ad a share in the privileges of the new covenant, who was
not under the law like Moses, but under grace like John, would one day
see the veil of her blindness shrivel away from before her deeper eyes,
burnt up by the glory of that face of God, which is a consuming
fire.--I suppose that Tibbie was right in the main. But was it not
another kind of brightness, a brightness without effulgence, a
brightness grander and more glorious, shining in love and patience, and
tenderness and forgiveness and excuse, that Moses was unfit to see,
because he was not well able to understand it, until, ages after, he
descended from heaven upon the Mount of Transfiguration, and the humble
son of God went up from the lower earth to meet him there, and talk
with him face to face as a man with his friend?

Annie went home to her garret. It was a singular experience the child
had in the changes that came to her with the seasons. The winter with
its frost and bitter winds brought her a home at Howglen; the summer,
whose airs were molten kisses, took it away, and gave her the face of
nature instead of the face of a human mother. For the snug little
chamber in which she heard with a quiet exultation the fierce rush of
the hail-scattering tempest against the window, or the fluffy fall of
the snow-flakes, like hands of fairy babies patting the glass, and
fancied herself out in the careering storm, hovering on the wings of
the wind over the house in which she lay soft and warm--she had now the
garret room, in which the curtainless bed, with its bare poles, looked
like a vessel in distress at sea, and through the roof of which the
winds found easy way. But the winds were warm now, and through the
skylight the sunbeams illuminated the floor, showing all the rat-holes
and wretchedness of decay.

There was comfort out of doors in the daytime--in the sky and the
fields and all the "goings-on of life." And this night, after this talk
with Tibbie, Annie did not much mind going back to the garret. Nor did
she lie awake to think about the beautiful lady Alec had taken home
with him.

And she dreamed again that she saw the Son of Man. There was a veil
over his face like the veil that Moses wore, but the face was so bright
that it almost melted the veil away, and she saw what made her love
that face more than the presence of Alec, more than the kindness of Mrs
Forbes or Dowie, more than the memory of her father.

CHAPTER XLVIII.

Alec did not f