ce pale, and her blue eyes lighted with fear, and the
thin delicate nostril distended, and hissing with her quick
breathings,--

"Oh mither, there's twa officers on the stair seeking Charlie!"

And the quick creature, darting her eye on the table where the notes
lay, snatched them up, and secreted them in her bosom; and, what was
more extraordinary, just as if she had divined something more from her
brother's looks, which told her that that money would be sought for by
these officers, she darted off like a bird with a crumb in its bill,
which it has picked up from beneath your eyes; but not before
depositing, as she passed, a paper on a chair near the door.

"That creature is a spirit," said the mother. "She sees the evil in the
dark before it comes, and wards it off like a guardian angel; but oh!
she has little in her power to be an angel."

And rising, she took up the paper. It was only some bread and cheese,
which the girl, knowing the privations of her mother, had bought with a
part of her five shillings a week.

Thereafter, just as little Jeannie had intimated, came in two officers,
with the usual looks of duty appearing through their professional
sorrow.

"We want your son, good woman."

"He is there," said she; "but what want ye him for?"

"Not for going to church," said the man, forgetting said professional
sorrow in his love of a joke, "but for robbery on the highway; and we
must search the house for five pounds in British Linen Company notes."

And the men proceeded to search, even putting their hands in the
mother's pockets, besides rifling those of the son. They of course found
nothing except the powder and shot, which had still remained there, and
a handkerchief.

"That is something, anyhow," said one of the men, "and a great deal too.
The one who is up in the office says true; he was not the man."

"No more he was," said Charles. "I am the man you ought to take; and
take me."

"Sae, sae; just as I suspected," muttered the mother. "Lord, Lord! the
cup runs over. It was e'en lipping when John died; but I will bear yet."
And she seemed to grasp firmly the back of a chair, and compressed her
lips--an attitude she maintained like a statue all the time occupied by
the departure of her son. The door closed--he was gone; and she still
stood, the _vivum cadaver_--the image of a petrified creature of misery.

Yet, overcome as her very calmness was, and enchanted for the moment
into voicelessness and