CHAPTER XXVII
Little as Murdoch Malison knew of the worlds of thought and feeling—Annie's among the rest—which lay within those young faces and forms assembled the next day as usual, he knew almost as little of the mysteries that lay within himself.
Annie was haunted all day with the thought of the wrath of God. When she forgot it for a moment, it would return again with a sting of actual physical pain, which seemed to pierce her heart. Before school was over she had made up her mind what to do.
And before school was over Malison's own deed had opened his own eyes, had broken through the crust that lay between him and the vision of his own character.
There is not to be found a more thorough impersonation of his own theology than a Scotch schoolmaster of the rough old-fashioned type. His pleasure was law, irrespective of right or wrong, and the reward of submission to law was immunity from punishment. He had his favourites in various degrees, whom he chose according to inexplicable directions of feeling ratified by "the freedom of his own will." These found it easy to please him, while those with whom he was not primarily pleased, found it impossible to please him.
Now there had come to the school, about a fortnight before, two unhappy-looking little twin orphans, with white thin faces, and bones in their clothes instead of legs and arms, committed to the mercies of Mr Malison by their grandfather. Bent into all the angles of a grasshopper, and lean with ancient poverty, the old man tottered away with his stick in one hand, stretched far out to support his stooping frame, and carried in the other the caps of the two forsaken urchins, saying, as he went, in a quavering, croaking voice,
"I'll jist tak them wi' me, or they'll no be fit for the Sawbath aboon a fortnicht. They're terrible laddies to blaud (spoil) their claes!"
Turning with difficulty when he had reached the door, he added:
"Noo ye jist gie them their whups weel, Master Mailison, for ye ken that he that spareth the rod blaudeth the bairn."
Thus authorized, Malison certainly did "gie them their whups weel." Before the day was over they had both lain shrieking on the floor under the torture of the lash. And such poor half-clothed, half-fed creatures they were, and looked so pitiful and cowed, that one cannot help thinking it must have been for his own glory rather than their good that he treated them thus.
But, in justice to Malison, another fact must be mentioned, which, although inconsistent with the one just recorded, was in perfect consistency with the theological subsoil whence both sprang. After about a week, during which they had been whipt almost every day, the orphans came to school with a cold and a terrible cough. Then his observant pupils saw the man who was both cruel judge and cruel executioner, feeding his victims with liquorice till their faces were stained with its exuberance.
The old habits of severity, which had been in some measure intermitted, had returned upon him with gathered strength, and this day Anne was to be one of the victims. For although he would not dare to whip her, he was about to incur the shame of making this day, pervaded as it was, through all its spaces of time and light, with the fumes of the sermon she had heard the night before, the most wretched day that Anne's sad life had yet seen. Indeed, although she afterwards passed many more sorrowful days, she never had to pass one so utterly miserable. The spirits of the pit seemed to have broken loose and filled Murdoch Malison's school-room with the stench of their fire and brimstone.
As she sat longing for school to be over, that she might follow a plan which had a glimmer of hope in it, stupified with her labouring thoughts, and overcome with wretchedness, she fell fast asleep. She was roused by a smart blow from the taws, flung with unerring aim at the back of her bare bended neck. She sprang up with a cry, and, tottering between sleep and terror, proceeded at once to take the leather snake back to the master. But she would have fallen in getting over the form had not Alec caught her in his arms. He re-seated her, and taking the taws from her trembling hand, carried it himself to the tyrant. Upon him Malison's fury, breaking loose, expended itself in a dozen blows on the right hand, which Alec held up without flinching. As he walked to his seat, burning with pain, the voice of the master sounded behind him; but with the decree it uttered, Alec did not feel himself at liberty to interfere.
"Ann Anderson," he bawled, "stand up on the seat."
