"Sawbbath'll be a gran' day. It's the Sacrament wi' us, ye ken," said Kirsty looking up from her knitting. "But I'm thinkin' it wad be ower langsome like for you bairns,—though I'se houp there's a day comin' when ye'll be sittin' doon til the table yersels, and meetin' wi' Himsel' there," continued the old woman, as she gazed kindly at the little group.
"Oh, is it really the Holy Communion; and may we children stay? I should like above all things to see it; shouldn't you, Morag? Miss Prosser always sends me home with Ellis when she stays to Communion. But then it doesn't last very long at all. For by the time that I've spoken to Chance and my birds, she has always come home again. But, perhaps, it is something quite different here, is it not, Kirsty?"
"Weel, I'm thinkin' there will be some differ from what I hae heerd tell. But eh, bairn, I mak' nae doobt that He feeds His ain folk the richt gait, in ilka part o' His warl'."
"Here's yer father comin' inby, Morag!" said Kirsty, as she rose to welcome the keeper, whom she saw leaning against the garden gate, looking at the group round the cottage door.
The keeper had become a frequent visitor at Kirsty's cottage since that eventful evening in the fir-wood. Often, when the work of the day was done, he might be seen wandering across the moor in the gloaming, in the direction of the abode which he had viewed for so many years with mingled feelings of dislike and fear.
Many a pleasant talk the old woman and he seemed to have together, and the keeper appeared more at ease and happy in Kirsty's society than he had been with any mortal for many a day. His face already began to lose the sinister expression which had made Blanche distrust him on that first day when she saw him. He did not say the bitter things which he used to do about his neighbors in the Glen, and no longer prided himself in looking dark and mysterious and self-contained, but seemed more happy with himself, and, consequently, with the rest of the world.
Morag felt, with a daily, hourly, silent gladness, that a change for the better had come to her father. To her he had never been positively unkind, but now he was more gentle and genial than she had ever known him. Already the little shieling among the crags began to show traces of the brighter days which were dawning. The evenings were no longer dreary and monotonous as they used to be. For the company of books had been summoned from the old kist, where they had been buried so long, and they proved very pleasant companions to both father and daughter. Dingwall would occasionally read aloud to Morag as she worked; and thus finally proved that his former dislike to reading had not arisen from an ignorance of the art, as Morag had sometimes suspected.
Occasionally, a bundle of old newspapers from the castle found their way to the hut, and were eagerly scanned by the keeper as he smoked his pipe; and his remarks to his little daughter showed her that he knew more about the world beyond the mountains than she ever guessed.
And now he seemed to notice favorably Morag's efforts after domestic reform, which he had sneered at, or completely ignored before. He commended her on her attempts to improve the interior of the hut, and occasionally teased her laughingly about her imitation of Kirsty's domestic arrangements, which was everywhere visible.
It seemed suddenly to occur to him that since the laird would not have the hut mended, he possibly might make some effort towards its restoration himself, and he began to make plans for the repairing of the porous roof, after the shooting party should have taken their departure.