“Even then--should the well-spring of thy life be polluted with vilest horrors such as, in Persian legends, the lips of the lost are doomed to drink with loathings inconceivable--the well is but the utterance of the water, not the source of its existence; the rain is its father, and comes from the sweet heavens. Thy soul, however it became known to itself, is from the pure heart of God, whose thought of thee is older than thy being--is its first and eldest cause. Thy essence cannot be defiled, for in him it is eternal.” Even with the thought, the horizon of his life began to clear; a light came out on the far edge of its ocean--a dull and sombre yellow, it is true, and the clouds hung yet heavy over sea and land, while miles of vapour hid the sky; but he could now believe there might be a blue beyond, in which the sun lorded it with majesty. He had been rambling on the waste hill in which the grounds of Lossie House, as it were, dissipated. It had a far outlook, but he had beheld neither sky or ocean. The Soutars of Cromarty had all the time sat on their stools large in his view; the hills of Sutherland had invited his gaze, rising faint and clear over the darkened water at their base, less solid than the sky in which they were set, and less a fact than the clouds that crossed their breasts; the land of Caithness had lain lowly and afar, as if, weary of great things, it had crept away in tired humility to the rigours of the north; and east and west his own rugged shore had gone lengthening out, fringed with the white burst of the dark sea; but none of all these things had he noted. Lady Florimel suddenly encountered him on his way home, and was startled by his look. “Where _have_ you been, Malcolm?” she exclaimed. “I hardly ken, my leddy: somewhaur aboot the feet o’ Mount Pisgah, I’m thinkin’, if no freely upo’ the heid o’ ’t.” “That’s not the name of the hill up there!” “Ow na; yon’s the Binn.” “What have you been about? Looking at things in general, I suppose.” “Na; they’ve been luikin’ at me, I daursay; but I didna heed them, an’ they didna fash me.” “You look so strangely bright!” she said, “as if you had seen something both marvellous and beautiful!” The words revealed a quality of insight not hitherto manifested by Florimel. In truth, Malcolm’s whole being was irradiated by the flash of inward peace that had visited him--a statement intelligible and therefore credible enough to the mind accustomed to look over the battlements of the walls that clasp the fair windows of the senses. But Florimel’s insight had reached its limit, and her judgment, vainly endeavouring to penetrate farther, fell floundering in the mud. “I know!” she went on: “--You’ve been to see your lady mother!”