follow with an uncut quill, over and over again, a single
straight stroke, set her by the master. Dreadfully dreary she found it,
and over it she fell fast asleep. Her head dropped on her outstretched
arm, and the quill dropped from her sleeping fingers--for when Annie
slept she all slept. But she was soon roused by the voice of the
master. "Ann Anderson!" it called in a burst of thunder to her ear; and
she awoke to shame and confusion, amidst the titters of those around
her.

Before the morning was over she was called up, along with some children
considerably younger than herself, to read and spell. The master stood
before them, armed with a long, thick strap of horse-hide, prepared by
steeping in brine, black and supple with constant use, and cut into
fingers at one end, which had been hardened in the fire.

Now there was a little pale-faced, delicate-looking boy in the class,
who blundered a good deal. Every time he did so the cruel serpent of
leather went at him, coiling round his legs with a sudden, hissing
swash. This made him cry, and his tears blinded him so that he could
not even see the words which he had been unable to read before. But he
still attempted to go on, and still the instrument of torture went
swish-swash round his little thin legs, raising upon them, no doubt,
plentiful blue wales, to be revealed, when he was undressed for the
night, to the indignant eyes of pitying mother or aunt, who would yet
send him back to the school the next morning without fail.

At length either the heart of the master was touched by the sight of
his sufferings and repressed weeping, or he saw that he was compelling
the impossible; for he stayed execution, and passed on to the next, who
was Annie.

It was no wonder that the trembling child, who could read very fairly,
should yet, after such an introduction to the ways of school, fail
utterly in making anything like coherence of the sentence before her.
What she would have done, had she been left to herself, would have been
to take the little boy in her arms and cry too. As it was, she
struggled mightily with her tears, and yet she did not read to much
better purpose than the poor boy, who was still busy wiping his eyes
with his sleeves, alternately, for he never had had a handkerchief. But
being a new-comer, and a girl to boot, and her long frock affording no
facilities for this kind of incentive to learning, she escaped for the
time.

It was a dreadful experience o