His nurse remembered him, and ran back to fetch him five minutes later. But that five minutes of mental agony had done a work which was never to be effaced. The powers of evil had come paralyzingly close, and nothing can compare with the terrors of helpless childhood. Like dying saints, children have eyes to see what is invisible to others. Children’s dreams are not necessarily pleasant. There are some whose souls are laid bare to the onslaughts of devils as well as angels. Even the deaths of good men and women are not always, nor even often, peaceful. To Richard, cowed and trembling—picture him; a small boy in a white sailor suit, with tiny fingers battering vainly at the great oak door whose latch was beyond his reach!—the five minutes of desertion spelled eternity. The Bible had already taught him that a day might be as a thousand years. His momentary vision as to the real meaning of the verse was kept alive in him thereafter by the weekly sermons of the Forbeggie minister, who loved to dilate—under some fifteen or sixteen headings—upon the torture of impenitents by cheerful means of "worms of the damned that dieth not and fire that is never to be quenched." So much for the dark side of the picture, but Richard had many compensations. _Fide et Fortitudine_ was the motto of his race; he learnt its lessons early. Let him but keep his inheritance, and he would not grudge one of those many supperless occasions which helped to retain the mere necessities of a clan deriving from Macduff, Thane of Fife. He loved his land, and throve quite joyously upon austerities that would have broken the spirit of a less hardy lad. His natural reserve was fostered by enforced solitude. The days went swiftly. To be more or less alone in the world, except for a collie dog, is certainly not to be unhappy when every other bird comes to your call, when stoats and ferrets even are familiar friends. Richard’s mind, dependent upon nature for its amusements, was seldom called upon to translate the word disappointment. The peace which wrapped him round became his dear possession, and was peopled with invisible playmates. There was a hut in the park near the river, some three miles away, where Dan, the collie, and he played the parts of settlers in a land full of enemies. He knew the range of every object within view. He altered the defences day after day, laying down wire entanglements, building rough stockades, or primitive trenches, with loopholes and head cover, in all of which Dan took a profound interest. Richard was his own stern critic, and yesterday’s work was pulled down on the morrow, until a day came when, after subjecting it to the severest tests he knew, he found it good. Continually burrowing in dirt, growing in experience, could the heart of boy ask more?