Kenneth had been gone but a few minutes when Eppie Ness in her turn had a visitor--an old woman, toothless and bent, limping on a staff, and with a covered basket on her arm. A grizzled elf-lock or two had escaped from the white sowback mutch which was bound to her head by a winding of broad black ribbon, and hung down over the glittering beadlike eyes. A hook nose and projecting chin nearly met in a bird-like beak over the fallen-in mouth, whence one surviving fang protruded with a grim witch-like effect. Her dress was dark blue linsey, and over it she wore, as on all occasions of ceremony, the scarlet cloak in which she had been 'kirket' as a bride fifty years before, and had worn unfailingly ever since, summer and winter, to kirk and market. It was Luckie Howden. She pushed open the door without ceremony, and stood in the middle of the kitchen looking about her. Eppie, with the child in her lap, sat by the fire and was crooning some old song in the endeavour to make it sleep. 'Hear til her noo! wi' her daft sinfu' sangs. Wraxin' the thrapple o' her like some screighin' auld craw! "Like draws to like," folk says, an' aiblins ye're no that faur wrang, gude wife, to be skirlin' the like til a merry-begotten wee din raiser, as that wein's like to turn out. But wadna "Bangor," noo, or "Saunt Neot's," or some douce tune like that, an' belike ane o' the waesome Psaulms o' penitence be fitter baith for the puir bairn an' its ill-doin' faither?' 'Haud yer lang, ill-scraipet tongue, Luckie Howden! We a' ken what maks _ye_ sae bitter on the puir bairn. Gin ye'd gotten the tentin' o' her, an' three shillin's the week forby the feedin', ye'd hae thocht nae wrang; an' ye wadna hae been sae gleg to hearken to senseless lees, 'at ony body no clean doited micht ken better nor mind.' 'Ye ill-tongued limmer! Hoo daur ye even me to the like?' 'Ou ay! Ye're rael heigh, are na ye? But ye gaed fleechin' to Miss Mary for a' that, to get the bairn awa frae me, an' ye said ye'd tent her for half-a-crown. I'm thinkin' she'd no hae fared ower weel, the bonny lamb, gin ye'd hae gotten yer way. Ye'd hae shotten't by, wi' ait meal brue, an' drank the sweet milk yersel'!' 'An' gin I did speer Miss Brown for the bairn, was there ony wrang kenned anent it than? An' what for suld I no? Wad it no hae been weel for the bairn gin I had gotten my way! I hae raised twal o' my ain, an' I'm granny to naar twa score. But you! ye ne'er had but ane, an' ye kenned na hoo to guide it--made sae puir a job o't the Lord ne'er chanced ye wi' anither.' 'The Lord forgie ye! ye ill-tongued witch,' cried Eppie, while her brimming eyes overflowed. The image of her long-lost darling rose before her in all its winsome beauty, and she gathered up the baby in her lap, more closely to her motherly breast, and pressed it fondly for the sake of the one that was gone.