t-aching fear
for her friend, the noble, the generous Alec Forbes, who withstood
authority, and was therefore in danger of hell-fire. About her own
doom, speculation was uninteresting.

The awful morning dawned. When she woke, and the thought of what she
had to meet came back on her, though it could hardly be said to have
been a moment absent all night long, she turned, not metaphorically,
but physically sick. Yet breakfast time would come, and worship did not
fail to follow, and then to school she must go. There all went on as
usual for some time. The Bible-class was called up, heard, and
dismissed; and Annie was beginning to hope that the whole affair was
somehow or other wrapt up and laid by. She had heard nothing of Alec's
fate after she had left him imprisoned, and except a certain stoniness
in his look, which a single glance discovered, his face gave no sign.
She dared not lift her eyes from the spelling-book before her, to look
in the direction of the master. No murderer could have felt more keenly
as if all the universe were one eye, and that eye fixed on him, than
Annie.

Suddenly the awful voice resounded through the school, and the words it
uttered--though even after she heard them it seemed too terrible to be
true--were,

"Ann Anderson, come up."

For a moment she lost consciousness--or at least memory. When she
recovered herself, she found herself standing before the master. His
voice seemed to have left two or three unanswered questions somewhere
in her head. What they were she had no idea. But presently he spoke
again, and, from the tone, what he said was evidently the repetition of
a question--probably put more than once before.

"Did you, or did you not, go out at the window on Saturday?"

She did not see that Alec Forbes had left his seat, and was slowly
lessening the distance between them and him.

"Yes," she answered, trembling from head to foot.

"Did you, or did you not, bring a loaf of bread to those who were kept
in?"

"Yes, sir."

"Where did you get it?"

"I bought it, sir."

"Where did you get the money?"

Of course every eye in the school was fixed upon her, those of her
cousins sparkling with delight.

"I got it oot o' my ain kist, sir."

"Hold up your hand."

Annie obeyed, with a most pathetic dumb terror pleading in her face.

"Don't touch her," said Alec Forbes, stepping between the executioner
and his victim. "You know well enough it was all my fault. I told you
s