"Ye needna say your faither isna muckle seck, Maggie. What else would keep ye a' out o' your beds? I maun see him for mysel."
Finding that she could not be quieted, her two children carried her to her husband's bedside. She gazed on the face to which the light of reason would never more return.
"Wae is me! Wae is me!" she exclaimed. "He is gaen, and gaen as his faither did before him. Oh, that I, wha hae been sae long on the brink o' the grave, s'ould live to see him taen awa!"
Her children persuaded her to return to her own room, promising to inform her if any change should take place.
The doctor came, but his remedies were of no avail. Mr. Lindsay passed away at dawn.
Margaret, true to her promise, communicated the sad intelligence to her mother as soon as she awoke.
Mrs. Lindsay spoke not a word. She raised her eyes and stretched her hands upward; then the hands fell and the eyes closed; her heart had ceased to beat.
Margaret Lindsay had been a most dutiful daughter. As long as her parents lived she had devoted herself to their care and comfort. Now that they were gone, she became a member of her brother's family.
Little Annie shared her aunt's room, for the child had been very lonely since Alice went away. She sometimes relieved the hours of their tediousness by going to her uncle Davie's to play with the twins. Many an hour did she amuse both herself and them, much to the satisfaction of her aunt Jeannie, whose duties were neither few nor light.