”
“Do you know, Archie, that one terrible night at sea, while we were rounding the Horn with a whole gale of wind blowing and a smothering sea on, when it was so dark you couldn’t have seen a sheet of white paper held at arm’s length, and when we all of a sudden knew from the frightful cold we were surrounded by ice, when at last the ship was struck and began to leak, and no one had a hope of seeing the morn break—that down below I stole just one half minute to open my Book? And my eyes fell upon the ninety-first Psalm, and I took comfort and heart at once; I knew we would be saved, and next day the captain complimented me on having been so daring, so fearless, and cheerful. Ah! lad, little did he know that the bravery in my breast was no bravery of mine; it had been put there by Him. Call this faith of mine folly if you like, I don’t care; it suits me, and it has saved me more than once, and comforted me a thousand times.
“Do you mind the time,” Kenneth went on, changing the subject, “when you and I used to herd the sheep here with dear old Kooran and Shot?”
“Can I e’er forget it, Kenneth?”
Sitting on the top of the fairy knoll there, the two young men had quite a long talk about bygone times. I have said “young men;” and they were so, though they might not have appeared to be in the eyes of boys and girls, but as they talked they seemed to grow younger still. Kenneth could almost imagine he saw the smoke curling up from his mother’s cot in the glen, and Kooran feathering away through the heather to fetch his dinner. (See Book One, chapter one.)
A day or two after this the three friends went together over the hills to pay a visit to the fisherman’s cot by the beach.
Duncan Reed was so glad to see them. He was not so very much altered in appearance. They found him seated in the sunlight, with a very large Bible on his lap, and an immense pair of hornrimmed spectacles on his nose.
Duncan drops out of the story here. He is gone years ago. Suffice it to say he had his wish—he sleeps beside the sea.