With trembling limbs, Annie obeyed. She could scarcely stand at first, and the form shook beneath her. For some time her colour kept alternating between crimson and white, but at last settled into a deadly pallor. Indeed, it was to her a terrible punishment to be exposed to the looks of all the boys and girls in the school. The elder Bruce tried hard to make her see one of his vile grimaces, but, feeling as if every nerve in her body were being stung with eyes, she never dared to look away from the book which she held upside down before her own sightless eyes.—This pillory was the punishment due to falling asleep, as hell was the punishment for forgetting God; and there she had to stand for a whole hour.
"What a shame! Damn that Malison!" and various other subdued exclamations were murmured about the room; for Annie was a favourite with most of the boys, and yet more because she was the General's sweetheart, as they said; but these ebullitions of popular feeling were too faint to reach her ears and comfort her isolation and exposure. Worst of all, she had soon to behold, with every advantage of position, an outbreak of the master's temper, far more painful than she had yet seen, both from its cruelty and its consequences.
A small class of mere children, amongst whom were the orphan Truffeys, had been committed to the care of one of the bigger boys, while the master was engaged with another class. Every boy in the latter had already had his share of pandies, when a noise in the children's class attracting the master's attention, he saw one of the Truffeys hit another boy in the face. He strode upon him at once, and putting no question as to provocation, took him by the neck, fixed it between his knees, and began to lash him with hissing blows. In his agony, the little fellow contrived to twist his head about and get a mouthful of the master's leg, inserting his teeth in a most canine and praiseworthy manner. The master caught him up, and dashed him on the floor. There the child lay motionless. Alarmed, and consequently cooled, Malison proceeded to lift him. He was apparently lifeless; but he had only fainted with pain. When he came to himself a little, it was found that his leg was hurt. It appeared afterwards that the knee-cap was greatly injured. Moaning with pain, he was sent home on the back of a big parish scholar.
At all this Anne stared from her pillory with horror. The feeling that God was angry with her grew upon her; and Murdoch Malison became for a time inseparably associated with her idea of God, frightfully bewildering all her aspirations.
The master still looked uneasy, threw the tag into his desk, and beat no one more that day. Indeed, only half an hour of school-time was left. As soon as that was over, he set off at a swinging pace for the old grandfather's cottage.
What passed there was never known. The other Truffey came to school the next day as usual, and told the boys that his brother was in bed. In that bed he lay for many weeks, and many were the visits the master paid him. This did much with the townsfolk to wipe away his reproach. They spoke of the affair as an unfortunate accident, and pitied the schoolmaster even more than the sufferer.
When at length the poor boy was able to leave his bed, it became apparent that, either through unskilful treatment, or as the unavoidable result of the injury, he would be a cripple for life.
The master's general behaviour was certainly modified by this consequence of his fury; but it was some time before the full reaction arrived.
CHAPTER XXVII
When Annie descended from her hateful eminence, just before the final prayer, it was with a deeper sense of degradation than any violence of the tawse on her poor little hands could have produced. Nor could the attentions of Alec, anxiously offered as soon as they were out of school, reach half so far to console her as they might once have reached; for such was her sense of condemnation, that she dared not take pleasure in anything. Nothing else was worth minding till something was done about that. The thought of having God against her took the heart out of everything.—As soon as Alec left her, she walked with hanging head, pale face, and mournful eyes, straight to Mr Cowie's door.
She was admitted at once, and shown into the library, where the clergyman sat in the red dusky glow of the firelight, sipping a glass of wine, and looking very much like an ox-animal chewing the cud; for the meditation in which the good man indulged over his wine was seldom worthy of being characterized otherwise than as mental rumination.
"Well, Annie, my dear, come away," said he, "I am glad to see you. How does the boat get on?"
Deeply touched by a kindness which fell like dew upon the parching misery of the day, Annie burst into tears. Mr Cowie was greatly distressed. He drew her between his knees, laid his cheek against hers, as was his way with children, and said with soothing tenderness:
"Walawa! what's the matter with my dawtie?"
