BLESSINGS THAT COMPENSATE.
This pathetic little story of a blind girl is told by Ian Maclaren: "If I dinna see"—and she spoke as if this were a matter of doubt, and she was making a concession for argument's sake—there's naebody in the glen can hear like me. There's no footsteps of a Drumtochty man comes to the door but I ken his name and there's no voice oot on the road that I canna tell. The birds sing sweeter to me than to anybody else, and I hear them cheeping to one another in the bushes before they go to sleep. And the flowers smell sweeter to me,—the roses and the carnations and the bonny moss-rose,—and I judge that the oat-cake and the milk taste the richer because I dinna see them. No, na, ye're no to think that I've been ill-trated by my God, for if He didn't give me ae thing He gave me mony things instead. "And, mind ye, it's no as if I'd seen once and lost my sight; that micht ha' been a trial and my faith micht ha' failed. I've lost nothing; my life has been all getting."