chidden
dog might steal across the room to creep under the master's table. Not
daring to look up, she went with noiseless difficulty down a steep step
or two, and perched herself timidly on the edge of a seat, beside an
old lady, who had kindly made room for her. When she ventured to lift
her eyes, she found herself in the middle of a sea of heads. But she
saw in the same glance that no one was taking any notice of her, which
discovery acted wonderfully as a restorative. The minister was reading,
in a solemn voice, a terrible chapter of denunciation out of the
prophet Isaiah, and Annie was soon seized with a deep listening awe.
The severity of the chapter was, however, considerably mollified by the
gentleness of the old lady, who put into her hand a Bible, smelling
sweetly of dried starry leaves and southernwood, in which Annie
followed the reading word for word, feeling sadly condemned if she
happened to allow her eyes to wander for a single moment from the book.
After the long prayer, during which they all stood--a posture certainly
more reverential than the sitting which so commonly passes for
kneeling--and the long psalm, during which they all sat, the sermon
began; and again for a moment Annie ventured to look up, feeling
protected from behind by the back of the pew, which reached high above
her head. Before her she saw no face but that of the minister, between
which and her, beyond the front of the gallery, lay a gulfy space,
where, down in the bottom, sat other listening souls, with upturned
faces and eyes, unseen of Annie, all their regards converging upon the
countenance of the minister. He was a thin-faced cadaverous man, with a
self-severe saintly look, one to whom religion was clearly a reality,
though not so clearly a gladness, one whose opinions-vague
half-monstrous embodiments of truth--helped to give him a consciousness
of the life which sprung from a source far deeper than his
consciousness could reach. I wonder if one will ever be able to
understand the worship of his childhood--that revering upward look
which must have been founded on a reality, however much after
experience may have shown the supposed grounds of reverence to be
untenable. The moment Annie looked in the face of Mr Brown, she
submitted absolutely; she enshrined him and worshipped him with an
awful reverence. Nor to the end of her days did she lose this feeling
towards him. True, she came to see that he was a man of ordinary
stature, an