CHAPTER XXIV.
STEPHEN KENNEDY.
The great comforts of Donal's life, next to those of the world in which his soul lived--the eternal world, whose doors are ever open to him who prays--were the society of his favourite books, the fashioning of his thoughts into sweetly ordered sounds in the lofty solitude of his chamber, and not infrequent communion with the cobbler and his wife.
To these he had as yet said nothing of what went on at the castle: he had learned the lesson the cobbler himself gave him.

But many a lesson of greater value did he learn from the philosopher of the lapstone.

He who understands because he endeavours, is a freed man of the realm of human effort.

He who has no experience of his own, to him the experience of others is a sealed book.

The convictions that in Donal rose vaporous were rapidly condensed and shaped when he found his new friend thought likewise.
By degrees he made more and more of a companion of Davie, and such was the sweet relation between them that he would sometimes have him in his room even when he was writing.