he looked upward often in self-communion, and sometimes groaned aloud in
the instancy of his unspoken prayer. His brow rose like the wall of a
fortress. A stray white lock on his bare head stirred in the crisp air.

Wattie was about to omit his prayers in his eagerness for his porridge,
but the sight of his grandfather induced him to change his mind. He
knelt reverently down, and was so found when his mother came in. She
stood for a moment on the threshold, and silently beckoned the good
mistress of the house forward to share in the sight. But neither of the
women knew how near the boy's prayers came to being entirely omitted
that morning. And what is more, they would not have believed it had they
been informed of it by the angel Gabriel. For this is the manner of
women--the way that mothers are made. The God of faith bless them for
it! The man has indeed been driven out of Paradise, but the woman, for
whose expulsion we have no direct scriptural authority, certainly
carries with her materials for constructing one out of her own generous
faith and belief. Often men hammer out a poor best, not because they are
anxious to do the good for its own sake, but because they know that some
woman expects it of them.

The dwelling-house of Drumquhat was a low one-storied house of a common
enough pattern. It stood at one angle of the white fortalice of
buildings which surrounded the "yard." Over the kitchen and the "ben the
hoose" there was a "laft," where the "boys"[3] slept. The roof of this
upper floor was unceiled, and through the crevices the winter snows
sifted down upon the sleepers. Yet were there no finer lads, no more
sturdy and well set-up men, than the sons of the farmhouse of Drumquhat.
Many a morning, ere the eldest son of the house rose from his bed in the
black dark to look to the sheep, before lighting his candle he brushed
off from the coverlet a full arm-sweep of powdery snow. It was a sign of