"But I wasna to be gainsaid, and Tam took my airm as we gaed doon through the toon to Market Street. There they tried hard to keep him oot frae my sight. They tellt me he wasna fit to be seen, but there's nae law that can keep a wife frae seeing her husband's corpse. He was lying in a waiting-room covered up with a sheet, and, oh me, he was sair, sair mangled--that puir fellow there is naething to him; but the winsome, manly face, with the sweet, familiar smile on it, was nane spoiled; and lang, lang, I sat there, us twa alane, with my hand on his cauld forehead, playing wi' his bonnie waving hair. They left me there, in their considerate kindliness, till the cauld light o' the New Year's morning began to break, and syne they came and tellt me I maun go. But I wadna gang my lane. He was mine, and mine only, sae lang as he was abune the mools; and I claimed my dead hame wi' me, to that hoose he had left sae brisk and sprichtly whan he kissed me in the morning. Four of the railway-porters carried him up to that hame which had lost its hame-look for me now. I keepit him to mysel' till they took him awa' frae me and laid him under a saugh tree in the Spittal Kirkyard." She paused in her story, overcome by the bitter memory of the past, and I wanted no formal application now to give me the clue to her strange preference for the accident ward and her hitherto inexplicable fondness for "railway cases." Poor thing, with what inexpressible vividness must the circumstances in which this New Year's night was passing with her have recalled the sad remembrances of that other New Year's night the narrative of which she had just given me! Presently she recovered her voice, and briefly concluded the little history. "Leddy, I was wi' bairn whan my Alick was taken from me. Oh, how I used to pray that God would be gude to me, and give me a living keepsake of my dead husband! I troubled naebody. I never speered if my father would do anything for me; but I got work at the factory, and I lived in prayerful hope. My hour of trouble came, and a fatherless laddie was born into this weary world, the very picture o' him that was sleeping under the tree in the Spittal Kirkyard. I needna tell ye I christened him Alick, and the bairn has been my joy and comfort ever since God gifted me with him. I found the sichts and memories of Aberdeen ower muckle for me, sae I came up to London here, and ye ken the rest about me. It was because of being with my bairn that I wouldna agree to live in the hospital here like the rest of the nurses, and whan I gang hame noo to my little garret, he will waken up out of his saft sleep, rosy and fresh, and hold up his bonnie mou', sae like his father's, for 'mammie's kiss.'" MY NATIVE SALMON RIVER