me
o' Whunnyliggate. 'I come frae Deeside, an' I ken Walter Anderson's
faither.'

"'That's no recommend,' says she. 'The mair's the peety,' says I, 'for
he's a daicent man.'

"So she took ben my name, that I had nae cause to be ashamed o', an'
syne she brocht word that I was to step in. So ben I gaed, an' it wasna
a far step, eyther, for it was juist ae bit garret room; an' there on a
bed in the corner was the minister's laddie, lookin' nae aulder than
when he used to swing on the yett an' chase the hens. At the verra first
glint I gat o' him I saw that Death had come to him, and come to bide.
His countenance was barely o' this earth--sair disjaskit an' no' manlike
ava'--mair like a lassie far gane in a decline; but raised-like too, an'
wi' a kind o' defiance in it, as if he was darin' the Almichty to His
face. O man, Rob, I hope I may never see the like again."

"Ay, man, Saunders, ay, ay!" said Rob Adair, who, being a more
demonstrative man than his friend, had been groping in the tail of his
"blacks" for the handkerchief that was in his hat. Then Rob forgot, in
the pathos of the story, what he was searching for, and walked for a
considerable distance with his hand deep in the pocket of his tail-coat.

The farmer of Drumquhat proceeded on his even way.

"The lassie that I took to be his wife (but I asked nae questions) was
awfu' different ben the room wi' him frae what she was wi' me at the
door--fleechin' like wi' him to tak' a sup o' soup. An' when I gaed
forrit to speak to him on the puir bit bed, she cam' by me like stour,
wi' the water happin' off her cheeks, like hail in a simmer
thunder-shoo'er."

"Puir bit lassockie!" muttered Rob Adair, who had three daughters of his
own at home, as he made another absent-minded and unsuccessful search
for his handkerchief. "There's a smurr o' rain beginnin' to fa', I
think," he said, apologetically.

"'An' ye're Sandy MacWhurr frae Drumquhat,' says the puir lad on the
bed. 'Are your sugar-plums as guid as ever?'

"What a quastion to speer on a dying bed, Saunders!" said Rob.

"'Deed, ye may say it. Weel, frae that he gaed on talkin' aboot hoo Fred
Robson an' him stole the hale o' the Drumquhat plooms ae back-end, an'
hoo they gat as far as the horse waterin'-place wi' them when the dogs
gat after them. He threepit that it was me that set the dogs on, but I
never did that, though I didna conter him. He said that Fred an' him
made for the seven-fit march dike, but h