Our fathers had no turn for sensation, but they had an unerring
sense of a spiritual situation. The preacher paused for five
seconds, while no man could breathe, and then lifting up his hand to
Heaven he said, with an indescribable authority and tenderness, "The
Lord fulfil the desire of your heart both in this world and in that
which is to come."

Then the congregation sang, after the ancient custom of our parts,

"Now blessed be the Lord our God,
The God of Israel,"

and Donald's face was one glory, because he saw in the soft evening
light of the upper window the angels of God ascending and descending
upon the Son of man.

It was after this that the Free Kirk minister occupied six months in
proving that Moses did not write Deuteronomy, and Lachlan was trying
for the same period to have the minister removed from Drumtochty.
Donald, deprived by one stroke of both his friends, fell back on me,
and told me many things I loved to hear, although they were beyond
my comprehension.

"It wass not always so with me as it iss this day, for I once had no
ear for God's voice, and my eyes were holden that I saw not the
spiritual world. But sore sickness came upon me, and I wass nigh
unto death, and my soul awoke within me and began to cry like a
child for its mother. All my days I had lived on Loch Tay, and now I
thought of the other country into which I would hef to be going,