he girl he
loved vanishing from his eyes.

The more heartily he worked the more did the evil as well as the
painful portions of his history recede into the background of his
memory, growing more and more like the traces left by a bad, turbid,
and sorrowful dream.

Is it true that _all_ our experiences will one day revive in entire
clearness of outline and full brilliancy of colour, passing before the
horror-struck soul to the denial of time, and the assertion of
ever-present eternity? If so, then God be with us, for we shall need
him.

Annie Anderson's great-aunt took to her bed directly after her
husband's funeral.

Finding there was much to do about the place, Annie felt no delicacy as
to remaining. She worked harder than ever she had worked before,
blistered her hands, and browned her fair face and neck altogether
autumnally. Her aunt and she together shore (reaped) the little field
of oats; got the sheaves home and made a rick of them; dug up the
potatoes, and covered them in a pit with a blanket of earth; looked
after the one cow and calf which gathered the grass along the road and
river sides; fed the pigs and the poultry, and even went with a
neighbour and his cart to the moss, to howk (dig) their winter-store of
peats. But this they found too hard for them, and were forced to give
up. Their neighbours, however, provided their fuel, as they had often
done in part for old John Peterson.

Before the winter came there was little left to be done; and Annie saw
by her aunt's looks that she wanted to get rid of her. Margaret
Anderson had a chronic, consuming sense of poverty, and therefore
worshipped with her whole soul the monkey Lars of saving and vigilance.
Hence Annie, as soon as Alec was gone, went, with the simplicity
belonging to her childlike nature, to see Mrs Forbes, and returned to
Clippenstrae only to bid them good-bye.

The bodily repose and mental activity of the winter formed a strong
contrast with her last experiences. But the rainy, foggy, frosty, snowy
months passed away much as they had done before, fostering, amongst
other hidden growths, that of Mrs Forbes' love for her semi-protegee,
whom, like Castor and Pollux, she took half the year to heaven, and
sent the other half to Tartarus. One notable event, however, of
considerable importance in its results to the people of Howglen, took
place this winter amongst the missionars of Glamerton.

CHAPTER LXXXV.

So entire was Thomas