ehold
assistance.

One day, while searching in the lumber-room for something for Mrs
Forbes, she came upon a little book lying behind a box. It was damp and
swollen and mouldy, and the binding was decayed and broken. The inside
was dingy and spotted with brown spots, and had too many f's in it, as
she thought. Yet the first glance fascinated her. It had opened in the
middle of _L'Allegro_. Mrs Forbes found her standing spell-bound,
reading the rhymed poems of the man whose blank-verse, two years
before, she had declined as not what poetry ought to be. I have often
seen a child refuse his food, and, after being compelled to eat one
mouthful, gladly devour the whole. In like manner Annie, having once
tasted Milton's poetry, did not let it go till she had devoured even
the _Paradise Lost_, of which when she could not make sense, she at
least made music-the chords of old John Milton's organ sounding through
his son's poetry in the brain of a little Scotch lassie who never heard
an organ in her life.

CHAPTER XLI.

"Hillo, bantam!" exclaimed Mr Cupples, to Alec entering his garret
within an hour of his arrival in his old quarters, and finding the soul
of the librarian still hovering in the steam of his tumbler, like one
of Swedenborg's damned over the odour of his peculiar hell. As he spoke
he emptied the glass, the custom of drinking from which, instead of
from the tumbler itself--rendering it impossible to get drunk all at
once--is one of the atonements offered by the Scotch to their tutelar
god--Propriety.--"Come awa'. What are ye stan'in' there for, as gin ye
warna at hame," he added, seeing that Alec lingered on the threshold.
"Sit doon. I'm nae a'thegither sorry to see ye."

"Have you been to the country, Mr Cupples?" asked Alec, as he took a
chair.

"The country! Na, I haena been i' the country. I'm a toon-snail. The
country's for calves and geese. It's ower green for me. I like the gray
stanes--weel biggit, to haud oot the cauld. I jist reverse the opingon
o' the auld duke in Mr Shackspere;--for this my life

'Find trees in tongues, its running brooks in books,
Stones in sermons,---'

and I canna gang on ony farther wi' 't. The last's true ony gait. I
winna gie ye ony toddy though."

"I dinna want nane."

"That's richt. Keep to that negation as an anchor o' the soul, sure and
steadfast. There's no boddom to the sea ye'll gang doon in gin ye cut
the cable that hauds ye to that anchor. H