"No; I am afraid to die. I know that I am sinning every day in weeping for my poor lost bairn, and yet I am that way made that I cannot help but weep for her. For it is my fault, David, all my fault. Why, then, did He pursue the child with His anger from the first hour of her sorrowful life to the last? And where is she now? O David, where is she? If God would only let me go to her!" "_Whist_, Nanna! You know not what you are saying. You might be asking yourself away from His presence." "I would rather be with Vala. If that be sinful, let me thole the wages of my sin. Where is my dear bairn?" "I heard Elder Kennoch say we may have a hope that God will eventually take pity on those babes who have done no actual sin." "But _when_ will he take pity? And until he does, how can the wee souls endure his anger? O David, my heart will break! My heart will break!" "Nanna, listen to this: when Elga Wick's child died, the minister said there was a benign interpretation of the doctrines which taught us that _none but elect infants died_. It would be unjust, Nanna, unless the child was elect, not to give it the offer of salvation." "What good would eighty years of 'offers' do, if there was no election to eternal life?" "Nanna, your father was a child of God, and you have loved him from your youth upward." "Can that help Vala?" "Even so. He keeps his mercy for children's children, to the third and fourth generation of them that fear him. Vala was in the direct succession of faith." "You know what her father and his folk have been?" "Yes, I know." "Oh, why did my father let me marry the man? He should rather have tied me hands and feet, and cast me into the depths of the sea. He should have said to me, 'Nanna, you may have a bairn, and it may be a child of sin, and thus foreordained to hell-fire.' Do you think then I would have wed Nicol Sinclair?" "Ay, I think you would." "Do you believe that I was born for that end?" "I think you had set your heart on Nicol at all risks." "At that time Nicol was in good favor with all folk." "You have told me that your father liked him not, and that he said many things to you against a marriage with him; so, then, if your heart had not been fully set on its own way, his 'no' would have been sufficient. If we heed not fathers and mothers and teachers, we should not heed, Nanna, no, not if one came from the dead to warn us." "That is an awful truth, David." "And one must speak truth to heal a wounded soul. If there be a canker in the body, you know well the doctor must not spare the sharp knife. But I would not put away hope for Vala--no, indeed!" "Why, David? Oh, why?" "Has she not kindred in His presence? Will He not remember His promise to them? Will they forget to remind Him of it? I think not so hardly of the dead."