"I wad like it, but there is nae occasion for it. The city doesna fright
me noo. If I couldna find my way to Pittenloch wi' a gude Scot's tongue in
my mouth, and siller in my purse, I wad hae little hope of ever finding my
way into a pulpit. Thank you kindly, sir."

"Then good-bye for the present, Davie, and give my regards to your sister."

He felt like a traitor to Maggie and to his own heart, but what was there
else for him to say. When he reached the street the whole atmosphere of
life seemed to have changed. A sudden weariness of the placid existence at
Meriton attacked him. Was he to go on, year after year, dressing and
visiting, and taking little rows in land-locked bays, and little rides and
drives with Mary Campbell? "I would rather fling a net in the stormiest
sea that ever roared, for my daily bread," he said. Yet he went on
dressing, and rowing, and riding, and visiting for many more weeks;
sometimes resenting the idle, purposeless life as thoroughly enervating;
more frequently, drifting in its sunshiny current, and hardly caring to
oppose it, though he suspected it was leading him to Drumloch.

What curious "asides" and soliloquies of the soul are dreams! Perhaps if
we cared to study them more conscientiously they would reveal us to
ourselves in many startling ways. The deep, real feelings which we will
not recognize while awake, take possession of us when we sleep; and the
cup-bearer who was slain for dreaming that he poisoned the king was, very
likely, righteously slain. The dream had but revealed the secret thought
of his soul. "We sleep, but our heart waketh," and though

"Calm and still may be the sleeping face
In the moonlight pale,
The heart waketh in her secret place