glimpse of his face as he crept past him, and then first
recognized the boy he had lashed. Not compunction, but an
occasional pang of dread lest he should have been the cause of his
death, and might come upon his body in one of his walks, had served
so to fix his face in his memory, that, now he had a near view of
him, pale with suffering and loss of blood and therefore more like
his former self, he knew him beyond a doubt. With a great shoot of
terror he concluded that the idiot had been lying there silently
gloating over his revenge, waiting only till Janet should be out of
sight, and was now gone after some instrument wherewith to take it.
He pulled and tugged at his bonds, but only to find escape
absolutely hopeless. In gathering horror, he lay moveless at last,
but strained his hearing towards every sound.

Not only did Janet often pray with Gibbie, but sometimes as she
read, her heart would grow so full, her soul be so pervaded with the
conviction, perhaps the consciousness, of the presence of the man
who had said he would be always with his friends, that, sitting
there on her stool, she would begin talking to him out of the very
depth of her life, just as if she saw him in Robert's chair in the
ingle-neuk, at home in her cottage as in the house where Mary sat at
his feet and heard his word. Then would Gibbie listen indeed, awed
by very gladness. He never doubted that Jesus was there, or that
Janet saw him all the time although he could not.

This custom of praying aloud, she had grown into so long before
Gibbie came to her, and he was so much and such a child, that his
presence was no check upon the habit. It came in part from the
intense reality of her belief, and was in part a willed fostering of
its intensity. She never imagined that words were necessary; she
believed that God knew her every thought, and that the moment she
lifted up her heart, it entered into communion with him; but the
very sound of the words she spoke seemed to make her feel nearer to
the man who, being the eternal Son of the Father, yet had ears to
hear and lips to speak, like herself. To talk to him aloud, also
kept her thoughts together, helped her to feel the fact of the
things she contemplated, as well as the reality of his presence.

Now the byre was just on the other side of the turf wall against
which was the head of Gibbie's bed, and through the wall Gibbie had
heard her voice, with that something in the tone of it whic