“Ay!” Malcolm began again, as if he had in the meantime been thinking over the question, and was now assured upon it, “--the win’ _maun_ come frae yont the stars; for dinna ye min’, laird? Ye was at the kirk last Sunday--wasna ye?” The laird nodded an affirmative, and Malcolm went on. “An’ didna ye hear the minister read frae the buik ’at hoo ilka guid an’ ilka perfit gift was frae abune, an’ cam frae the Father o’ lichts?” “Father o’ lichts!” repeated the laird, and looked up at the stars. “I dinna ken whaur _I_ cam frae. I hae nae father. I hae only a.... I hae only a wuman.” The moment he had said the word, he began to move his head from side to side like a scared animal seeking where to conceal itself. “The Father o’ lichts is your father an’ mine--the Father o’ a’ o’ ’s,” said Malcolm. “O’ a’ guid fowk, I daursay,” said the laird, with a deep and quivering sigh. “Mr Graham says--o’ a’ body,” returned Malcolm, “guid an’ ill; --o’ the guid to haud them guid an’ mak them better--o’ the ill to mak them guid.” “Eh! gien that war true!” said the laird. They walked on in silence for a minute. All at once the laird threw up his hands, and fell flat on his face on the sand, his poor hump rising skywards above his head. Malcolm thought he had been seized with one of the fits to which he was subject, and knelt down beside him, to see if he could do anything for him. Then he found he was praying: he heard him--he could but just hear him--murmuring over and over, all but inaudibly, “Father o’ lichts! Father o’ lichts! Father o’ lichts!” It seemed as if no other word dared mingle itself with that cry. Maniac or not--the mood of the man was supremely sane, and altogether too sacred to disturb. Malcolm retreated a little way, sat down in the sand and watched beside him. It was a solemn time--the full tide lapping up on the long yellow sand from the wide sea darkening out to the dim horizon: the gentle wind blowing through the molten darkness; overhead, the great vault without arch or keystone, of dim liquid blue, and sown with worlds so far removed they could only shine; and, on the shore, the centre of all the cosmic order, a misshapen heap of man, a tumulus in which lay buried a live and lovely soul! The one pillar of its chapter house had given way, and the downrushing ruin had so crushed and distorted it, that thenceforth until some resurrection should arrive, disorder and misshape must appear to it the law of the universe, and loveliness but the passing dream of a brain glad to deceive its own misery, and so to fancy it had received from above what it had itself generated of its own poverty from below. To the mind’s eye of Malcolm, the little hump on the sand was heaved to the stars, higher than ever Roman tomb or Egyptian pyramid, in silent appeal to the sweet heavens, a dumb prayer for pity, a visible groan for the resurrection of the body. For a few minutes he sat as still as the prostrate laird.