ANNIE'S TEMPTATION.


A few days after, Susie was not very well, and her mother thought best to
keep her at home. Annie, however, was sent to school, as usual. As she was
preparing to set out, she thought to herself,--

"Now I am going all alone, and mother will never know it; I will not wear
my shoes to-day." So, when she was just starting, she stole softly round to
the back-side of the house, and hid her shoes behind the rain-barrel. On
she skipped, but not so light-hearted and happy as usual. It was her first
act of wilful disobedience. As she went on she at last repented that she
had ventured to disobey her kind mother; but something seemed to whisper in
her heart, "It will do you no harm: your mother will never find it out."

Do any of my little readers know whose voice that was in Annie's heart? It
was the voice of _him_ who spoke the _first lie_ ever uttered in this
beautiful world; who in the garden of Eden said to our first mother, "_Ye
shall not surely die_."

As she approached the school-room, she stopped near a huge pile of rocks at
the road-side to gather some flowers for her teacher. She found a great
many, and, among others, some which she had never seen before. As she
stooped forward hastily to pluck them, she heard a sound close by her.
Looking quickly about her, she spied a large snake just below her naked
feet, among the loose stones. Uttering a loud scream, she sprang terrified
from the spot; nor did she slacken her speed until she reached the
schoolhouse, her delicate feet cut and bleeding in several places, and a