Page:The Cottagers of Glenburnie - Hamilton (1808).djvu/255

 of informing him of the situation of his wife and son: to which he made no other answer, than that they were in the hands of a merciful God, and in life and death he submitted to his will.

On the minister coming in, he spoke to him in the same strain of pious resignation. "I know," he said, "that my hour is at hand; but though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil, knowing that the Redeemer of the world has paved the way. He will guide his flock like a shepherd, and none that believe on him shall be lost." After much conversation of the same kind, in which he strongly evinced the faith and hope of a Christian—that faith and that hope, which transforms the death-bed of the cottager into a scene of glory, on which kings and conquerors might look with envy, and in comparison of which, all the grandeur of the world is contemptible—he desired to see his daughters and his little boy. They