"Elspat was aye," she said, "a retired body, wi' a cast o' decent pride aboot her; an', though bare an' puirly aff sometimes, in her auld days, she had never been chargeable to onybody. She had come o' decent, 'sponsible people, though they were a' low aneugh the day--ay, an' they were God-fearing people, too, wha had gien plenty in their time, and had aye plenty to gie. An' though they had been a' langsyne laid in the kirkyard--a' except hersel, puir body!--she wouldna disgrace their guid name, she said, by takin an alms frae ony ane. Her sma' means fell oot o' her hands afore her last illness. Little had aye dune her turn--but the little failed at last; an' sair, sair thocht did it gie her, for a while, what was to come o' her. I could hear her, in the butt-end o' the house, ae mornin, mair earnest an' langer in her prayers than usual--though she never neglected them, puir body--an' a' the early part o' that day she seemed to be no weel. She was aye up and down; an' I could ance or twice hear her gaunting at the fireside; but, when I went ben to her, an' asked what was the matter wi' her, she said she was just in her ordinar. She went oot for a wee; an' what did I do but gang to her amry, for I jaloused a' wasna richt there; an', oh! it was a sair sicht to see, neebors; but there was neither a bit o' bread nor a grain o' meal within its four corners--naething but the sealed-up greybeard, wi' the whisky, that, for twenty years an' mair, she had been keeping for her lykewake; an', ye ken, it was oot o' the question to think that she would meddle wi' it. Weel did I scold her, when she cam in, for being sae close-minded. I asked her what harm I had ever done to her, that she would rather hae died than hae trusted her wants to me; but, though she said nothing, I could see the tears in her ee; an' sae I stopped, and we took a late breakfast thegither at my fireside.