To this I could only say, "Alas! sir, twice have I again consulted the oracle, and twice has the answer been an exhortation and a reproach that I should be so loath to obey." "But what for, father," interposed my son, "need ye be sae fashed about it. I would ne'er refuse;--I'm ready to gang if ye were na sae weakly;--and though the folk afore the house are but a wee waff-like, ye ken it is written in the Book that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." Mr Cargill looked with admiration at the confidence of this young piety, and, laying his hand on the boy's head, said, "I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. The Lord is in this, Ringan, put your trust in Him." Whereupon I took my son's hand, and I placed it in the martyr's hand, and I said, "Take him, lead him wheresoever ye will. I have sinned almost to disobedience, but the confidence has been renewed within me." "Rejoice," said Mr Cargill, in words that were as the gift of health to my enfeebled spirit, "rejoice, and be exceeding glad; for great is your reward in heaven; for so persecuted they the prophets which were before you." As he pronounced the latter clause I felt my thoughts flash with a wild remembrance of the desolation of my house; but he began to return thanks for the comfort that he himself enjoyed in his outcast condition, of beholding so many proofs of the unshaken constancy of faith still in the land, and prayed for me in words of such sweet eloquence, that even in the parting from my son,--my last, whom I loved so well, they cherished me with a joy passing all understanding. At the conclusion of his inspired thanksgiving, I kissed my Joseph on the forehead, and bidding him remember what his father's house had been, bade him farewell. His young heart was too full to reply; and Mr Cargill too was so deeply affected that he said nothing; so, after shaking me by the hand, he led him away. And if I did sin when they were departed, in the complaint of my childless desolation, for no less could I account it, it was a sin that surely will not be heavily laid against me. "O Absalom, my son, my son,--would I had died for thee," cried the warlike King David, when Absalom was slain in rebellion against him, and he had still many children; but my innocent Absalom was all that I had left. CHAPTER LXXX During the season that the malady continued upon me, through the unsuspected agency of Robin Brown, a paction was entered into with certain of my neighbours, to take the lands of Quharist on tack among them, and to pay me a secret stipend, by which means were obtained to maintain me in a decency when I was able to be removed into Glasgow. And when my strength was so far restored that I could bear the journey, the same good man entered into a stipulation with Mrs Aird, the relict of a Gospel minister, to receive me as a lodger, and he carried me in on his cart to her house at the foot of the Stockwell.