walk without
being fussed over and forced to change his socks on his return; at others,
and for days together, his wife would resign the care of him to
Providence, or at any rate to Fate, and trouble herself not at all about
his goings-out or his comings-in, nor whether he wore a great-coat or not,
nor if he returned wet to the skin and neglected to change his wear.

Well, the girl was right, as was proved on the afternoon when
Mr. Johnstone, taking his customary walk upon the Kilmarnock road, fell
and burst a blood-vessel, and was borne home to the manse on a gate.
The two women were seated in the garret as usual when the crowd entered
the garden; and with the first sound of the bearers' feet upon the path,
which was of smooth pebbles compacted in lime, Mrs. Johnstone rose up,
with a face of a sudden so grey and terrible that Kirstie dropped the book
from her knee.

"It has come!" said the poor lady under her breath, and put out a hand as
if feeling for some stick of furniture to lean against. "It has come!"
she repeated aloud, but still hoarsely; and with that she turned to the
lass with a most piteous look, and "Oh, Kirstie, girl," she cried,
"you won't leave me? I have been kind to you--say you won't leave me!"

Before Kirstie well understood, her mistress's arms were about her and the
gaunt woman clinging to her body and trembling like a child. "You will
save me, Kirstie? You will live here and not forsake me? There is nobody
now but you!" she kept crying over and over.

The girl held her firmly with a grasp above the elbows to steady her and
allay the trembling, and, albeit dazed herself, uttered what soothing
words came first to her tongue. "Why, mistress, who thinks of leaving
you? Not I, to be sure. But let me get you to bed, and in an hour you
will be better of this fancy, for fancy it must be."

"He is dead, I tell you," Mrs. Johnstone insisted, "and they are bringing
him home. Hark to the door--that was never your master's knock--and the
voices!"

She was still clinging about Kirstie when the cook came panting up the
stairs and into the room with a white face; for it was true, and the
minister had breathed his last between the garden gate and his house door.

As I have said, I rode over from Wyliebank four days later to read the
burial service. The widow was not to be seen, and of Kirstie, who ever
hid herself from the sight of strangers, I caught but a glimpse.
She did not follow the cof