bits of old songs and psalms, stopping suddenly, mingling the
Psalms of David, and the diviner words of his Son and Lord, with homely
odds and ends and scraps of ballads.

Nothing more touching, or in a sense more strangely beautiful, did I
ever witness. Her tremulous, rapid, affectionate, eager, Scotch
voice--the swift, aimless, bewildered mind, the baffled utterance, the
bright and perilous eye; some wild words, some household cares,
something for James, the names of the dead, Rab called rapidly and in a
"fremyt"[112-4] voice, and he starting up, surprised, and slinking off
as if he were to blame somehow, or had been dreaming he heard. Many
eager questions and beseechings which James and I could make nothing of,
and on which she seemed to set her all, and then sink back ununderstood.
It was very sad, but better than many things that are not called sad.
James hovered about, put out and miserable, but active and exact as
ever; read to her, when there was a lull, short bits from the Psalms,
prose and metre, chanting the latter in his own rude and serious way,
showing great knowledge of the fit words, bearing up like a man, and
doating over her as his "ain Ailie," "Ailie, ma woman!" "Ma ain bonnie
wee dawtie!"

The end was drawing on: the golden bowl was breaking; the silver cord
was fast being loosed--that _animula blandula, vagula, hospes,
comesque_[113-5] was about to flee. The body and the soul--companions
for sixty years--were being sundered, and taking leave. She was walking,
alone, through the valley of that shadow, into which one day we must all
enter--and yet she was not alone, for we knew whose rod and staff were
comforting her.

One night she had fallen quiet, and as we hoped, asleep; her eyes were
shut. We put down the gas and sat watching her. Suddenly she sat up in
bed, and taking a bedgown which was lying on it rolled up, she held it
eagerly to her breast--to the right side. We could see her eyes bright
with surpassing tenderness and joy, bending over this bundle of clothes.
She held it as a woman holds her sucking child; opening out her
nightgown impatiently, and holding it close, and brooding over it, and
murmuring foolish little words, as one whom his mother comforteth, and
who sucks and is satisfied. It was pitiful and strange to see her
wasting dying look, keen and yet vague--her immense love.

"Preserve me!" groaned James, giving away. And then she rocked back and
forward, as if to make it sleep,