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Updated: June 22, 2025
It is certainly plausible to suppose that these moments which the old man had set apart for familiar conversation with his daughter, whom he loved above all earthly things, for she reminded him of past days, might have proved highly detrimental to Nanna's sensitive and susceptible mind.
The door opened readily to the lifted latch, and he entered the forsaken room. The peat fire had long ago burned itself to ashes. The rose-plant, which had been Nanna's delight, had withered away on its little shelf by the window. But the neighbors had swept the floor and put the simple furniture in order. David drew the bolt across the door, and opened the papers which Nanna had left for him.
He had been grandly supported both by God and man, and he was grateful for the pronounced kindness of his friends, for their hand-shakings and greetings and loving words and wishes. But when both the enthusiasm and the pang of conflict were over, oh, how good it was to clasp Nanna's hand, and in this perfect but silent companionship to walk home with her!
But David regarded frost and snow, stormy winds and raging seas, poverty, pestilence, and death, as part of the eternal necessity pursuing its never-ending work through discord and imperfection. When there was a possibility of casting the fifty fathoms of ling-lines, David and his helpers were sure to venture out; when it was clearly impossible, he went to Nanna's and sat with her.
They were the abodes of poverty; there was none better than the rest. But Barbara had said that Nanna's was the first one, and he went slowly toward it. No one appeared, though the door stood wide open; but when he reached the threshold he could see Nanna sitting within.
There was nothing unusual in this request. Minister Campbell had already learned how averse Shetlanders are to having dealings with a lawyer, and he was quite willing to take the charge David desired to impose upon him. "I may not come back to Shetland," David said. "My father went away and never returned. I am bound for foreign seas, and I may go down any day or night. All I have is Nanna's.
Nanna's heart sank to its lowest depths, and a cold despair made her feet and hands heavy as lead; but she slowly spread the cloth on the table, and bit by bit managed to recollect the cup and saucer, the barley-cake, the smoked goose, and the tea.
And Nanna's patient face, her fixed outward gaze, the spiritual light of resolute decision in her eyes, gave to her appearance an austere beauty that made him feel as if this offering up of their love and all its earthly sweetness was a sacrifice already tied to the horns of the altar, and fully accepted.
But perhaps, again, this was the crisis for which he had been waiting; even as she meditated she heard his step in the hallway and his knock at her door; then it opened, and Quinton Edge stood before her. He did not appear to notice Nanna's absence, but crossed over to the window where Esmay stood. "Come," he said, and Esmay obeyed, being yet faint with terror lest his hands should touch her.
For some dauntless, primitive confidence in the love of the Maker of men is older than any creed. And there were yet hours when Nanna's soul outleaped its mortal shadow and had mystic flashes, native and sweet, beyond the reach of will and endeavor intimations of serenities and compensations which would be neither small nor long delayed.
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