After some vain attempts at speech, Annie succeeded in giving the following account of the matter, much interrupted with sobs and fresh outbursts of weeping.
"Ye see, sir, I gaed last nicht to the missionar kirk to hear Mr Broon.
And he preached a gran' sermon, sir. But I haena been able to bide
mysel' sin' syne. For I doobt I'm ane o' the wicked 'at God hates, and
I'll never win' to haven at a', for I canna help forgettin' him whiles.
An' the wicked'll be turned into hell, and a' the nations that forget
God. That was his text, sir. And I canna bide it."
In the bosom of the good man rose a gentle indignation against the schismatics who had thus terrified and bewildered that sacred being, a maid-child. But what could he say? He thought for a moment, and betook himself, in his perplexity, to his common sense.
"You haven't forgotten your father, have you, Annie?" said he.
"I think aboot him maist ilka day," answered Annie.
"But there comes a day now and then when you don't think much about him, does there not?"
"Yes, sir."
"Do you think he would be angry with his child because she was so much taken up with her books or her play–"
"I never play at onything, sir."
"Well—with learning songs to say to Alec Forbes and Willie Macwha—do you think he would be angry that you didn't think about him that day, especially when you can't see him?"
"'Deed no, sir. He wadna be sae sair upo' me as that."
"What would he say, do you think?"
"Gin Mr Bruce war to cast it up till me, he wad say: 'Lat alane the lassie. She'll think aboot me the morn—time eneuch.'"
"Well, don't you think your Father in heaven would say the same?"
"Maybe he micht, sir. But ye see my father was my ain father, and wad mak' the best o' me."
"And is not God kinder than your father?"
"He canna weel be that, sir. And there's the Scripter!"
"But he sent his only Son to die for us."
"Ay—for the eleck, sir," returned the little theologian.
Now this was more than Mr Cowie was well prepared to meet, for certainly this terrible doctrine was perfectly developed in the creed of the Scotch Church; the assembly of divines having sat upon the Scripture egg till they had hatched it in their own likeness. Poor Mr Cowie! There were the girl-eyes, blue, and hazy with tearful questions, looking up at him hungrily.—O starving little brothers and sisters! God does love you, and all shall be, and therefore is, well.—But the minister could not say this, gladly as he would have said it if he could; and the only result of his efforts to find a suitable reply was that he lost his temper—not with Annie, but with the doctrine of election.
"Gang ye hame, Annie, my bairn," said he, talking Scotch now, "and dinna trouble yer heid about election, and a' that. It's no' a canny doctrine. No mortal man could ever win at the boddom o' 't. I'm thinkin' we haena muckle to do w' 't. Gang hame, dawtie, and say yer prayers to be preserved frae the wiles o' Sawtan. There 's a sixpence to ye."
His kind heart was sorely grieved that all it could give was money. She had asked for bread, and he had but a stone, as he thought, to give her. So he gave it her with shame. He might however have reversed the words of St Peter, saying, "Spiritual aid I have none, but such as I have give I thee;" and so offered her the sixpence. But, for my part, I think the sixpence had more of bread in it than any theology he might have been expected to have at hand; for, so given, it was the symbol and the sign of love, which is the heart of the divine theology.
Annie, however, had a certain Scotchness in her which made her draw back from the offer.
"Na, thank ye, sir," she said; "I dinna want it."
"Will ye no tak' it to please an auld man, bairn?"
"Deed will I, sir, I wad do a hantle mair nor that to please you."
And again the tears filled her blue eyes as she held out her hand—receiving in it a shilling which Mr Cowie, for more relief to his own burdened heart, had substituted for the sixpence.
"It's a shillin', sir!" she said, looking up at him with the coin lying on her open palm.
"Weel, what for no? Is a shillin' no a saxpence?"
"Ay, sir. It's twa."
"Weel, Annie," said the old man, suddenly elevated into prophecy for the child's need—for he had premeditated nothing of the sort—"maybe whan God offers us a saxpence, it may turn oot to be twa. Good nicht, my bairn."
