But the bliss went not yet; he sat for a while in the joy of conscious loss in the higher life.

With his meditations and feelings mingled now and then a few muffled blows of the cobbler's hammer: he was once more at work on his disabled shoe.
"Here is a true man!" he thought, "-- a Godlike helper of his fellow!" When the hammer ceased, the cobbler was stitching; when Donal ceased thinking, he went on feeling.

Again and again came a little roll of the cobbler's drum, giving glory to God by doing his will: the sweetest and most acceptable music is that which rises from work a doing; its incense ascends as from the river in its flowing, from the wind in its blowing, from the grass in its growing.

All at once he heard the voices of two women in the next garden, close behind him, talking together.
"Eh," said one, "there's that godless cratur, An'rew Comin, at his wark again upo' the Sawbath mornin'!" "Ay, lass," answered the other, "I hear him! Eh, but it 'll be an ill day for him whan he has to appear afore the jeedge o' a'! He winna hae his comman'ments broken that gait!" "Troth, na!" returned the former; "it'll be a sair sattlin day for him!" Donal rose, and looking about him, saw two decent, elderly women on the other side of the low stone wall.

He was approaching them with the request on his lips to know which of the Lord's commandments they supposed the cobbler to be breaking, when, seeing that he must have overheard them, they turned their backs and walked away.
And now his hostess, having discovered he was in the garden, came to call him to breakfast--the simplest of meals--porridge, with a cup of tea after it because it was Sunday, and there was danger of sleepiness at the kirk.
"Yer shune 's waitin' ye, sir," said the cobbler.