soul! Surely she loved him yet with her mother-love, else how could she have been angry enough with him to strike him! For weeks the pain lasted keen, and it was ever after ready to return. It was a human type of the divine suffering in the discipline of the sinner, which with some of the old prophets takes the shape of God’s repenting of the evils he has brought on his people; and was the only trouble she ever kept from her mother: she feared to wake her own pain in the dearer heart. She could have told her father; for, although he was, she knew, just as loving as her mother, he was not so soft-hearted, and would not, she thought, distress himself too much about an ache more or less in a heart that had done its duty; but as she could not tell her mother, she would not tell her father. But her father and mother saw that a change had passed upon her, and partially, if not quite, understood the nature of it. They perceived that she left behind her on that night a measure of her gaiety, that thereafter she was yet gentler to her parents, and if possible yet tenderer to her brother. For all the superiority constantly manifested by her in her relations with Francis, the feeling was never absent from her that he was of a race above her own; and now the visage of the young officer in her father’s old regiment never, any more than that of her play-fellow, rose in her mind’s eye uncrossed by the livid mark of her whip from the temple down the cheek! Whether she had actually seen it so, she did not certainly remember, but so it always came to her, and the face of the man never cost her a tear; it was only that of the boy that made her weep. Another thing distressed her even more: the instant ere she struck the first, the worst blow, she saw on his face an expression so meanly selfish that she felt as if she hated him. That expression had vanished from her visual memory, her whip had wiped it away, but she knew that for a moment she had all but hated him--if it was indeed _all but_! All the house was careful the next morning that Phemy should not be disturbed; and when at length the poor child appeared, looking as if her colour was not ‘ingrain,’ and so had been washed out by her tears, Kirsty made haste to get her a nice breakfast, and would answer none of her questions until she had made a proper meal. ‘Noo, Kirsty,’ said Phemy at last, ‘ye maun tell me what he said whan ye loot him ken ’at I cudna win til him ’cause ye wudna lat me!’ ‘He saidna muckle to that. I dinna think he had been sair missin ye.’ ‘I see ye’re no gaein to tell me the trowth, Kirsty! I ken by mysel he maun hae been missin me dreidfu’!’ ‘Ye can jeedge nae man by yersel, Phemy. Men’s no like hiz lass-fowk!’ Phemy laughed superior. ‘What ken ye aboot men, Kirsty? There never cam a man near ye, i’ the w’y o’ makin up til ye!’