But Mr Cowie was sorely dissatisfied with himself. For not only did he perceive that the heart of the child could not be thus satisfied, but he began to feel something new stirring in his own bosom. The fact was that Annie was further on than Mr Cowie. She was a child looking about to find the face of her Father in heaven: he was but one of God's babies, who had been lying on his knees, receiving contentedly and happily the good things he gave him, but never looking up to find the eyes of him from whom the good gifts came. And now the heart of the old man, touched by the motion of the child's heart—yearning after her Father in heaven, and yet scarcely believing that he could be so good as her father on earth—began to stir uneasily within him. And he went down on his knees and hid his face in his hands.
But Annie, though not satisfied, went away comforted. After such a day of agony and humiliation, Mr Cowie's kiss came gracious with restoration and blessing. It had something in it which was not in Mr Brown's sermon. And yet if she had gone to Mr Brown, she would have found him kind too—very kind; but solemnly kind—severely kind; his long saintly face beaming with religious tenderness—not human cordiality; and his heart full of interest in her spiritual condition, not sympathy with the unhappiness which his own teaching had produced; nay, rather inclined to gloat over this unhappiness as the sign of grace bestowed and an awakening conscience.
But notwithstanding the comfort Mr Cowie had given her—the best he had, poor man!—Annie's distress soon awoke again. To know that she could not be near God in peace and love without fulfilling certain mental conditions—that he would not have her just as she was now, filled her with an undefined but terribly real misery, only the more distressing that it was vague with the vagueness of the dismal negation from which it sprung.
It was not however the strength of her love to God that made her unhappy in being thus barred out from him. It was rather the check thus given to the whole upward tendency of her being, with its multitude of undefined hopes and longings now drawing nigh to the birth. It was in her ideal self rather than her conscious self that her misery arose. And now, dearly as she loved Mr Cowie, she began to doubt whether he knew much about the matter. He had put her off without answering her questions, either because he thought she had no business with such things, or because he had no answer to give. This latter possibly added not a little to her unhappiness, for it gave birth to a fearful doubt as to the final safety of kind Mr Cowie himself.
But there was one man who knew more about such secret things, she fully believed, than any man alive; and that man was Thomas Crann. Thomas was a rather dreadful man, with his cold eyes, high shoulders, and wheezing breath; and Annie was afraid of him. But she would have encountered the terrors of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, as surely as the Pilgrim, to get rid of the demon nightmare that lay upon her bosom, crushing the life out of her heart. So she plucked up courage, like Christian of old, and resolved to set out for the house of the Interpreter. Judging, however, that he could not yet be home from his work, she thought it better to go home herself first.
After eating a bit of oat cake, with a mug of blue milk for kitchie (Latin "obsonium"), she retired to her garret and waited drearily, but did not try to pray.
CHAPTER XXIX
It was very dark by the time she left the house, for the night was drizzly; but she knew the windings of Glamerton almost as well as the way up her garret-stair. Thomas's door was half open, and a light was shining from the kitchen. She knocked timidly. At the same moment she heard the voice of Thomas from the other end of this house, which consisted only of a but and a ben. In the ben-end (the inner originally, hence better room) there was no light: Thomas often sat in the dark.
"Jean, come ben to worship," he cried roughly.
"Comin', Thamas," answered Jean.
Again Annie knocked, but again without result. Her knock was too gentle. After a moment's pause, dreading that the intended prayers might interfere with her project, she knocked yet again; but a second time her knock was overwhelmed in the gruff call of Thomas, sounding yet more peremptory than before.
"Jean, come ben to worship."
"Hoot, Thamas, hae patience, man. I canna come."
"Jean, come ben to worship direckly."
"I'm i' the mids' o' cleanin' the shune. I hae dooble wark o' Mononday, ye ken."
"The shune can bide."
