the present; and when she carried him a
half-year's interest, he took it in silence, justifying himself on the
ground that the whole transaction was of doubtful success, and he must
therefore secure what he could secure.

As may well be supposed, Annie had very little money to give away now;
and this subjected her to a quite new sense of suffering.

CHAPTER XC.

It was a dreary wintry summer to all at Howglen. Why should the ripe
corn wave deep-dyed in the gold of the sunbeams, when Alec lay frozen
in the fields of ice, or sweeping about under them like a broken
sea-weed in the waters so cold, so mournful? Yet the work of the world
must go on. The corn must be reaped. Things must be bought and sold.
Even the mourners must eat and drink. The stains which the day had
gathered must be washed from the brow of the morning; and the dust to
which Alec had gone down must be swept from the chair in which he had
been wont to sit. So things did go on--of themselves as it were, for no
one cared much about them, although it was the finest harvest that year
that Howglen had ever borne. It had begun at length to appear that the
old labour had not been cast into a dead grave, but into a living soil,
like that of which Sir Philip Sidney says in his sixty-fifth psalm:

"Each clodd relenteth at thy dressing,"

as if it were a human soul that had bethought itself and began to bring
forth fruit.--This might be the beginning of good things. But what did
it matter?

Annie grew paler, but relaxed not a single effort to fill her place.
She told her poor friends that she had no money now, and could not help
them; but most were nearly as glad to see her as before; while one of
them who had never liked receiving alms from a girl in such a lowly
position, as well as some who had always taken them thankfully, loved
her better when she had nothing to give.

She renewed her acquaintance with Peter Whaup, the blacksmith, through
his wife, who was ill, and received her visits gladly.

"For," she said, "she's a fine douce lass, and speyks to ye as gin ye
war ither fowk, and no as gin she kent a'thing, and cam to tell ye the
muckle half o' 't."

I wonder how much her friends understood of what she read to them? She
did not confine herself to the Bible, which indeed she was a little shy
of reading except they wanted it, but read anything that pleased
herself, never doubting that "ither fowk" could enjoy what she enjoyed.
She even