“Sir Walter was no relation of Marjorie’s, but of the Keiths, through the Swintons; and, like Marjorie, he stayed much at Ravelstone in his early days, with his grandaunt Mrs. Keith; and it was while seeing him there as a boy, that another aunt of mine composed, when he was about fourteen, the lines prognosticating his future fame that Lockhart ascribes in his Life to Mrs. Cockburn, authoress of ‘The Flowers of the Forest’:-- “Go on, dear youth, the glorious path pursue Which bounteous Nature kindly smooths for you; Go bid the seeds her hands have sown arise, By timely culture, to their native skies; Go, and employ the poet’s heavenly art, Not merely to delight, but mend the heart.” Mrs. Keir was my aunt’s name, another of Dr. Rae’s daughters.” We cannot better end than in words from this same pen: “I have to ask you to forgive my anxiety in gathering up the fragments of Marjorie’s last days, but I have an almost sacred feeling to all that pertains to her. You are quite correct in stating that measles were the cause of her death. My mother was struck by the patient quietness manifested by Marjorie during this illness, unlike her ardent, impulsive nature; but love and poetic feeling were unquenched. When Dr. Johnstone rewarded her submissiveness with a sixpence, the request speedily followed that she might get out ere New Year’s day came. When asked why she was so desirous of getting out, she immediately rejoined, ‘Oh, I am so anxious to buy something with my sixpence for my dear Isa Keith.’ Again, when lying very still, her mother asked her if there was anything she wished: ‘Oh yes! if you would just leave the room door open a wee bit, and play ‘The Land o’ the Leal,’ and I will lie and _think_, and enjoy myself’ (this is just as stated to me by her mother and mine). Well, the happy day came, alike to parents and child, when Marjorie was allowed to come forth from the nursery to the parlor. It was Sabbath evening, and after tea. My father, who idolized this child, and never afterwards in my hearing mentioned her name, took her in his arms; and, while walking her up and down the room, she said, ‘Father, I will repeat something to you; what would you like?’ He said, ‘Just choose yourself, Maidie.’ She hesitated for a moment between the paraphrase, ‘Few are thy days, and full of woe,’ and the lines of Burns already quoted, but decided on the latter, a remarkable choice for a child. The repeating these lines seemed to stir up the depths of feeling in her soul. She asked to be allowed to write a poem; there was a doubt whether it would be right to allow her, in case of hurting her eyes. She pleaded earnestly, ‘Just this once’; the point was yielded, her slate was given her, and with great rapidity she wrote an address of fourteen lines, ‘to her loved cousin on the author’s recovery,’ her last work on earth:--