"Worship can bide."
"Haud yer tongue. The shune can bide."
"Na, na; they canna bide."
"Gin ye dinna come ben this minute, I'll hae worship my lane."
Vanquished by the awful threat, Jean dropped the shoe she held, and turned her apron; but having to pass the door on her way to the ben-end, she saw Annie standing on the threshold, and stopped with a start, ejaculating:
"The Lord preserve's, lassie!"
"Jean, what are ye sweerin' at?" cried Thomas, angrily.
"At Annie Anderson," answered Jean simply.
"What for are ye sweerin' at her? I'm sure she's a douce lassie. What does the bairn want?"
"What do ye want, Annie?"
"I want to see Thomas, gin ye please," answered Annie.
"She wants to see you, Thomas," screamed Jean; remarking in a lower voice, "He's as deef's a door-nail, Annie Anderson."
"Lat her come in, than," bawled Thomas.
"He's tellin' ye to come in, Annie," said Jean, as if she had been interpreting his words. But she detained her nevertheless to ask several unimportant questions. At length the voice of Thomas rousing her once more, she hastened to introduce her.
"Gang in there, Annie," she said, throwing open the door of the dark room. The child entered and stood just within it, not knowing even where Thomas sat. But a voice came to her out of the gloom:
"Ye're no feared at the dark, are ye, Annie? Come in."
"I dinna ken whaur I'm gaein."
"Never min' that. Come straucht foret. I'm watchin' ye."
For Thomas had been sitting in the dark till he could see in it (which, however, is not an invariable result), while out of the little light Annie had come into none at all But she obeyed the voice, and went straight forward into the dark, evidently much to the satisfaction of Thomas, who seizing her arm with one hand, laid the other, horny and heavy, on her head, saying:
"Noo, my lass, ye'll ken what faith means. Whan God tells ye to gang into the mirk, gang!"
"But I dinna like the mirk," said Annie.
"No human sowl can," responded Thomas. "Jean, fess a can'le direckly."
Now Thomas was an enemy to everything that could be, justly or unjustly, called superstition; and this therefore was not the answer that might have been expected of him. But he had begun with the symbolic and mystical in his reception of Annie, and perhaps there was something in the lovely childishness of her unconscious faith (while she all the time thought herself a dreadful unbeliever) that kept Thomas to the simplicities of the mystical part of his nature. Besides, Thomas's mind was a rendezvous for all extremes. In him they met, and showed that they met by fighting all day long. If you knocked at his inner door, you never could tell what would open it to you—all depending on what happened to be uppermost in the wrestle.
The candle was brought and set on the table, showing two or three geranium plants in the window. Why her eyes should have fixed upon these, Annie tried to discover afterwards, when she was more used to thinking. But she could not tell, except it were that they were so scraggy and wretched, half drowned in the darkness, and half blanched by the miserable light, and therefore must have been very like her own feelings, as she stood before the ungentle but not unkind stone-mason.
"Weel, lassie," said he, when Jean had retired, "what do ye want wi' me?"
Annie burst into tears again.
"Jean, gae butt the hoose direckly," cried Thomas, on the mere chance of his attendant having lingered at the door. And the sound of her retreating footsteps, though managed with all possible care, immediately justified his suspicion. This interruption turned Annie's tears aside, and when Thomas spoke next, she was able to reply.
"Noo, my bairn," he said, "what's the maitter?"
"I was at the missionar kirk last nicht," faltered Annie.
"Ay! And the sermon took a grip o' ye?—Nae doot, nae doot. Ay. Ay."
"I canna help forgettin' him, Thomas."
"But ye maun try and no forget him, lassie."
"Sae I do. But it's dour wark, and 'maist impossible."
"Sae it maun aye be; to the auld Aidam impossible; to the young
Christian a weary watch."
Hope began to dawn upon Annie.
"A body micht hae a chance," she asked with meditative suggestion, "allooin' 'at she did forget him whiles?"
