d ink: she dreaded seeming for a moment to hesitate.
He brought them to her, she signed, and they shook hands.

He then conducted her all over the house--first to the rooms
prepared for his study and bedroom, and next to the room in the
garret, which he had left just as it was when his father died in it.
There he gave her a look by which he meant to say, "See what whisky
brings people to!" but which her conscience interpreted, "See what
you brought my father to!" Next, on the floor between, he showed
her a number of bedrooms, all newly repaired and
fresh-painted,--with double windows, the inside ones filled with
frosted glass. These rooms, he gave her to understand, he wished
her to furnish, getting as many things as she could from Mistress
Murkison. Going back then to the sitting-room, he proceeded to
explain his plans, telling her he had furnished the house that he
might not any longer be himself such a stranger as to have no place
to take a stranger to. Then he got a Bible there was in the room,
and showed her those words in the book of Exodus--"Also, thou shalt
not oppress a stranger; for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing
ye were strangers in the land of Egypt;" and while she thought again
of her wanderings through the country, and her nights in the open
air, made her understand that whomsoever he should at any time bring
home she was to treat as his guest. She might get a servant to wait
upon herself, he said, but she must herself help him to wait upon
his guests, in the name of the Son of Man.

She expressed hearty acquiescence, but would not hear of a servant:
the more work the better for her! she said. She would to-morrow
arrange for giving up her shop and disposing of her stock and the
furniture in her garret. But Gibbie requested the keys of both
those places. Next, he insisted that she should never utter a word
as to the use he intended making of his house; if the thing came
out, it would ruin his plans, and he must give them up
altogether--and thereupon he took her to the ground floor and showed
her a door in communication with a poor little house behind, by
which he intended to introduce and dismiss his guests, that they
should not know where they had spent the night. Then he made her
read to him the hundred and seventh Psalm; after which he left her,
saying he would come to the house as soon as the session began,
which would be in a week; until then he should be at Mr. Sclater's.

Lef