h i' my
ain bedroom, an' pit on a clean sark o' my deid man's, rist his
sowl!--no 'at I'm a papist, Maister Grant, an' aye kent better nor
think it was ony eese prayin' for them 'at's gane; for wha is there
to pey ony heed to sic haithenish prayers as that wad be? Na! we
maun pray for the livin' 'at it may dee some guid till, an' no for
them 'at its a' ower wi'--the Lord hae mercy upo' them!"

My readers may suspect, one for one reason another for another, that
she had already, before Donal came that evening been holding
communion with the idol in the three-cornered temple of her cupboard;
and I confess that it was so. But it is equally true that before
the next year was gone, she was a shade better--and that not without
considerable struggle, and more failures than successes.

Upon one occasion--let those who analyze the workings of the human
mind as they would the entrails of an eight-day clock, explain the
phenomenon I am about to relate, or decline to believe it, as they
choose--she became suddenly aware that she was getting perilously
near the brink of actual drunkenness.

"I'll tak but this ae mou'fu' mair," she said to herself; "it's but
a mou'fu', an' it's the last i' the boatle, an' it wad be a peety
naebody to get the guid o' 't."

She poured it out. It was nearly half a glass. She took it in one
large mouthful. But while she held it in her mouth to make the most
of it, even while it was between her teeth, something smote her with
the sudden sense that this very moment was the crisis of her fate,
that now the axe was laid to the root of her tree. She dropped on
her knees--not to pray like poor Sir George--but to spout the
mouthful of whisky into the fire. In roaring flame it rushed up the
chimney. She started back.

"Eh!" she cried; "guid God! sic a deevil's I maun be, to cairry the
like o' that i' my inside!--Lord! I'm a perfec' byke o' deevils!
My name it maun be Legion. What is to become o' my puir sowl!"

It was a week before she drank another drop--and then she took her
devils with circumspection, and the firm resolve to let no more of
them enter into her than she could manage to keep in order.

Mr. and Mrs. Sclater got over their annoyance as well as they could,
and agreed that in this case no notice should be taken of Gibbie's
conduct.

CHAPTER XLV.

SHOALS AHEAD.

It had come to be the custom that Gibbie should go to Donal every
Friday afternoon about four o'clock, and