had
gone a certain distance--broth being the Sunday fare with the
Bruces--and, I presume, with most families in Scotland. The countenance
was very plain, seamed and scarred as if the woman had fallen into the
fire when a child; and Annie had not looked at her two seconds, before
she saw that she was perfectly blind. Indeed she thought at first that
she had no eyes at all; but as she kept gazing, fascinated with the
strangeness and ugliness of the face, she discovered that the eyelids,
though incapable of separating, were inconstant motion, and that a
shrunken eye-ball underneath each kept rolling and turning ever, as if
searching for something it could not find. She saw too that there was a
light on the face, a light which came neither from the sun in the sky,
nor the sunbeam on the wall, towards which it was unconsciously turned.
I think it must have been the heavenly bow itself, shining upon all
human clouds--a bow that had shone for thousands of ages before ever
there was an Abraham, or a Noah, or any other of our faithless
generation, which will not trust its God unless he swear that he will
not destroy them. It was the ugliest face. But over it, as over the
rugged channel of a sea, flowed the transparent waves of a heavenly
delight.

When the service was over, almost before the words of the benediction
had left the minister's lips, the people, according to Scotch habit,
hurried out of the chapel, as if they could not possibly endure one
word more. But Annie, who was always put up to the top of the pew,
because there, by reason of an intruding pillar, it required a painful
twist of the neck to see the minister, stood staring at the blind woman
as she felt her way out of the chapel. There was no fear of putting her
out by staring at her. When, at length, she followed her into the open
air, she found her standing by the door, turning her sightless face on
all sides, as if looking for some one and trying hard to open her eyes
that she might see better. Annie watched her, till, seeing her lips
move, she knew, half by instinct, that she was murmuring, "The bairn's
forgotten me!" Thereupon she glided up to her and said gently:

"If ye'll tell me whaur ye bide, I s' tak ye hame."

"What do they ca' _you_, bairn?" returned the blind woman, in a gruff,
almost manlike voice, hardly less unpleasant to hear than her face was
to look at.

"Annie Anderson," answered Annie.

"Ow, ay! I thoucht as muckle. I ken a' aboot ye. G