‘David!’ said grannie, with a reproachful dignity, ‘_you_ know what I mean well enough. You know that until I have done what I have to do, the grave that is waiting for me will not open its mouth to receive me. If you will only allow me to do what I have to do, I shall not trouble you long. Oh dear! oh dear!’ she broke out, moaning and rocking herself to and fro, ‘I am too old to weep, and they will not let me to my bed. I want to go to bed. I want to go to sleep.’ She moaned and complained like a child. My uncle went near and took her hand. ‘Come, come, dear grannie!’ he said, ‘you must not behave like this. You know all things are for the best.’ ‘To keep a corpse out of its grave!’ retorted the old lady, almost fiercely, only she was too old and weak to be fierce. ‘Why should you keep a soul that’s longing to depart and go to its own people, lingering on in the coffin? What better than a coffin is this withered body? The child is old enough to understand me. Leave him with me for half an hour, and I shall trouble you no longer. I shall at least wait my end in peace. But I think I should die before the morning.’ Ere grannie had finished this sentence, I had shrunk from her again and retreated behind my uncle. ‘There!’ she went on, ‘you make my own child fear me. Don’t be frightened, Willie dear; your old mother is not a wild beast; she loves you dearly. Only my grand-children are so undutiful! They will not let my own son come near me.’ How I recall this I do not know, for I could not have understood it at the time. The fact is that during the last few years I have found pictures of the past returning upon me in the most vivid and unaccountable manner, so much so as almost to alarm me. Things I had utterly forgotten--or so far at least that when they return, they must appear only as vivid imaginations, were it not for a certain conviction of fact which accompanies them--are constantly dawning out of the past. Can it be that the decay of the observant faculties allows the memory to revive and gather force? But I must refrain, for my business is to narrate, not to speculate. My uncle took me by the hand, and turned to leave the room. I cast one look at grannie as he led me away. She had thrown her head back on her chair, and her eyes were closed; but her face looked offended, almost angry. She looked to my fancy as if she were trying but unable to lie down. My uncle closed the doors very gently. In the middle of the stair he stopped, and said in a low voice, ‘Willie, do you know that when people grow very old they are not quite like other people?’ ‘Yes. They want to go to the churchyard,’ I answered. ‘They fancy things,’ said my uncle. ‘Grannie thinks you are her own son.’ ‘And ain’t I?’ I asked innocently. ‘Not exactly,’ he answered. ‘Your father was her son’s son. She forgets that, and wants to talk to you as if you were your grandfather. Poor old grannie! I don’t wish you to go and see her without your aunt or me: mind that.’