David Elginbrod | Page 2

fir-wood drew her
towards it, and she rose and went. Through its crowd of slender pillars,
she strayed hither and thither, in an aimless manner, as if resignedly
haunting the neighbourhood of something she had lost, or, hopefully,
that of a treasure she expected one day to find.
It did not seem that she had heard her mother's call, for no response
followed; and Janet Elginbrod returned into the cottage, where David of
the same surname, who was already seated at the white deal table with
"the beuk," or large family bible before him, straightway commenced
reading a chapter in the usual routine from the Old Testament, the New
being reserved for the evening devotions. The chapter was the fortieth
of the prophet Isaiah; and as the voice of the reader re-uttered the words
of old inspiration, one might have thought that it was the voice of the
ancient prophet himself, pouring forth the expression of his own faith
in his expostulations with the unbelief of his brethren. The chapter
finished--it is none of the shortest, and Meg had not yet returned--the
two knelt, and David prayed thus:
"O Thou who holdest the waters in the hollow of ae han', and carriest
the lambs o' thy own making in thy bosom with the other han', it would
be altogether unworthy o' thee, and o' thy Maijesty o' love, to require o'
us that which thou knowest we cannot bring unto thee, until thou enrich
us with that same. Therefore, like thine own bairns, we boo doon afore
thee, an' pray that thou wouldst tak' thy wull o' us, thy holy an' perfect
an' blessed wull o' us; for, O God, we are a' thine ain. An' for oor lassie,
wha's oot amo' thy trees, an' wha' we dinna think forgets her Maker,
though she may whiles forget her prayers, Lord, keep her a bonnie
lassie in thy sicht, as white and clean in thy een as she is fair an'
halesome in oors; an' oh! we thank thee, Father in heaven, for giein' her

to us. An' noo, for a' oor wrang-duins an' ill-min'ins, for a' oor sins and
trespasses o' mony sorts, dinna forget them, O God, till thou pits them
a' richt, an' syne exerceese thy michty power e'en ower thine ain sel, an'
clean forget them a'thegither; cast them ahint thy back, whaur e'en thine
ain een shall ne'er see them again, that we may walk bold an' upricht
afore thee for evermore, an' see the face o' Him wha was as muckle
God in doin' thy biddin', as gin he had been ordering' a' thing Himsel.
For his sake, Ahmen."
I hope my readers will not suppose that I give this as a specimen of
Scotch prayers. I know better than that. David was an unusual man, and
his prayers were unusual prayers. The present was a little more so in its
style, from the fact that one of the subjects of it was absent, a
circumstance that rarely happened. But the degree of difference was too
small to be detected by any but those who were quite accustomed to his
forms of thought and expression. How much of it Janet understood or
sympathized with, it is difficult to say; for anything that could be called
a thought rarely crossed the threshold of her utterance. On this occasion,
the moment the prayer was ended, she rose from her knees, smoothed
down her check apron, and went to the door; where, shading her eyes
from the sun with her hand, she peered from under its penthouse into
the fir-wood, and said in a voice softened apparently by the exercise in
which she had taken a silent share,
"Whaur can the lassie be?"
And where was the lassie? In the fir-wood, to be sure, with the
thousand shadows, and the sunlight through it all; for at this moment
the light fell upon her far in its depths, and revealed her hastening
towards the cottage in as straight a line as the trees would permit, now
blotted out by a crossing shadow, and anon radiant in the sunlight,
appearing and vanishing as she threaded the upright warp of the
fir-wood. It was morning all around her; and one might see that it was
morning within her too, as, emerging at last in the small open space
around the cottage, Margaret--I cannot call her Meg, although her
mother does--her father always called her "Maggy, my doo," Anglicé,
dove--Margaret approached her mother with a bright healthful face, and
the least possible expression of uneasiness on her fair forehead. She
carried a book in her hand.
"What gars ye gang stravaguin' that get, Meg, whan ye ken weel

eneuch ye sud a' been in to worship lang syne? An sae we maun hae
worship