ning, and she did not care what came
next. For an hour the box stood on the floor like a coffin, and then
Betty came, with red eyes and a red nose, and carried it downstairs.
Then auntie came up again, dressed in her Sunday clothes. She put on
Annie's best frock and bonnet--adorning the victim for sacrifice--at
least, so Annie's face would have suggested--and led her down to the
door. There stood a horse and cart. In the cart was some straw, and a
sack stuffed with hay. As auntie was getting into the cart, Betty
rushed out from somewhere upon Annie, caught her up, kissed her in a
vehement and disorderly manner, and before her mistress could turn
round in the cart, gave her into James Dow's arms, and vanished with
strange sounds of choking. Dowie thought to put her in with a kiss, for
he dared not speak; but Annie's arms went round his neck, and she clung
to him sobbing--clung till she roused the indignation of auntie, at the
first sound of whose voice, Dowie was free, and Annie lying in the
cart, with her face buried in the straw. Dowie then mounted in front,
with his feet on the shaft; the horse--one Annie did not know--started
off gently; and she was borne away helpless to meet the unknown.

And the road was like the going. She had often been upon it before, but
it had never looked as it did now. The first half-mile went through
fields whose crops were gone. The stubble was sticking through the
grass, and the potato stalks, which ought to have been gathered and
burnt, lay scattered about all over the brown earth. Then came two
miles of moorland country, high, and bleak, and barren, with hillocks
of peat in all directions, standing beside the black holes whence they
had been dug. These holes were full of dark water, frightful to look
at; while along the side of the road went deep black ditches half-full
of the same dark water. There was no danger of the cart getting into
them, for the ruts were too deep to let the wheels out; but it jolted
so dreadfully from side to side, as it crawled along, that Annie was
afraid every other moment of being tilted into one of the frightful
pools. Across the waste floated now and then the cry of a bird, but
other sound there was none in this land of drearihead. Next came some
scattered and ragged fields, the skirts of cultivation, which seemed to
draw closer and closer together, while the soil grew richer and more
hopeful, till, after two miles more, they entered the first straggling
p