She suffered no pain, and uttered no complaint. She lay peacefully propped up with pillows on the bed where Mary Marshall had breathed her last, and her pale wrinkled face grew almost as white as the cap-border that encircled it. At the commencement of her illness I was unable to be much with her. Susan and Phoebe Locke had thoroughly engrossed me, and a hurried visit morning and evening to give Peggy orders was all that was possible under the circumstances; but I saw that she was well cared for and comfortable, and Peggy was very good to her and kept the children out of the room. 'Ah, my bairn, I am dying like a lady,' she said to me one day, 'and it is good to be here on poor Mary's bed. See the fine clean sheets that Peggy has put me on, and the grand quilt that keeps my feet warm! Sometimes I could cry with the comfort of it all; and there is the broth and the jelly always ready; and what can a poor old body want more?' When Susan was convalescent I spent more time with Elspeth. I knew she loved to have me beside her, and to listen to the chapters and Psalms I read to her. She would ask me to sing sometimes, and often we would sit and talk of the days that seemed so 'few and evil' in the light of advancing immortality. 'Ay, dearie,' she would say, 'it is not much to look back upon except in an angel's sight,--a poor old woman's life, who worked and struggled to keep her master and children from clemming. I used to think it hard sometimes that I could not get to church on Sunday morning,--for I was aye a woman for church,--but I had to stand at my wash-tub often until late on Saturday night. "After a day's charing, rinsing out the children's bits of things, and ironing them too, how is a poor tired body like me to get religion?" I would say sometimes when I was fairly moithered with it all. But, Miss Garston, my dear, I'm glad, as I lie here, to know that I never neglected the children God had given me; and so He took care of all that; He knew when I was too tired to put up a prayer that it was not for the want of loving Him.' 'No, indeed, Elspeth. I often think we ought not to be too hard on poor people.' 'That's true,' brightening up visibly. 'He is no severe taskmaster demanding bricks out of stubble; He knows poor labouring people are often tired, and out of heart. I used to say to my master sometimes, "Ah well, we must leave all that for heaven; we shall have a fine rest there, and plenty of time to sing our hymns and talk to the Lord Jesus. He was a labouring man too, and He will know all about it." I often comforted my master like that.' Elspeth's quaint talk interested me greatly. I grew to love her dearly, and I liked to feel that she was fond of me in return. I could have sat by her contentedly for hours, holding her hard work-worn hand and listening to her gentle flow of talk with its Scriptural phrases and simple realistic thoughts. It was like washing some pilgrim's feet at a feast to listen to Elspeth.