d for the first time in her life experienced one of those
rude shocks--one of those rough contacts with the stern realities of
life which tend to deepen and intensify our feelings. The mind does not
always grow by slow, imperceptible degrees, although it usually does so.
There are periods in the career of every one when the mind takes, as it
were, a sharp run and makes a sudden and stupendous jump out of one
region of thought into another in which there are things new as well as
old.

The present was such an occasion to little Ailie Dunning. She had
indeed seen bloody work before, in the cutting-up of a whale. But
although she had been told it often enough, she did not _realise_ that
whales have feelings and affections like other creatures. Besides, she
had not witnessed the actual killing of the whale; and if she had, it
would probably have made little impression on her beyond that of
temporary excitement--not even that, perhaps, had her father been by her
side. But she _sympathised_ with the gazelle. It was small, and
beautiful, and lovable. Her heart had swelled the moment she saw it,
and she had felt a longing desire to run up to it and throw her arms
round its soft neck, so that, when she saw it suddenly struggling and
crushed in the tremendous jaws of the horrible crocodile, every tender
feeling in her breast was lacerated; every fibre of her heart trembled
with a conflicting gush of the tenderest pity and the fiercest rage.
From that day forward new thoughts began to occupy her mind, and old
ideas presented themselves in different aspects.

We would not have the reader suppose, for a moment, that Ailie became an
utterly changed creature. To an unobservant eye--such as that of Jim
Scroggles, for instance--she was the same in all respects a few days
after as she had been a few hours before the event. But new elements
had been implanted in her breast, or rather, seeds which had hitherto
lain dormant were now caused to burst forth into plants by the All-wise
Author of her being. She now _felt_ for the first time--she could not
tell why--that enjoyment was _not_ the chief good in life.

Of course she did not argue or think out all this clearly and
methodically to herself. Her mind, on most things, material as well as
immaterial, was very much what may be termed a jumble; but undoubtedly
the above processes of reasoning and feeling, or something like them,
were the result to Ailie of the violent death of t