When Janet got back to bed it was too dark to see anything except the big printing at the top of the paper.

“Two columns of it!” said Janet, with great thankfulness in her heart, lifting up her soul to God who had given her the power to sing.  She strained her prematurely old and weary eyes to make out the sense.  “A genuine source of pride to every native of the ancient province,” she read.

“The Lord be praised!” said Janet, in a rapture of devout thankfulness; “though I never really doubted it,” she added, as though asking pardon for a moment’s distrust.  “But I tried to write these poems to the glory of God and not to my own praise, and He will accept them and keep me humble under the praise of men as well as under their neglect.”

So clutching the precious paper close to her breast, and letting tears of thankfulness fall on the article, which, had they fallen on the head of the junior reporter, would have burned like fire, she patiently awaited the coming dawn.

“I can wait till the morning now to read the rest,” she said.

So hour after hour, with her eyes wide, staring hard at the gray window-squares, she waited the dawn from the east.  About half-past two there was a stirring and a moaning among the pines, and the roar of the sudden gust came with the breaking day through the dark arches.  In the whirlwind there came a strange expectancy and tremor into the heart of the poetess, and she pressed the wet sheet of crumpled paper closer to her bosom, and turned to face the light.  Through the spaces of the Long Wood of Barbrax there came a shining visitor, the Angel of the Presence, he who comes but once and stands a moment with a beckoning finger.  Him she followed up through the wood.

They found Janet on the morning of the second day after, with a look so glad on her face, and so natural an expectation in the unclosed eye, that Rob Affleck spoke to her and expected an answer.  The “Night Hawk” was clasped to her breast with a hand that they could not loosen.  It went to the grave with her body.  The ink had run a little here and there, where the tears had fallen thickest.

God is more merciful than man.

A DOCTOR OF THE OLD SCHOOL, By Ian Maclaren

[See also the illustrated html version:  #9320]

I A GENERAL PRACTITIONER

Drumtochty was accustomed to break every law of health, except wholesome food and fresh air, and yet had reduced the psalmist’s furthest limit to an average life-rate.  Our men made no difference in their clothes for summer or winter, Drumsheugh and one or two of the larger farmers condescending to a top-coat on Sabbath, as a penalty of their position, and without regard to temperature.  They wore their blacks at a funeral, refusing to cover them with anything, out of respect to the deceased, and standing longest