rtail the space
available for books, which, he indicated, were the proper furniture of
any room, but chiefly of a study. So great was his alarm that he
repented of too early concessions about the other rooms, and explained
to Mrs. Pitillo that every inch of space must be rigidly kept for the
overflow from the study, which he expected--if he were spared--would
reach the garrets. Several times on their way back to Kilbogie,
Saunderson looked wistfully at Mrs. Pitillo, and once opened his mouth
as if to speak, from which she gathered that he was grateful for her
kindness, but dared not yield any farther to the luxuries of the flesh.

What this worthy woman endured in securing a succession of reliable
housekeepers for Mr. Saunderson and overseeing the interior of that
remarkable home, she was never able to explain to her own satisfaction,
though she made many honest efforts, and one of her last intelligible
utterances was a lamentable prophecy of the final estate of the Free
Church manse of Kilbogie. Mr. Saunderson himself seemed at times to
have some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her
name to Carmichael in feeling terms. There had been some delay in
providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles'
walk from Drumtochty, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to
take his meal standing for want of a chair.

"While Mrs. Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting
to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better
ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree,
and was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.

"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an
unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange
them after an artificial fashion. This she called tidying, and, in its
most extreme form, cleaning."

[Illustration: "She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my
books."]

"With all her excellencies, there was also in her what I have noticed
in most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I
was making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of
comely editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the
garden and dusted. It was the space of two years before I regained
mastery of my library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on
the service book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second
edition, to