She shrank from opening a letter addressed to her dead tyrant, unless she had Janet by her side. It was so many years since he had allowed her to take an active interest in their common life (indeed he never had) that she was as helpless as a child. "It's to faither," said Janet. "Shall I waken John?" "No; puir fellow, let him sleep," said his mother. "I stole in to look at him enow, and his face was unco wan lying down on the pillow. I'll open the letter mysell; though, as your faither used to tell me, I never had a heid for business." She broke the seal, and Janet, looking over her shoulder, read aloud to her slower mind:-- "GLASGOW, _March 12, 18--._ "SIR,--We desire once more to call your attention to the fact that the arrears of interest on the mortgage of your house have not been paid. Our client is unwilling to proceed to extremities, but unless you make some arrangement within a week, he will be forced to take the necessary steps to safeguard his interests.--Yours faithfully, BRODIE, GURNEY, & YARROWBY." Mrs. Gourlay sank into a chair, and the letter slipped from her upturned palm, lying slack upon her knee. "Janet," she said, appealingly, "what's this that has come on us? Does the house we live in, the House with the Green Shutters, not belong to us ainy more? Tell me, lassie. What does it mean?" "I don't ken," whispered Janet, with big eyes. "Did faither never tell ye of the bond?" "He never telled me about anything," cried Mrs. Gourlay, with a sudden passion. "I was aye the one to be keepit in the dark--to be keepit in the dark and sore hadden doon. Oh, are we left destitute, Janet--and us was aye sae muckle thocht o'! And me, too, that's come of decent folk, and brought him a gey pickle bawbees--am I to be on the parish in my auld age? Oh, _my_ faither, _my_ faither!" Her mind flashed back to the jocose and well-to-do father who had been but a blurred thought to her for twenty years. That his daughter should come to a pass like this was enough to make him turn in his grave. Janet was astonished by her sudden passion in feebleness. Even the murder of her husband had been met by her weak mind with a dazed resignation. For her natural horror at the deed was swallowed by her anxiety to shield the murderer; and she experienced a vague relief--felt but not considered--at being freed from the incubus of Gourlay's tyranny. It seemed, too, as if she was incapable of feeling anything poignantly, deadened now by these quick calamities. But that _she_, that Tenshillingland's daughter, should come to be an object of common charity, touched some hidden nerve of pride, and made her writhe in agony. "It mayna be sae bad," Janet tried to comfort her.