really hurt by a fall, and ran crying into the shop,
where she sobbed out,

"Please, sir, they winna lat me be."

"Dinna come into the chop wi' yer stories. Mak' it up amo' yersels."

"But they winna mak' it up."

Robert Bruce rose indignant at such an interruption of his high
calling, and went out with the assumption of much parental grandeur. He
was instantly greeted with a torrent of assurances that Annie had
fallen, and then laid the blame upon them; whereupon he turned sternly
to her, and said--

"Annie, gin ye tell lees, ye'll go to hell."

But paternal partiality did not prevent him from reading them also a
lesson, though of a quite different tone.

"Mind, boys," he said, in a condescending whine, "that poor Annie has
neither father nor mither; an' ye maun be kind till her."

He then turned and left them for the more important concerns
within-doors; and the persecution recommenced, though in a somewhat
mitigated form. The little wretches were perfectly unable to abstain
from indulging in a pleasure of such intensity. Annie had indeed fallen
upon evil days.

I am thus minute in my description of her first day, that my reader,
understanding something similar of many following days, may be able to
give due weight to the influence of other events, when, in due time,
they come to be recorded. But I must not conclude the account without
mentioning something which befell her at the close of the same day, and
threatened to be productive of yet more suffering.

After _worship_, the boys crawled away to bed, half-asleep already; or,
I should rather say, only half-awake from their prayers. Annie
lingered.

"Can ye no tak' aff yer ain claes, as weel as pit them on, Annie?"
asked Mrs Bruce.

"Ay, weel eneuch. Only I wad sair like a bittie o' can'le," was Annie's
trembling reply, for she had a sad foreboding instinct now.

"Can'le! Na, na, bairn," answered Mrs Bruce. "Ye s' get no can'le here.
Ye wad hae the hoose in a low (flame) aboot oor lugs (ears). I canna
affoord can'les. Ye can jist mak' a can'le o' yer han's, and fin (feel)
yer gait up the twa stairs. There's thirteen steps to the firs, and
twal to the neist."

With choking heart, but without reply, Annie went.

Groping her way up the steep ascent, she found her room without any
difficulty. As it was again a clear, starlit night, there was light
enough for her to find everything she wanted; and the trouble at her
heart kept her imagination from bei