superstition mingled with her prayer, the main thing in it was
genuine, that is, the love that prompted it; and if God heard only
perfect prayers, how could he be the prayer-hearing God?

Her dwelling stood but a stone's-throw from the road, and presently
they turned up to it by a short steep ascent. It was a poor hut,
mostly built of turf; but turf makes warm walls, impervious to the
wind, and it was a place of her own!--that is, she had it to
herself, a luxury many cannot even imagine, while to others to he
able to be alone at will seems one of the original necessities of
life. Even the Lord, who probably had not always a room to himself
in the poor houses he staid at, could not do without solitude;
therefore not unfrequently spent the night in the open air, on the
quiet, star-served hill: there even for him it would seem to have
been easier to find an entrance into that deeper solitude which, it
is true, he did not need in order to find his Father and his God,
but which apparently he did need in order to come into closest
contact with him who was the one joy of his life, whether his hard
life on earth, or his blessed life in heaven.

The Macruadh set down the creel, and taking out peat after peat,
piled them up against the wall, where already a good many waited
their turn to be laid on the fire; for, as the old woman said, she
must carry a few when she could, and get ahead with her store ere
the winter came, or she would soon be devoured: there was a death
that always prowled about old people, she said, watching for the
fire to go out. Many of the Celts are by nature poets, and mistress
Conal often spoke in a manner seldom heard from the lips of a
lowland woman. The common forms of Gaelic are more poetic than those
of most languages, and could have originated only with a poetic