But it was only her
illness that made her capable of prizing such comfort. In health,
the heather on a hill-side was far more to her taste than bed and
blankets. She had a wild, roving, savage nature, and the wind was
dearer to her than house-walls. She had come of ancestors--and it
was a poor little atom of truth that a soul bred like this woman
could have been born capable of entertaining. But she too was
eternal--and surely not to be fixed for ever in a bewilderment of
sin and ignorance--a wild-eyed soul staring about in hell-fire for
want of something it could not understand and had never beheld--by
the changeless mandate of the God of love! She was in less pain
than during the night, and lay quietly gazing at the fire. Things
awful to another would no doubt cross her memory without any
accompanying sense of dismay; tender things would return without
moving her heart; but Falconer had a hold of her now. Nothing could
be done for her body except to render its death as easy as might be;
but something might be done for herself. He made no attempt to
produce this or that condition of mind in the poor creature. He
never made such attempts. 'How can I tell the next lesson a soul is
capable of learning?' he would say. 'The Spirit of God is the
teacher. My part is to tell the good news. Let that work as it
ought, as it can, as it will.' He knew that pain is with some the
only harbinger that can prepare the way for the entrance of
kindness: it is not understood till then.
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