od--dead--drowned by slipping from the slippery pier, close to his
comrades' hands, in a dark and gusty night; how her daughter married,
and was well to do, and assisted her; how she fell into a rapid decline,
and died, a picture of health to inexperienced eyes. How she, the
mother, saw and knew, and watched the treacherous advance of disease
and death; how others said gayly, "Her daughter was better," and she
was obliged to say, "Yes." How she had worked, eighteen hours a day,
at making nets; how, when she let out her nets to the other men at the
herring fishing, they always cheated her, because her man was gone. How
she had many times had to choose between begging her meal and going to
bed without it, but, thank Heaven! she had always chosen the latter.

She told him of hunger, cold, and anguish. As she spoke they became real
things to him; up to that moment they had been things in a story-book.
And as she spoke she rocked herself from side to side.

Indeed, she was a woman "acquainted with grief." She might have said,
"Here I and sorrow sit. This is my throne, bid kings come and bow to
it!"

Her hearer felt this, and therefore this woman, poor, old, and ugly,
became sacred in his eye; it was with a strange sort of respect that he
tried to console her. He spoke to her in tones gentle and sweet as the
south wind on a summer evening.

"Madam," said he, "let me be so happy as to bring you some comfort. The
sorrows of the heart I cannot heal; they are for a mightier hand; but a
part of your distress appears to have been positive need; that we can at
least dispose of, and I entreat you to believe that from this hour want
shall never enter that door again. Never! upon my honor!"

The Scotch are icebergs, with volcanoes underneath; thaw the Scotch ice,
which is very cold, and you shall get to the Scotch fire, warmer than
any sun of Italy or Spain.

His lordship had risen to go. The old wife had seemed absorbed in her
own grief; she now dried her tears.

"Bide ye, sirr," said she, "till I thank ye."

So she began to thank him, rather coldly and stiffly.

"He says ye are a lord," said she; "I dinna ken, an' I dinna care; but
ye're a gentleman, I daur say, and a kind heart ye hae."

Then she began to warm.

"And ye'll never be a grain the poorer for the siller ye hae gien me;
for he that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord."

Then she began to glow.

"But it's no your siller; dinna think it--na, lad, na! Oh, f