Few words passed between the two men until they had had their tea, and then followed a long talk, Malcolm first explaining his present position, and then answering many questions of the master as to how things had gone since he left. Next followed anxious questions on Malcolm’s side as to how his friend found himself in the prison of London. “I do miss the air, and the laverocks (_skylarks_), and the gowans,” he confessed; “but I have them all in my mind, and at my age a man ought to be able to satisfy himself with the idea of a thing in his soul. Of outer things that have contributed to his inward growth, the memory alone may then well be enough. The sights which, when I lie down to sleep, rise before that inward eye Wordsworth calls the bliss of solitude, have upon me power almost of a spiritual vision, so purely radiant are they of that which dwells in them, the divine thought which is their substance, their _hypostasis_. My boy! I doubt if you can tell what it is to know the presence of the living God in and about you.” “I houp I hae a bit notion o’ ’t, sir,” said Malcolm. “But believe me that in any case, however much a man may have of it, he may have it endlessly more. Since I left the cottage where I hoped to end my days under the shadow of the house of your ancestors, since I came into this region of bricks and smoke, and the crowded tokens too plain of want and care, I have found a reality in the things I had been trying to teach you at Portlossie, such as I had before imagined only in my best moments. And more still: I am now far better able to understand how it must have been with our Lord when he was trying to teach the men and women of Palestine to have faith in God. Depend upon it, we get our best use of life in learning by the facts of its ebb and flow to understand the Son of Man. And again, when we understand Him, then only do we understand our life and ourselves. Never can we know the majesty of the will of God concerning us except by understanding Jesus and the work the Father gave Him to do. Now, nothing is of a more heavenly delight than to enter into a dusky room in the house of your friend, and there, with a blow of the heavenly rod, draw light from the dark wall--open a window, a fountain of the eternal light, and let in the truth which is the life of the world. Joyously would a man spend his life, right joyously even if the road led to the gallows, in showing the grandest he sees--the splendid purities of the divine religion--the mountain top up to which the voice of God is ever calling his children. Yes, I can understand even how a man might live, like the good hermits of old, in triumphant meditation upon such all-satisfying truths, and let the waves of the world’s time wash by him in unheeded flow until his cell changed to his tomb, and his spirit soared free. But to spend your time in giving little lessons when you have great ones to give; in teaching the multiplication table the morning after