son were in that shieling as happy as any family in the parish.
He worked at all kinds of work without, and she sat spinning from
morning to night within--a constant occupation, soothing to one before
whose mind past times might otherwise have come too often, and that
creates contentment by its undisturbed sameness and invisible
progression. If not always at meals, the widow saw her son for an hour
or two every night, and throughout the whole Sabbath-day. They slept,
too, under one roof; and she liked the stormy weather when the rains
were on--for then he found some ingenious employment within the
shieling, or cheered her with some book lent by a friend, or with the
lively or plaintive music of his native hills. Sometimes, in her
gratitude, she said that she was happier now than when she had so many
other causes to be so; and when occasionally an acquaintance dropt in
upon her, her face gave a welcome that spoke more than resignation; nor
was she averse to partake the sociality of the other huts, and sat
sedate among youthful merriment, when summer or winter festival came
round, and poverty rejoiced in the riches of content and innocence.

But her trials, great as they had been, were not yet over; for this her
only son was laid prostrate by fever--and, when it left his body, he
survived hopelessly stricken in mind. His eyes, so clear and
intelligent, were now fixed in idiocy, or rolled about unobservant of
all objects living or dead. To him all weather seemed the same, and if
suffered, he would have lain down like a creature void of understanding,
in rain or on snow, nor been able to find his way back for many paces
from the hut. As all thought and feeling had left him, so had speech,
all but a moaning as of pain or woe, which none but a mother could bear
to hear without shuddering--but she heard it during night as well as
day, and only sometimes lifted up her eyes as in prayer to God. An offer
was made to send him to a place where the afflicted were taken care of;
but she beseeched charity for the first time for such alms as would
enable her, along with the earnings of her wheel, to keep her son in the
shieling; and the means were given her from many quarters to do so
decently, and with all the comforts that other eyes observed, but of
which the poor object himself was insensible and unconscious.
Henceforth, it may almost be said, she never more saw the sun, nor heard
the torrents roar. She went not to the kirk, but kep