had for a time been suspended, came round again to the thin pale girl, who sat there looking wistfully and wonderingly into the face of the witness, and the murmuring approbation that broke out, in spite of the shrill “silence” of the crier, expressed at once admiration of the man—­criminal as he swore himself to be—­and pity for the accused.  What could the issue be?  Effie was acquitted, and Lindsay sent back to gaol.  Was he not to be tried?  The officials felt that the game was dangerous.  If Lindsay had stood firm in the box, had not Effie sat firm at the bar, with the very gallows in her eye, and would not she, in her turn, be as firm in the box?  All which was too evident, and the consequence in the end came to be, that Lindsay was in the course of a few days set at liberty.

And now there occurred proceedings not less strange in the house of John Carr.  Lindsay was turned off, because, though he had made a sacrifice of himself to save the life of Effie, the sacrifice was only that due to the justice he had offended.  The dismissal was against the protestations of Effie, who alone knew he was innocent; and she had to bear the further grief of learning that Stormonth had left the city on the very day whereon she was apprehended—­a discovery this too much for a frame always weak, and latterly so wasted by her confinement in prison, and the anguish of mind consequent upon her strange position.  And so it came to pass in a few more days that she took to her bed, a wan, wasted, heart-broken creature; but stung as she had been by the conduct of the man she had offered to die to save, she felt even more the sting of ingratitude in herself for not divulging to her mother as much of her secret as would have saved Lindsay from dismissal, for she was now more and more satisfied that it was the strength of his love for her that had driven him to his great and perilous sacrifice.  Nor could her mother, as she bent over her daughter, understand why her liberation should have been followed by so much sorrow; nay, loving her as she did, she even reproached her as being ungrateful to God.

“Mother,” said the girl, “I have a secret that lies like a stane upon my heart.  George Lindsay had nae mair to do with that forgery than you.”

“And who had to do with it then, Effie, dear?”

“Myself,” continued the daughter; “I filled up the cheque at the bidding o’ Robert Stormonth, whom I had lang loved.  It was he wha put my faither’s name to it.  It was to him I gave the money, to relieve him from debt, and he has fled.”

“Effie, Effie,” cried the mother; “and we have done this thing to George Lindsay—­ta’en from him his basket and his store, yea, the bread o’ his mouth, in recompense for trying to save your life by offering his ain!”

“Yes, mother,” added Effie; “but we must make that wrang richt.”