atin' the siller, like the meal-worms, they fa'
upo' the girnel itsel'--that's the heart; and afore lang the hert
itsel's roostit awa' wi' the roost, and riddlet through and through wi'
the moths, till it's a naisty fushionless thing, o' no use to God or
man, not even to mak' muck o'. Sic a crater's hardly worth damnin'."

And Thomas threw trowelful after trowelful of rough-cast upon the wall,
making his hypocrite in all the composure of holy thoughts. And Annie
forgot her trouble in his presence. For Thomas was one of those whom
the prophet foresaw when he said: "And a man shall be as an
hiding-place from the wind, and a covert from the tempest; as rivers of
water in a dry place, as a shadow of a great rock in a weary land." I
do not mean that Thomas was felt to be such by all whom he encountered;
for his ambition was to rouse men from the sleep of sin; to set them
face to face with the terrors of Mount Sinai; to "shak' them ower the
mou' o' the pit," till they were all but choked with the fumes of the
brimstone. But he was a shelter to Annie--and to Tibbie also, although
she and he were too much of a sort to appear to the best advantage in
their intercourse.

"Hoo's Tibbie the day?" said Thomas.

"She's a wee bit better the day," answered Annie.

"It's a great preevileege, lassie, and ane that ye'll hae to answer
for, to be sae muckle wi' ane o' the Lord's elec' as ye are wi' Tibbie
Dyster. She's some thrawn (twisted) whiles, but she's a good honest
woman, wha has the glory o' God sair at her hert. And she's tellt me my
duty and my sins in a mainner worthy o' Debohrah the prophetess; and I
aye set mysel' to owercome them as gin they had been the airmy o'
Sisera, wham Jael, the wife o' Heber, the Kenite, killed efter a
weel-deserved but some cooardly faushion."

Annie did not return to the harvest-field that day. She did not want to
go near Alec again. So, after lingering a while with Thomas, she
wandered slowly across some fields of barley-stubble through which the
fresh young clover was already spreading its soft green. She then went
over the Glamour by the bridge with the three arches, down the path at
the other end, over the single great stone that crossed the dyer's dam,
and so into Tibbie's cottage.

Had Annie been Robert Bruce's own, she would have had to mind the baby,
to do part of the house work, and, being a wise child, to attend in the
shop during meals, and so expedite the feeding-process which follo