Part 66 (2/2)

”It is a chapel--the old castle-chapel--mentioned, I know, somewhere in the history of the place, though no one, I suppose, ever dreamed the missing room could be that!--And in the chapel,” continued Arctura, hardly able to bring out the words, for a kind of cramping of the muscles of speech, ”there was a bed! and in the bed the crumbling dust of a woman! and on the altar what was hardly more than the dusty shadow of a baby?”

”The Lord be aboot us!” cried the housekeeper, her well-seasoned composure giving way; ”ye saw that wi' yer ain e'en, my lady!--Mr.

Grant! hoo could ye lat her leddys.h.i.+p luik upo' sic things!”

”I am her ladys.h.i.+p's servant,” answered Donal.

”That's varra true! But eh, my bonny bairn, sic sichts is no for you!”

”I ought to know what is in the house!” said Arctura, with a shudder.

”But already I feel more comfortable that you know too. Mr. Grant would like to have your advice as to what--.--You'll come and see them, won't you?”

”When you please, my lady.--To-night?”

”No, no! not to-night.--Was that the knocking again?--Some ghosts want their bodies to be buried, though your butler--”

”I wouldna wonder!” responded mistress Brookes, thoughtfully.

”Where shall we bury them?” asked Donal.

”In Englan',” said the housekeeper, ”I used to hear a heap aboot consecrated ground; but to my min' it was the bodies o' G.o.d's handiwark, no the bishop, that consecrated the ground. Whaur the Lord lays doon what he has done wi', wad aye be a sacred place to me. I daursay Moses, whan he cam upo' 't again i' the desert, luikit upo' the ground whaur stood the buss that had burned, as a sacred place though the fire was lang oot!--Thinkna ye, Mr. Grant?”

”I do,” answered Donal. ”But I do not believe the Lord Jesus thought one spot on the face of the earth more holy than another: every dust of it was his father's, neither more nor less, existing only by the thought of that father! and I think that is what we must come to.--But where shall we bury them?--where they lie, or in the garden?”

”Some wud doobtless hae dist laid to dist i' the kirkyard; but I wudna wullin'ly raise a clash i' the country-side. Them that did it was yer ain forbeirs, my leddy; an' sic things are weel forgotten. An' syne what wud the earl say? It micht upset him mair nor a bit! I'll consider o' 't.”

Donal accompanied them to the door of the chamber which again they shared, and then betook himself to his own high nest. There more than once in what remained of the night, he woke, fancying he heard the ghost-music sounding its coronach over the dead below.

CHAPTER LVIII.

A SOUL DISEASED.

”Papa is very ill to-day, Simmons tells me,” said Davie, as Donal entered the schoolroom. ”He says he has never seen him so ill. Oh, Mr.

Grant, I hope he is not going to die!”

”I hope not,” returned Donal--not very sure, he saw when he thought about it, what he meant; for if there was so little hope of his becoming a true man on this side of some awful doom, why should he hope for his life here?

”I wish you would talk to him as you do to me, Mr. Grant!” resumed Davie, who thought what had been good for himself must be good for everybody.

Of late the boy had been more than usual with his father, and he may have dropped some word that turned his father's thoughts toward Donal and his ways of thinking: however weak the earl's will, and however dull his conscience, his mind was far from being inactive. In the afternoon the butler brought a message that his lords.h.i.+p would be glad to see Mr. Grant when school was over.

Donal found the earl very weak, but more like a live man, he thought, than he had yet seen him. He pointed to a seat, and began to talk in a way that considerably astonished the tutor.

”Mr. Grant,” he began, with not a little formality, ”I have known you long enough to believe I know you really. Now I find myself, partly from the peculiarity of my const.i.tution, partly from the state of my health, partly from the fact that my views do not coincide with those of the church of Scotland, and there is no episcopal clergyman within reach of the castle--I find myself, I say, for these reasons, desirous of some conversation with you, more for the sake of identifying my own opinions, than in the hope of receiving from you what it would be unreasonable to expect from one of your years.”

Donal held his peace; the very power of speech seemed taken from him: he had no confidence in the man, and nothing so quenches speech as lack of faith. But the earl had no idea of this distrust, never a doubt of his listener's readiness to take any position he required him to take.

Experience had taught him as little about Donal as about his own real self.

”I have long been troubled,” continued his lords.h.i.+p after a momentary pause, ”with a question of which one might think the world must by this time be weary--which yet has, and always will have, extraordinary fascination for minds of a certain sort--of which my own is one: it is the question of the freedom of the will:--how far is the will free? or how far can it be called free, consistently with the notion of a G.o.d over all?”

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