“This day I shall remember all my life,” he said, “and you in my prayers with all the world—always, always. Only I should like to tell you that that little idea of mine, which the father told me he had spoken to you about, I see now that it is too large for me. I am only a very poor monk. I should think I must be the poorest monk God has in all His family of monks. If He can be patient, surely I can. And it came over me while we were looking at all those wonderful things, that if money had been the way to save the world, Christ himself would have been rich. It was stupid of me. I did not remember that when he wanted to feed the multitude, he did not empty the great granaries that were all his, too; he took only five loaves and two small fishes; but they were enough.
“We little ones can pray, and God can change His world. Speriamo!” He smiled as he gave me his hand—a smile which seemed to me as beautiful as anything we had seen that day in Venice. Then the high-prowed, black gondola glided swiftly out over the golden waters with the little brown figure seated in the smallest seat. He turned often to wave to me, but I noticed that he sat with his face away from Venice.
He had turned back to San Francesco del Deserto, and I knew as I looked at his face that he carried no single small regret in his eager heart.
A FIGHT WITH DEATH[[10]]
By IAN MACLAREN
[10]. From Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush. Copyright, 1894, by Dodd, Mead & Company.
When Drumsheugh’s grieve was brought to the gates of death by fever, caught, as was supposed, on an adventurous visit to Glasgow, the London doctor at Lord Kilspindie’s shooting lodge looked in on his way from the moor, and declared it impossible for Saunders to live through the night.
“I give him six hours, more or less; it is only a question of time,” said the oracle, buttoning his gloves and getting into the brake. “Tell your parish doctor that I was sorry not to have met him.”
Bell heard this verdict from behind the door, and gave way utterly, but Drumsheugh declined to accept it as final, and devoted himself to consolation.
“Dinna greet like that, Bell, wumman, sae lang as Saunders is still livin’; a’ll never give up houp, for ma pairt, till oor ain man says the word.