Helped by Marcella he would clamber into bed again, shutting his eyes, waiting on the Lord, only to start up as the pumping of his worn-out, strained heart almost choked him.  And then, leaning back on heaped pillows he would look out through the dark window and say, very humbly: 

“Most patient hast Thou been with me, Oh Lord, when Thou wast seeking me so far.  Most patient must I be with Thee—­I, who have no claim upon Thy mercy save Thy own most holy kindliness to me.”

And so the night would wear on; sometimes he would talk to God, sometimes to Marcella, telling her how he had hated her because she was not a boy and seemed, to his great strength, too much like her frail English mother to be of any use in the world.

“We’re a great folk, we Lashcairns, Marcella,” he would say, his sunken eyes brightening.  “A great name, Marcella.  I wanted you Janet, for there has always been a Janet Lashcairn since the wild woman came to Lashnagar.  But Rose would have you Marcella—­a foreign name to us,” and he sighed heavily.  “I hated you, Marcella, because I wanted a boy to win back everything we have lost.  Lashcairn the Landless whose lands stretched once from—­Marcella, what am I saying?  O Lord, Thou knowest that in nothing do I glory save in the Cross of Jesus Christ.  O Lord, Simon of Cyrene, Thy cross-bearer, has naught to boast save only the burden Thy grace has laid upon him.  Be patient with me, O Lord—­very hardly dies the vanity of the flesh.”

Andrew was always glad when it was Marcella’s turn to stay with him at night, for he liked her to read to him; she read the epistles of Paul especially and F.W.H.  Myers’ “St. Paul” until she knew them almost by heart.  In St. Paul Andrew saw much of himself:  especially could he see himself on the Damascus road when a blinding light came down.

Three of the five cows were sold to buy the medicines and the patent foods he did not seem to notice.  Duncan, the farm man who never got any wages, went out at night to work with Jock and Tammas in their boat, and at every month end he handed to Aunt Janet the money he got to buy things for his master.  Though he was on his bed Andrew did not forget his proselytising and Duncan and Jean were brought into the bedroom every night while Marcella read the New Testament, and her father prayed.  He prayed for her soul and the souls of Duncan and Jean; Marcella would kneel between the two of them, with the smell of the fish from Duncan and the scent of the byres from Jean’s shoes and her clothes stealing round her while her father prayed.  She was bewildered by him:  very often, when he prayed long and she was falling asleep after her wakeful night, she would feel impatient with him, especially when he prayed loud and long that she might be brought to a conviction of sin.  He puzzled her unendurably; sometimes her old docility to his autocracy made her feel that she really must be the miserable sinner he pictured her.  Sometimes her common sense told her she could not be.  Then, on top of the impatience and revolt, would come aching pity for his weakness, his tenderness to God, the apologies he made for God who was so hard, so just in His dealings with him.