It was
a great book, large of print, read over in every part, but opening
most easily among the prophets. No cry, no denunciation, no longing,
no judgment from Isaiah to Malachi, but was known to the elder of the
kirk. Now he sat here, in his Sunday dress, with the Bible. At a
little distance, on the round bench, sat Robin Greenlaw. The old man
read sternly, concentratedly on; the young one looked at the purple
mountain-heads. Elspeth came around the tree.
"Grandfather, dinner is ready.--Robin! we didn't know that you were
here--"
"I went the way around to speak with the laird. Then I thought, 'I
will eat at White Farm--'"
"You're welcome!--Grandfather, let me take the Book."
"No," said the old man, and bore it himself withindoors. Spare and
unbent of frame, threescore and ten and five, and able yet at the
plow-stilts, rigid of will, servant to the darker Calvinism, starving
where he might human pride and human affections, and yet with much of
both to starve, he moved and spoke with slow authority, looked a
patriarch and ruled his holding. When presently he came to table in
the clean, sanded room with the sunlight on the wall and floor, and
when, standing, he said the long, the earnest grace, it might have
been taken that here, in the Scotch farm-house, was at least a minor
prophet. The grace was long, a true wrestling in prayer.
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