r was
she not one of them that forget God? and was she not therefore wicked?
and was not God angry with her every day? Was not the fact that she
could not pray a certain proof that she was out of God's favour, and
counted unworthy of his notice?

But there was Jesus Christ: she would cry to him. But did she believe
in him? She tried hard to convince herself that she did; but at last
she laid her weary head on the bed, and groaned in her young despair.
At the moment a rustling in the darkness broke the sad silence with a
throb of terror. She started to her feet. She was exposed to all the
rats in the universe now, for God was angry with her, and she could not
pray. With a stifled scream she darted to the door, and half tumbled
down the stair in an agony of fear.

"What gars ye mak sic a din i' the hoose o' the Sawbath nicht?"
screamed Mrs Bruce.

But little did Annie feel the reproof. And as little did she know that
the dreaded rats had this time been the messengers of God to drive her
from a path in which lies madness.

She was forced at length to go to bed, where God made her sleep and
forget him, and the rats did not come near her again that night.

Curly and Alec had been in the chapel too, but they were not of a
temperament to be disturbed by Mr Brown's discourse.

CHAPTER XXVII.

Little as Murdoch Malison knew of the worlds of thought and
feeling--Annie's among the rest--which lay within those young faces and
forms assembled the next day as usual, he knew almost as little of the
mysteries that lay within himself.

Annie was haunted all day with the thought of the wrath of God. When
she forgot it for a moment, it would return again with a sting of
actual physical pain, which seemed to pierce her heart. Before school
was over she had made up her mind what to do.

And before school was over Malison's own deed had opened his own eyes,
had broken through the crust that lay between him and the vision of his
own character.

There is not to be found a more thorough impersonation of his own
theology than a Scotch schoolmaster of the rough old-fashioned type.
His pleasure was law, irrespective of right or wrong, and the reward of
submission to law was immunity from punishment. He had his favourites
in various degrees, whom he chose according to inexplicable directions
of feeling ratified by "the freedom of his own will." These found it
easy to please him, while those with whom he was not primarily pl