day coming yet. Gude kens it never cam' to me;
and here I am, wi' nayther man nor bairn to ca' my ain, wearying a'
folks wi' my ill tongue, and you just the first, Mr. Erchie!"

"I have a difficulty in knowing what you mean," said Archie.

"Weel, and I'll tell ye," she said. "It's just this, that I'm feared.
I'm feared for ye, my dear. Remember, your faither is a hard man,
reaping where he hasna sowed and gaithering where he hasna strawed. It's
easy speakin', but mind! Ye'll have to look in the gurley face o'm,
where it's ill to look, and vain to look for mercy. Ye mind me o' a
bonny ship pitten oot into the black and gowsty seas--ye're a' safe
still, sittin' quait and crackin' wi' Kirstie in your lown chalmer; but
whaur will ye be the morn, and in whatten horror o' the fearsome
tempest, cryin' on the hills to cover ye?"

"Why, Kirstie, you're very enigmatical to-night--and very eloquent,"
Archie put in.

"And, my dear Mr. Erchie," she continued, with a change of voice, "ye
maunna think that I canna sympathise wi' ye. Ye maunna think that I
havena been young mysel'. Lang syne, when I was a bit lassie, no twenty
yet----" She paused and sighed. "Clean and caller, wi' a fit like the
hinney bee," she continued. "I was aye big and buirdly, ye maun
understand; a bonny figure o' a woman, though I say it that
suldna--built to rear bairns--braw bairns they suld hae been, and grand
I would hae likit it! But I was young, dear, wi' the bonny glint o'
youth in my e'en, and little I dreamed I'd ever be tellin' ye this, an
auld, lanely, rudas wife! Weel, Mr. Erchie, there was a lad cam'
courtin' me, as was but naetural. Mony had come before, and I would nane
o' them. But this yin had a tongue to wile the birds frae the lift and
the bees frae the foxglove bells. Deary me, but it's lang syne. Folk
have dee'd sinsyne and been buried, and are forgotten, and bairns been
born and got merrit and got bairns o' their ain. Sinsyne woods have been
plantit, and have grawn up and are bonny trees, and the joes sit in
their shadow; and sinsyne auld estates have changed hands, and there
have been wars and rumours of wars on the face of the earth. And here
I'm still--like an auld droopit craw--lookin' on and craikin'! But, Mr.
Erchie, do ye no think that I have mind o' it a' still? I was dwalling
then in my faither's house; and it's a curious thing that we were whiles
trysted in the Deil's Hags. And do ye no think that I have mind of the
bonny si