"'Besides all this, Landolf and his companions were skilled husbandmen, who themselves shunned no manual labour nor painstaking, and who knew right well how to eat their bread in the sweat of their brow. So they introduced agriculture universally, of which our forefathers at that time knew little or nothing; and thus they were not only the spiritual but also the material benefactors of the whole district. How much a single man can do, who is wholly given to the Lord, and who is moved by burning love to the Lord and to his fellows! God give all preachers and teachers, and especially all messengers to the heathen, such a mind, such a brave heart, such a single eye, such will to work! that some good may be done. "'About the next hundred years I have found nothing said in the chronicle. Probably things went on in such a quiet way that there was nothing particular to say concerning them. But then comes the relation of a noteworthy occurrence.'" Meredith shut up his book. "Well, aren't you going on?" said Maggie. "Presently. I want a run down to the shore and see how the water looks." "Why, it always looks just the same way," said Esther. "Does it? I am afraid something must be the matter with your eyes." "Oh, of course sometimes it blows, and sometimes it is smooth; but what is that?" "Just according to your eyes." "Aren't all eyes alike?" "Not exactly. Some see." "What do you see in the water?" "There is one peculiarity of eyes," said Meredith. "You cannot see through another person's. Come, Maggie, let us stretch ourselves a bit." Taking hold of hands, the two ran and scrambled down the steep, rocky pitch of the hill, to the edge of the river. The wind was not blowing to-day; soft and still the water lay, with a mild gleam under the October sun, sending up not even a ripple to the shore. There was a warm, spicy smell in the woods; there was a golden glow here and there from a hickory; the hills were variegated and rich-hued in the distance and near by. Meredith sat down on a stone by the water and looked out on the view. But he was graver than Maggie liked. "Ditto," she said after a while, "you are thinking of something." "Of a good many things, Maggie. How good the world is! and men are not!" "What then, Ditto?" "One ought to do something to make them better." "What can you do?" "What could Landolf the Saxon? I do not know, Maggie; but one ought to be as ready as Landolf was to do anything. And I think I am." "Then God will show you what to do, Ditto." Meredith bent down and kissed the earnest little face, "You are the only friend I have got, Maggie, that thinks and feels as I do." "O Ditto! Uncle Eden?" "Well, I suppose Mr. Murray would do me the honour to let me call him my friend," said Meredith. "And papa?" "Mr. Candlish is very good to me; but you see, I do not know him so well, Maggie."