CHAPTER XXVII.
Little as Murdoch Malison knew of the worlds of thought and feeling--Annie's among the rest--which lay within those young faces and forms assembled the next day as usual, he knew almost as little of the mysteries that lay within himself.
Annie was haunted all day with the thought of the wrath of God.

When she forgot it for a moment, it would return again with a sting of actual physical pain, which seemed to pierce her heart.

Before school was over she had made up her mind what to do.
And before school was over Malison's own deed had opened his own eyes, had broken through the crust that lay between him and the vision of his own character.
There is not to be found a more thorough impersonation of his own theology than a Scotch schoolmaster of the rough old-fashioned type.
His pleasure was law, irrespective of right or wrong, and the reward of submission to law was immunity from punishment.

He had his favourites in various degrees, whom he chose according to inexplicable directions of feeling ratified by "the freedom of his own will." These found it easy to please him, while those with whom he was not primarily pleased, found it impossible to please him.
Now there had come to the school, about a fortnight before, two unhappy-looking little twin orphans, with white thin faces, and bones in their clothes instead of legs and arms, committed to the mercies of Mr Malison by their grandfather.

Bent into all the angles of a grasshopper, and lean with ancient poverty, the old man tottered away with his stick in one hand, stretched far out to support his stooping frame, and carried in the other the caps of the two forsaken urchins, saying, as he went, in a quavering, croaking voice, "I'll jist tak them wi' me, or they'll no be fit for the Sawbath aboon a fortnicht.