Thou that never sleepest! Give me ten minutes' rest, ten minutes' sleep.
To Thee a thousand years are but as yesterday. To me, O Lord, in this
weariness, a night is as a thousand years."

Helped by Marcella he would clamber into bed again, shutting his eyes,
waiting on the Lord, only to start up as the pumping of his worn-out,
strained heart almost choked him. And then, leaning back on heaped
pillows he would look out through the dark window and say, very humbly:

"Most patient hast Thou been with me, Oh Lord, when Thou wast seeking
me so far. Most patient must I be with Thee--I, who have no claim upon
Thy mercy save Thy own most holy kindliness to me."

And so the night would wear on; sometimes he would talk to God,
sometimes to Marcella, telling her how he had hated her because she was
not a boy and seemed, to his great strength, too much like her frail
English mother to be of any use in the world.

"We're a great folk, we Lashcairns, Marcella," he would say, his sunken
eyes brightening. "A great name, Marcella. I wanted you Janet, for
there has always been a Janet Lashcairn since the wild woman came to
Lashnagar. But Rose would have you Marcella--a foreign name to us," and
he sighed heavily. "I hated you, Marcella, because I wanted a boy to win
back everything we have lost. Lashcairn the Landless whose lands
stretched once from--Marcella, what am I saying? O Lord, Thou knowest
that in nothing do I glory save in the Cross of Jesus Christ. O Lord,
Simon of Cyrene, Thy cross-bearer, has naught to boast save only the
burden Thy grace has laid upon him. Be patient with me, O Lord--very
hardly dies the vanity of the flesh."