"'Good and kind, sir! What would the clachan do without her? We all call her auntie. I don't know why. Some bairnies began it, I suppose. Ah! don't the bairnies love her, sir! And she lives all by herself, and that wee laddie in the house where her parents died. Never a child is ill in the village, sir, that she doesn't attend. She gathers the herbs and simples on the moors, and mixes them with her own honest hands, and little toddlers will take physic from her who would spurn it from the doctor.'
"'Dear sir,' continued this somewhat garrulous landlady, 'death itself doesn't seem so dreadful when she is in the room. And she has aye a word of comfort for poor wives, when their boats are detained at sea or blown far, far away by the raging storm. On that terrible Tuesday, sir, and all the dark drear night that followed, when the wind blew louder and the sea was wilder than anybody ever remembered it before—when out of eleven boats and their brave crews but only five regained the shore, Miss Elspet was everywhere, directing, sir, and comforting, praying with the widows and the fatherless bairns, and sometimes even scolding the women for their want of trust in the Maker—like a very angel in the midst of the great grief that wailed around her.'
"'The boy, sir? He had no mother, and his father was drowned on that stormy night——"
"I stopped to hear no more,
"In ten minutes' time I was in the well-remembered wee room in Elspet's house, and she stood before me.
"I thought that, hardy and strong as she was, she would have faulted.
"'Eppie,' I said, 'it is me!' Yes, boys, I forgot my grammar just then. 'You could not marry me when I was rich and young, now I am old—though not in years—and I am poor and ill. You nursed me once, Eppie. Will you nurse me again?' Ah! lads, it has been a new life to me since the village bells rang on our wedding morn. I have found peace and contentment at last, and after the fever of life I can rest me here. Are we not happy, Eppie?"
He did not give Eppie time to reply.
"Yonder sits the drowned fisherman's son, Fred, who saved your life to-day, Frank Fielding."
"And the wee thing who has gone to sleep on my lap," said Frank Fielding, "she is?"