No more festivals now! no talk to the children of future dances! and so few purchases of Backhouse, that he ceased to come, and the household were almost in rags. No more going to church, therefore, for any body! When the wind was in the right quarter for bringing to the uplands the din-dinning of the chapel-bell, Janet liked to hear it, though it was no summons to her to listen to the promises. The very sound revived the promises in her mind. But what could she make of them now? An incident, unspeakably fearful to her, suddenly showed her how she ought to view them. The eldest girl was nursing her idiot-brother's head in her lap while the younger children were at play, when the poor fellow nestled closer to her. "Poor Dan!" said she. "You can't play about, and be merry, like the others: but I will always take care of you, poor Dan!" Little Willy heard this, and stopped his play. In another moment his face flushed, his eyes flashed, he clenched his hands, he even stamped, as he cried out, "Mother, it's too bad! Why did God make Dan different from the rest?" His panic-stricken mother clapped her hand over his mouth. But this was no answer to his question. She thought she must be a wicked mother, that a child of hers should ask such a question as that. It was not often that she wept; but she wept sorely now. It brought her back to the old lesson of the seed-time and harvest. The promise here, too, failed, because the conditions were not fulfilled. The hope had been broken by a collision with the great natural laws, under which alone all promise can be fulfilled. But how explain this to Willy? How teach him that the Heavenly Father had made Dan as noble a little fellow as ever was seen, and that it was his own father there that had made him an idiot. When Raven came in, he could not but see her state; and he happened to be in so mild a mood, that she ventured to tell him what her terror and sorrow were about. He was dumb for a time. Then he began to say that he was bitterly punished for what was no habit of his, but that he vowed-- "No, no--don't vow!" said his wife, more alarmed than ever. She put her arm round his neck, and whispered into his ear, "I dare not hear you vow any more. You know how often--you know you had better not. I dare not hear you promise any more." He loosened her arm from his neck, and called Willy to him. He held the frightened boy between his knees, and looked him full in the face, while he said, "Willy, you must not say that God made Dan an idiot. God is very good, and I am very bad. _I_ made Dan an idiot." The stare with which Willy heard this was too much for his mother. She rushed up-stairs and threw herself upon the bed, where she was heard long afterward sobbing as if her heart would break. "Father," said Willy, timidly, but curiously, "did you make mother cry too?" "Yes, Willy, I did. It is all my doing." "Then I think you are very wicked."