“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?”