“Well, well, there’s little difference. Kirsteen, she’s very young, younger than you were at her age. Ye’ll aye give an eye to Jeanie. She may have need of it when her auld mother’s away. I’ve not been much protection, ye’ll think, but still it’s a loss to a woman bairn. Jeanie’s my youngest and Alison my first-born, and yet Jeanie’s a woman and Alison a little playing bairn at heaven’s gate. Isna that strange?” A little sound of laughter came from the bed. Never was dying so easy, so pleasant and gentle. The sand was ebbing out a grain at a time. Suddenly she roused herself a little, and put out again her hand to Kirsteen. A little change came over her face. “I hear your father’s step coming up the stair. But ye’ll no forsake me, Kirsteen--ye’ll not go away?” “Never while you want me, mother.” “It will not be for long,” said the dying woman. Her gratitude was disturbed by a little alarm; she grasped Kirsteen with her shadowy hand, and held her fast. CHAPTER XIV. “Weel--how are ye now?” said Drumcarro, coming to his wife’s bedside. His shaggy eyebrows were drawn together, so that his eyes gleamed small from among the manifold puckers round them. He was not altogether without feeling. He was sorry now that she was dying. He had never taken much notice of her constant illness before. His voice was still gruff and abrupt, and he had no kind things to say, but in his way he was a little affected by the fact that she was lying, this weak creature to whose presence and complaints he had been accustomed for so many years, on the brink of the grave. “I’m just very comfortable. Never you mind me, Neil, my man. Just go to your bed, and if anything should happen Jeanie will give ye a cry. Your father was never a man that could do without his night’s rest. And there’s no need; I’m just as easy as I can be, and well taken care of.” Mrs. Douglas was past the little wiles which women fall into when there is a domestic despot to deal with. She forgot that it was a sin against her husband that Kirsteen should be there. She turned her head from one side to the other with a smile. “Real weel taken care of--between them,” she said. Drumcarro lifted his head and gazed fiercely at the figure on the other side; the folds of his eyelids widened and opened up, a fierce glance of recognition shot out of them. “How dared ye come here?” he said. “To see my mother,” said Kirsteen. “How dared ye come into my house?” “I would have gone--to the gates of death when my mother wanted me. Let me be, as long as she wants me, father; she’s so quiet and peaceable, you would not disturb her. Let her be.”