The clergyman was getting old, and Mr Malison was a licentiate of the Church; and although the people had no direct voice in the filling of the pulpit, it was very desirable that a candidate should have none but friends in the parish.
Mr Malison made no allusion whatever to the events of Monday, and things went on as usual in the school, with just one exception: for a whole week the tawse did not make its appearance.

This was owing in part at least to the state of his hand; but if he had ever wished to be freed from the necessity of using the lash, he might have derived hope from the fact that somehow or other the boys were during this week no worse than usual.

I do not pretend to explain the fact, and beg leave to refer it to occult meteorological influences.
As soon as school was over on that first day of Alec's absence, Annie darted off on the road to Howglen, where he lived, and never dropped into a walk till she reached the garden-gate.

Fully conscious of the inferiority of her position, she went to the kitchen door.

The door was opened to her knock before she had recovered breath enough to speak.
The servant, seeing a girl with a shabby dress, and a dirty bonnet, from underneath which hung disorderly masses of hair--they would have _glinted_ in the eye of the sun, but in the eye of the maid they looked only dusky and disreputable--for Annie was not kept so tidy on the interest of her money as she had been at the farm--the girl, I say, seeing this, and finding besides, as she thought, that Annie had nothing to say, took her for a beggar, and returning into the kitchen, brought her a piece of oat-cake, the common dole to the young mendicants of the time.