Alec Forbes of Howglen

an' gang to the schuil wi' the l

had been duly observed; and having just risen from his knees, his voice, as he stooped over the child, retained al

, smoothed her hair, put on her bonnet, and had been waiting a long time at the door when her comp

le manner. But they had gone half the distance and not a word had bee

ad been brooding upon the fact for

imidly, for his tone had alrea

till his canine teeth were fully disclosed, as if he gloated in a

Johnnie, following his

as used to sinking now. But she said nothing, resolved

l, but on this occasion no one happened to have gone to his house to fetch the key, and the scholars had therefore to wait in the street. None of them took any notice of Annie; so she was left to study the outside of the school. It was a long, low, thatched building, of one story and a garret, with five windows to the lane, and some behind, for she could see light through. It h

heels by the troop of boys, big and little, and lastly by the girls-last of all, at a short distance, by Annie, like a motherless lamb that followed the flock, because she did not know what else to do. She found she had to go down a step into a sunk passage or lobby, and then up another step, through a door on the left, into the school. There she saw a double row of desks, with a clear space down the middle between the rows. Each scholar was hurrying to his place at one of the desks, where, as he arrived, he stood. The master already stood in solemn posture at the nearer end of the room on a platform behind his desk, prepared to commence the extempore prayer, which was printed in a kind of blotted stereotype upon every one of their brains. Annie had hardly succeeded in reaching a vacant place among the girls when he began. The boys were as still

arriving late, had stood outside the door till the prayer was over, and then entered unperceived during the subsequent confusion. Some little ones on the opposite form, howev

ds of the master, ringing through the roo

k. Each read a verse-neither more nor less-often leaving the half of a sentence to be taken up as a new subject in a new key; thus perverting what was intended as an assistance to find the truth int

till less reverence for humanity than they had for Scripture. It was a good thing that they were not the sacred fountains of the New Testament that

ed by the master, even if she had understood them herself sufficiently to set them out before him. For, besides her aunt, who had taught her to read, and nothing more, her only instructors had been Nature, with her whole staff, including the sun, moon, and wind; the grass, the corn, Brownie the cow, and her own faithful subject, Dowie. Still, it was a great mortification to her to be put into the spelling-book, which excluded her from the Bible-class. She was also condemned t

ad and spell. The master stood before them, armed with a long, thick strap of horse-hide, prepared by steeping i

cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he still attempted to go on, and still the instrument of torture went swish-swash round his little thin legs,

ufferings and repressed weeping, or he saw that he was compelling the impo

had she been left to herself, would have been to take the little boy in her arms and cry too. As it was, she struggled mightily with her tears, and yet she did not read to much better purpose than the poor boy, who was still busy wi

ayed with David-"Let us fall now into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great; and let us not f

ismissed, and went home to

with a severe, if not an altogether cruel temper, and a quite savage sense of duty. The punishment was mostly in the form of pandies,-blows delivered with varying force, but generally with the full swing of the tag, as it was commonly called, thrown over the master's shoulder, and brough

st out crying, but managed to choke her

doubt whether the discovery of a boy's innocence was not a disappointment to him. Without a word of expostulation or defence, the boy held out his hand, with his arm at full length, received four stinging blows upon it, grew very red in the face, gave a kind of grotesque smile, and returned to his seat with the suffering hand sent into retirement in his trowsers-pocket. Annie's admiration of his courage as well as of his looks, though perhaps unrecog

e of strife, suffering, and deliverance. Birth and death, with the life-struggle between, were shadowed out in it-with this difference, that the God of a corrupt Calvinism, in the person of

e all about her still. She had but one comfort left-that no one would prevent her from creeping up to her own desolate garret, which was now the dreary substitute for Brownie's stall. Thither the persecuting boys were not like