Still Lost!  
Meanwhile, Mrs Sudberry was thrown into a species of frenzied horror, which no words can describe, and which was not in any degree allayed by the grave shaking of the head with which Mr McAllister accompanied his vain efforts to comfort and re-assure her. This excellent man quoted several passages from the works of Dugald Stewart and Locke, tending to show, in common parlance, that “necessity has no law,” and that the rightly constituted human mind ought to rise superior to all circumstances—quotations which had the effect of making Mrs Sudberry more hysterical than ever, and which induced Mrs Brown to call him who offered such consolation a “brute!”
 
But McAllister did not confine his efforts solely to the region of mind. While he was earnestly administering doses of the wisdom of Stewart and Locke to the agitated lady in the parlour, Dan and Hugh, with several others, were, by his orders, arming themselves in the kitchen for a regular search.
 
“She’s ready,” said Dan, entering the parlour unceremoniously with a huge stable lantern.
 
“That’s right, Dan—keep away up by the slate corrie, and come down by the red tarn. If they’ve taken the wrong turn to the right, you’re sure to fall in wi’ them thereaway. Send Hugh round by the burn; I’ll go straight up the hill, and come down upon Loch Cognahoighliey. Give a shout now and then, as ye goo.”
 
Dan was a man of action and few words: he vouchsafed no reply, but turned immediately and left the room, leaving a powerful odour of the byre behind him.
 
Poor Mrs Sudberry and Tilly were unspeakably comforted by the grave business-like way in which the search was gone about. They recalled to mind that a search of a somewhat similar nature, in point of manner and time, was undertaken a week before for a stray sheep, and that it had been successful; so they felt relieved, though they remained, of course, dreadfully anxious. McAllister refrained from administering any more moral philosophy. As he was not at all anxious about the lost party, and was rather fond of a sly joke, it remains to this day a matter of doubt whether he really expected that his nostrums would be of much use. In a few minutes he was breasting the hill like a true mountaineer, with a lantern in his hand, and with Hobbs by his side.
 
“Only think, ma’am,” said Mrs Brown, who was not usually judicious in her remarks, “only think if they’ve been an’ fell hover a precipice.”
 
“Shocking!” exclaimed poor Mrs Sudberry, with a little shriek, as she clapped her hands on her eyes.
 
“Poor Jacky, ma’am, p’raps ’e’s lyin’ hall in a mangled ’eap at the foot of a—”
 
“Leave me!” cried Mrs Sudberry, with an amount of sudden energy that quite amazed Mrs Brown, who left the room feeling that she was an injured woman.
 
“Darling mamma, they will come back!” said Tilly, throwing her arms round her mother’s neck, and bursting into tears on her bosom. “You know that the sheep—the lost sheep—was found last week, and brought home quite safe. Dan is so kind, though he does not speak much, and Hugh too. They will be sure to find them, darling mamma!”
 
The sweet voice and the hopeful heart of the child did what philosophy had failed to accomplish—Mrs Sudberry was comforted. Thus we see, not that philosophy is a vain thing, but that philosophy and feeling are distinct, and that each is utterly powerless in the domain of the other.
 
When Peter was left alone by his master, as recorded in a former chapter, he sat himself down in a cheerful frame of mind on the sunny side of a large rock, and gave himself up to the enjoyment of thorough repose, as well mental as physical. The poor lad was in that state of extreme lassitude which renders absolute and motionless rest delightful. Extended at full length on a springy couch of heath, with his eyes peeping dreamily through the half-closed lids at the magnificent prospect of mountains and glens that lay before him, and below him too, so that he felt like a bird in mid-air, looking down upon the world, with his right arm under his meek head, and both pillowed on the plaid, with his countenance exposed to the full blaze of the sun, and with his recent lunch commencing to operate on the system, so as to render exhaustion no longer a pain, but a pleasure, Peter lay on that knoll, high up the mountain-side, in close proximity to the clouds, dreaming and thinking about nothing; that is to say, about everything or anything in an imbecile sort of way: in other words, wandering in his mind disjointedly over the varied regions of memory and imagination; too tired to originate an idea; too indifferent to resist one when it arose; too weak to follow it out; and utterly indifferent as to whether his mind did follow it out, or cut it short off in the middle.
 
We speak of Peter’s mind as a totally distinct and separate thing from himself. It had taken the bit in its teeth and run away. He cared no more for it than he did for the nose on his face, which was, at that time, as red as a carrot, by reason of the sun shining full on its tip. But why attempt to describe Peter’s thoughts? Here they are—such as they were—for the reader to make what he can out of them.
 
“Heigh ho! comfortable now—jolly—what a place! How I hate mountains—climbing them—dreadful!—Like ’em to lie on, though—sun, I like your jolly red-hot face—Sunday! wonder if’s got to do with sun—p’raps—twinkle, twinkle, little sun, how I wonder—o............