"MacDONALD, George - The Wow O' Riven aka The Bell" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacDonald George)

could rouse him, till, next morning, he was waked by friendly death from the
long sleep of this world's night. They bore him to his favourite churchyard, and
buried him within the site of the old church, below his loved bell, which had
ever been to him as the cuckoo-note of a coming spring. Thus he at length obeyed
its summons, and went home.
Elsie lingered till the first summer days lay warm on the land. Several kind
hearts in the village, hearing of her illness, visited her and ministered to
her. Wondering at her sweetness and patience, they regretted they had not known
her before. How much consolation might not their kindness have imparted, and how
much might not their sympathy have strengthened her on her painful road! But
they could not long have delayed her going home. Nor, mentally constituted as
she was, would this have been at all to be desired. Indeed it was chiefly the
expectation of departure that quieted and soothed her tremulous nature. It is
true that a deep spring of hope and faith kept singing on in her heart, but this
alone, without the anticipation of speedy release, could only have kept her mind
at peace. It could not have reached, at least for a long time, the border land
between body and mind, in which her disease lay.
One still night of summer, the nurse who watched by her bedside heard her murmur
through her sleep, "I hear it: come hame-come hame. I'm comin', I'm comin'-I'm
gaein' hame to the wow, nae to come back." She awoke at the sound of her own
words, and begged the nurse to convey to her brother her last request, that she
might be buried by the side of the fool, within the old church of Ruthven. Then
she turned her face to the wall, and in the morning was found quiet and cold.
She must have died within a few minutes after her last words. She was buried
according to her request; and thus she too went home.
Side by side rest the aged fool and the young maiden; for the bell called them,
and they obeyed; and surely they found the fire burning bright, and heard
friendly voices, and felt sweet lips on theirs, in the home to which they went.
Surely both intellect and love were waiting them there.
Still the old bell hangs in the old gable; and whenever another is borne to the
old churchyard, it keeps calling to those who are left behind, with the same
sad, but friendly and unchanging voice-"Come hame! come hame! come hame!"

"Thy sun shall no more go down; neither shall thy moon withdraw itself: for the
Lord shall be thine everlasting light, and the days of thy mourning shall be
ended."-ISA. LX 20.