"That would be one of the ills you would leave behind you, Peggy," suggested Marjory, with a tender smile at the oddity of the old woman's thought. "I'm sure I hope sae, for it wad be maist terrible in the wings," replied Peggy, gravely. Her eyes, following the girl as she complied with the grim request, lit up with satisfaction, her mouth trembled in the effort for calm indifference. "Ay! sure enough it's the best of cloth, yon, and there is twa rows back stitchin' as fine as fine, and a frill down the front. Some has a lace edgin', but I'm no sure o' furbelows. It wad no be decent for me to come before my Maker prinked oot like a young lass; though Mary McAndrews, who was a gude four year aulder nor me, had real Valenciennes. But, there! she was ae' flighty, puir thing; her mind set on bows and gum flowers, no on things above. Fine cloth an' a cambric frill's gude eneuch for my funeral; an' the coffin no from the pairish, thank the Lord!" As old Peggy lay there in the bay bed gossiping over her shroud she was a grim sight; yet a pathetic one, since there is nothing in the wide world which appeals to the humanity within us so much as the tired, toil-wasted hands of old age folded on a coverlet waiting for death. Marjory, with her strong young ones straightening the dead clothes, felt a strange thrill at her heart, even as she thought of the long years of welcome struggle before she, too, would be glad of rest. "So Mr. Paul is to come hame again?" quavered the old voice, softened inexplicably by that chill thought of death. "Aye, aye! he will be bonnie still, for he was aye of the kind to mak' a bonnie corp. And no that bad for a man--not by ordinair. Weel! when ye see him tell him that ould Peggy's gone on the pairish, but that it'll no be a pairish funeral. For there's twa bottles gude whiskey in the draw wi' the deid claes, my dear, and that's eneuch to carry me to my grave as I sou'd be carried." CHAPTER III.