He was a good many paces behind her; and then first she discovered the condition of her champion.

For now that the excitement was over, he could scarcely walk, and evidence in kind was not wanting that from head to foot he must be one mass of wales and bruises.

He put his hand on her shoulder to help him along, and made no opposition to her accompanying him as far as the gate of his mother's garden, which was nearly a mile from the town, on the further bank of one of the rivers watering the valley-plain in which Glamerton had stood for hundreds of years.

Then she went slowly home, bearing with her the memory of the smile which, in spite of pain, had illuminated his tawse-waled cheeks, as she took her leave.
"Good-bye, dear Alec!" she had said.
"Good-bye, Annie dear," he had answered, with the smile; and she had watched him crawl into the house before she turned away.
When she got home, she saw at once, from the black looks of the Bruce, that the story, whether in its trite shape or not, had arrived before her.
Nothing was said, however, till after worship; when Bruce gave her a long lecture, as impressive as the creature was capable of making it, on the wickedness and certain punishment of "takin' up wi' ill loons like Sandy Forbes, wha was brakin' his mither's hert wi' his baad behaviour." But he came to the conclusion, as he confided to his wife that night, that the lassie "was growin' hardent already;" probably from her being in a state of too great excitement from the events of the day to waste a tear upon his lecture; for, as she said in the hearing of the rottans, when she went up to bed, she "_didna care a flee for't_." But the moment she lay down she fell to weeping bitterly over the sufferings of Alec.

She was asleep in a moment after, however.
If it had not been for the power of sleeping that there was in the child, she must long before now have given way to the hostile influences around her, and died.
There was considerable excitement about the hearths of Glamerton, generally, in consequence of the news of the master's defeat carried home by the children.