But she detained her nevertheless to ask
several unimportant questions. At length the voice of Thomas rousing
her once more, she hastened to introduce her.
"Gang in there, Annie," she said, throwing open the door of the dark
room. The child entered and stood just within it, not knowing even
where Thomas sat. But a voice came to her out of the gloom:
"Ye're no feared at the dark, are ye, Annie? Come in."
"I dinna ken whaur I'm gaein."
"Never min' that. Come straucht foret. I'm watchin' ye."
For Thomas had been sitting in the dark till he could see in it (which,
however, is not an invariable result), while out of the little light
Annie had come into none at all But she obeyed the voice, and went
straight forward into the dark, evidently much to the satisfaction of
Thomas, who seizing her arm with one hand, laid the other, horny and
heavy, on her head, saying:
"Noo, my lass, ye'll ken what faith means. Whan God tells ye to gang
into the mirk, gang!"
"But I dinna like the mirk," said Annie.
"No human sowl _can_," responded Thomas. "Jean, fess a can'le
direckly."
Now Thomas was an enemy to everything that could be, justly or
unjustly, called _superstition_; and this therefore was not the answer
that might have been expected of him.
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