The excellence must vanish from one portion,
that it may be diffused through the whole. The seed ripens on one
favoured mound, and is scattered over the plain. We console
ourselves with the higher thought, that if Scotland is worse, the
world is better. Yea, even they by whom the offence came, and who
have first to reap the woe of that offence, because they did the
will of God to satisfy their own avarice in laying land to land and
house to house, shall not reap their punishment in having their own
will, and standing therefore alone in the earth when the good of
their evil deeds returns upon it; but the tears of men that ascended
to heaven in the heat of their burning dwellings shall descend in
the dew of blessing even on the hearts of them that kindled the
fire.--'Something too much of this.'
Robert lifted the latch, and walked into the cottage. It was not
quite so strange to him as it would be to most of my readers; still,
he had not been in such a place before. A girl who was stooping by
the small peat fire on the hearth looked up, and seeing that he was
lame, came across the heights and hollows of the clay floor to meet
him. Robert spoke so faintly that she could not hear.
'What's yer wull?' she asked; then, changing her tone,--'Eh! ye're
no weel,' she said. 'Come in to the fire. Tak a haud o' me, and
come yer wa's butt.'
She was a pretty, indeed graceful girl of about eighteen, with the
elasticity rather than undulation of movement which distinguishes
the peasant from the city girl.
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