Page:Blind Allan (1).pdf/15

15 beggar along the high-way under the sickening sunshine or the chilling sleet, with an abject that abjectly protruded with a cold heart for colder charity;-but he was, although he humbly felt and acknowledged that he was in nothing more worthy than these, a man loaded with many blessings, warmed by a constant ingle, laughed round by a flock of joyful children, love-tended and love-lighted by a wife who was to him at once music, and radiance,———while his house stood in the middle of a village of which all the inhabitants were his friends, and of all whose hands the knock was known when it touched his door, and of all whose voices the tone was felt when it kindly accosted him in the wood, in the field, in the garden, by the river's side, hospitable board of a neighbour, or in the Church-yard assemblage before entering into the House of God.

Thus did years pass along. Children were born to them———lived———were healthy———and wellbehaved. A blessing rested upon them and all that belonged to them, and the name of “Blind Allan" carried with it far and near an authority that could belong only to virtue, piety, and faith tried by affliction and found to stand fast.

Ten years ago, when they married, Allan Bruce and Fanny Raeburn were among the poorest of