"Nae doot, lassie. The nations that forget God are them that dinna care, that never fash their heids, or their herts aither, aboot him—them that were never called, never chosen."
Annie's trouble returned like a sea-wave that had only retired to gather strength.
"But hoo's a body to ken whether she be ane o' the elec'?" she said, quaking.
"That's a hard maitter. It's no needfu' to ken't aforehan'. Jist lat that alane i' the mean time."
"But I canna lat it alane. It's no for mysel' aither a'thegither. Could ye lat it alane, Thomas?"
This home-thrust prevented any questioning about the second clause of her answer. And Thomas dearly loved plain dealing.
"Ye hae me there, lassie. Na, I cudna lat it alane. An' I never did lat it alane. I plaguit the Lord nicht an' day till he loot me ken."
"I tried hard last nicht," said Annie, "but the rottans war ower mony for me."
"Sawtan has mony wiles," said the mason reflectively.
"Do ye think they warna rottans?' asked Annie.
"Ow! nae doot. I daursay."
"'Cause, gin I thocht they war only deils, I wadna care a buckie (periwinkle) for them."
"It's muckle the same what ye ca' them, gin they ca you frae the throne o' grace, lassie."
"What am I to do than, Thomas?"
"Ye maun haud at it, lassie, jist as the poor widow did wi' the unjust judge. An' gin the Lord hears ye, ye'll ken ye're ane o' the elec', for it's only his own elec' that the Lord dis hear. Eh! lassie, little ye ken aboot prayin' an' no faintin'."
Alas for the parable if Thomas's theories were to be carried out in its exposition! For they would lead to the conclusion that the Lord and the unjust judge were one and the same person. But it is our divine aspirations and not our intellectual theories that need to be carried out. The latter may, nay must in some measure, perish; the former will be found in perfect harmony with the divine Will; yea, true though faint echoes of that Will—echoes from the unknown caves of our deepest humanity, where lies, yet swathed in darkness, the divine image.
To Thomas's words Annie's only reply was a fixed gaze, which he answered thus, resuming his last words:
"Ay, lassie, little ye ken aboot watchin' and prayin'. Whan it pleased the Lord to call me, I was stan'in' my lane i' the mids' o' a peat-moss, luikin' wast, whaur the sun had left a reid licht ahin him, as gin he had jist brunt oot o' the lift, an' hadna gane doon ava. An' it min'd me o' the day o' jeedgment. An' there I steid and luikit, till the licht itsel' deid oot, an' naething was left but a gray sky an' a feow starns intil't. An' the cloods gethered, an' the lift grew black an' mirk; an' the haill countryside vainished, till I kent no more aboot it than what my twa feet could answer for. An' I daurna muv for the fear o' the pits o' water an' the walleen (well-eyes—quagmire-springs) on ilka han'. The lee-lang nicht I stood, or lay, or kneeled upo' my k-nees, cryin' to the Lord for grace. I forgot a' aboot election, an' cried jist as gin I could gar him hear me by haudin' at him. An' i' the mornin', whan the licht cam', I faund that my face was to the risin' sun. And I crap oot o' the bog, an' hame to my ain hoose. An' ilka body 'at I met o' the road took the tither side o' 't, and glowert at me as gin I had been a ghaist or a warlock. An' the bairns playin' aboot the doors ran in like rabbits whan they got sicht o' me. An' I begud to think 'at something fearsome had signed me for a reprobate; an' I jist closed my door, and gaed to my bed, and loot my wark stan', for wha cud wark wi' damnation hingin' ower his heid? An' three days gaed ower me, that nothing passed my lips but a drap o' milk an' water. An' o' the fourth day, i' the efternoon, I gaed to my wark wi' my heid swimmin' and my hert like to brak for verra glaidness. I was ane o' the chosen.["]
"But hoo did ye fin' that oot, Thomas?" asked Annie, trembling.
