Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/248

 to Mrs MacClarty, who, oppressed with fatigue, had, by her persuasion, gone to take a little rest. While she was speaking to him, the minister of the parish came in. He had but just returned from a long journey, the only one he had taken for many years, and though much tired, no sooner heard that he had been sent for in his absence to visit a sick parishioner, than he instantly proceeded to administer comfort to the distressed. Learning from Mrs Mason the state of insensibility to which the sick man was now reduced, he desired his children to be called, in order that they might benefit by the impression which such serious acts of devotion are calculated to make; and when they were assembled, he, with solemn fervency, supplicated the God of all mercy and consolation, in behalf of the sufferer and his afflicted family. While he spoke, tears flowed from the eyes of the most insensible; and Mrs Mason was not without hope, that the spirit of obedience, which