far far happier in their childhood than it
had been her lot to be, and all growing up beneath her now untroubled
eyes, in innocence, love, and joy inspired into their hearts by her,
their young and happy benefactress. Not a human dwelling in all the
parish, that had not reason to be thankful to Margaret Burnside. She
taught them to be pleasant in their manners, neat in their persons,
rational in their minds, pure in their hearts, and industrious in all
their habits. Rudeness, coarseness, sullenness, all angry fits, and all
idle dispositions--the besetting vices and sins of the children of the
poor, whose home-education is often so miserably, and almost necessarily
neglected--did this sweet Teacher, by the divine influence of meekness
never ruffled, and tenderness never troubled, in a few months subdue and
overcome--till her school-room, every day in the week, was, in its
cheerfulness, sacred as a Sabbath, and murmured from morn till eve with
the hum of perpetual happiness. The effects were soon felt in every
house. All floors were tidier, and order and regularity enlivened every
hearth. It was the pride of her scholars to get their own little gardens
behind their parents' huts to bloom like that of the Brae--and, in
imitation of that flowery porch, to train up the pretty creepers on the
wall. In the kirkyard, a smiling group every Sabbath forenoon waited for
her at the gate--and walked, with her at their head, into the House of
God--a beautiful procession to all their parents' eyes--one by one
dropping away into their own seats, as the band moved along the little
lobby, and the minister, sitting in the pulpit all the while, looked
solemnly down upon the fair flock--the shepherd of their souls!

It was Sabbath, but Margaret Burnside was not in the kirk. The
congregation had risen to join in prayer, when the great door was thrown
open, and a woman, apparelled as for the house of worship, but wild and
ghastly in her face and eyes as a maniac hunted by evil spirits, burst
in upon the service, and, with uplifted hands, beseeched the man of God
to forgive her irreverent entrance, for that the foulest and most
unnatural murder had been done, and that her own eyes had seen the
corpse of Margaret Burnside lying on the moor in a pool of blood! The
congregation gave one groan, and then an outcry as if the roof of the
kirk had been toppling over their heads. All cheeks waxed white, women
fainted, and the firmest heart quaked with te