the den of the hungry wild beast.
So great, however, was the effect of the terrible conflict of yestreen, and such an impression had it made on the minds of baith father and mother, that, when they regarded the agoneezed countenance of Jeanie, they hesitated to put the thing to the test, though they kent that in the course of a few hours, the battle must either be lost or won for ever. Breakfast passed without scarcely being tasted, while Jeanie glanced with a fearfu’ ee on them baith as dauting her, and hinging about her, they yet feared and kept aloof frae the momentous subject. The dark cloud, she perceived, had not yet passed over their heads. Hour after hour glided away. In the courte o’ the forenoon, Wattie hurridly shut the auld family Bible, which he had set down, as if to pore over: and, putting on his hat, dawnered away out like a tapsy auld man amang the fields without kenning where his path lay.
Jeanie at last sat down to her spinning-wheel as usual, tho’ she crooned not away at either of her favourite tunes “Cowden Knows,” or, “The Flowers of the Forest” and her mother, putting on her spectacles, opened the book her father had shut. Neither seemed inclined to converse; and, save the humming of Jeanie's wheel, and now and then the mewing of the kitten, that wandered about among the empty dishes in search of its accustomed milk, the haill house was silent. It didna, however, lang remain so. Walter came hurrying in with visible perplexity in his features; and throwing his hat into a corner sank down into a chair by the window. Jeanie turned