"Weel, lassie," answered Thomas, with solemn conviction in every tone, "it's my firm belief that, say what they like, there is, and there can be, but one way o' comin' to the knowledge o' that secret."
"And what's that?" entreated Annie, whose life seemed to hang upon his lips.
"Jist this. Get a sicht o' the face o' God.—It's my belief, an' a' the minnisters in creation'll no gar me alter my min', that no man can get a glimp' o' the face o' God but ane o' the chosen. I'm no sayin' 'at a man's no ane o' the elec' that hasna had that favour vouchsaufed to him; but this I do say, that he canna ken his election wi'oot that. Try ye to get a sicht o' the face o' God, lassie: syne ye'll ken and be at peace. Even Moses himsel' cudna be saitisfeed wi'oot that."
"What is't like, Thomas?" said Annie, with an eagerness which awe made very still.
"No words can tell that. It's all in the speerit. Whan ye see't ye'll ken't. There's no fear o' mistakin' that."
Teacher and scholar were silent. Annie was the first to speak. She had gained her quest.
"Am I to gang hame noo, Thomas?"
"Ay, gang hame, lassie, to yer prayers. But I doobt it's dark. I'll gang wi' ye.—Jean, my shune!"
"Na, na; I could gang hame blinlins," remonstrated Annie.
"Haud yer tongue. I'm gaein hame wi' ye, bairn.—Jean, my shune!"
"Hoot, Thamas! I've jist cleaned them," screeched Jean from the kitchen at the second call.
"Fess them here direckly. It's a jeedgment on ye for sayin' worship cud bide better nor the shune."
Janet brought them and put them down sulkily. In another minute the great shoes, full of nails half an inch broad, were replaced on the tired feet, and with her soft little hand clasped in the great horny hand of the stonemason, Annie trotted home by his side. With Scotch caution, Thomas, as soon as they entered the shop, instead of taking leave of Annie, went up to the counter, and asked for an "unce o' tobawco," as if his appearance along with Annie were merely accidental; while Annie, with perfect appreciation of the reticence, ran through the gap in the counter.
She was so far comforted and so much tired, that she fell asleep at her prayers by the bedside. Presently she awoke in terror. It was Pussy however that had waked her, as she knew by the green eyes lamping in a corner. But she closed her prayers rather abruptly, clambered into bed, and was soon fast asleep.
And in her sleep she dreamed that she stood in the darkness of the same peat-moss which had held Thomas and his prayers all the night long. She thought she was kept in there, till she should pray enough to get herself out of it. And she tried hard to pray, but she could not. And she fell down in despair, beset with the terrors of those frightful holes full of black water which she had seen on her way to Glamerton. But a hand came out of the darkness, laid hold of hers, and lifting her up, led her through the bog. And she dimly saw the form that led her, and it was that of a man who walked looking upon the earth. And she tried to see his face, but she could not, for he walked ever a little before her. And he led her home to the old farm. And her father came to the door to meet them. And he looked just the same as in the old happy days, only that his face was strangely bright. And with the joy of seeing her father she awoke to a gentle sorrow that she had not seen also the face of her deliverer.
The next evening she wandered down to George Macwha's, and found the two boys at work. She had no poetry to give them, no stories to tell them, no answer to their questions as to where she had been the night before. She could only stand in silence and watch them. The skeleton of the boat grew beneath their hands, but it was on the workers and not on their work that her gaze was fixed. For her heart was burning within her, and she could hardly restrain herself from throwing her arms about their necks and imploring them to seek the face of God. Oh! if she only knew that Alec and Curly were of the elect! But they only could find that out. There was no way for her to peer into that mystery. All she could do was to watch their wants, to have the tool they needed next ready to their hand, to clear away the spales from before the busy plane, and to lie in wait for any chance of putting to her little strength to help. Perhaps they were not of the elect! She would minister to them therefore—oh, how much the more tenderly!