ted, and he after her, as well as he could, which was not
with his usual fleetness by any means. When Annie had rounded a corner,
not in the master's way home, she stopped, and looked back for Alec. He
was a good many paces behind her; and then first she discovered the
condition of her champion. For now that the excitement was over, he
could scarcely walk, and evidence in kind was not wanting that from
head to foot he must be one mass of wales and bruises. He put his hand
on her shoulder to help him along, and made no opposition to her
accompanying him as far as the gate of his mother's garden, which was
nearly a mile from the town, on the further bank of one of the rivers
watering the valley-plain in which Glamerton had stood for hundreds of
years. Then she went slowly home, bearing with her the memory of the
smile which, in spite of pain, had illuminated his tawse-waled cheeks,
as she took her leave.

"Good-bye, dear Alec!" she had said.

"Good-bye, Annie dear," he had answered, with the smile; and she had
watched him crawl into the house before she turned away.

When she got home, she saw at once, from the black looks of the Bruce,
that the story, whether in its trite shape or not, had arrived before
her.

Nothing was said, however, till after worship; when Bruce gave her a
long lecture, as impressive as the creature was capable of making it,
on the wickedness and certain punishment of "takin' up wi' ill loons
like Sandy Forbes, wha was brakin' his mither's hert wi' his baad
behaviour." But he came to the conclusion, as he confided to his wife
that night, that the lassie "was growin' hardent already;" probably
from her being in a state of too great excitement from the events of
the day to waste a tear upon his lecture; for, as she said in the
hearing of the rottans, when she went up to bed, she "_didna care a
flee for't_." But the moment she lay down she fell to weeping bitterly
over the sufferings of Alec. She was asleep in a moment after, however.
If it had not been for the power of sleeping that there was in the
child, she must long before now have given way to the hostile
influences around her, and died.

There was considerable excitement about the hearths of Glamerton,
generally, in consequence of the news of the master's defeat carried
home by the children. For, although it was amazing how little of the
doings at school the children were in the habit of reporting--so
little, indeed, that this account invo