"Why, let me see,—oh, yes! It had almost slipped my memory," replied the bed-maker. "Poor Widow Butler died last night, after her long sickness. Poor woman! I remember her forty years ago, or so,—as rosy a lass as you could set eyes on."
"Ah! has she gone?" said Edward, recollecting the sick woman of the cottage which he had entered with Ellen and Fanshawe. "Was she not out of her right mind, Dolly?"
"Yes, this seven years," she answered. "They say she came to her senses a bit, when Dr. Melmoth visited her yesterday, but was raving mad when she died. Ah, that son of hers!—if he is yet alive. Well, well!"
"She had a son, then?" inquired Edward.
"Yes, such as he was. The Lord preserve me from such a one!" said Dolly.
"It was thought he went off with Hugh Crombie, that keeps the tavern now.
That was fifteen years ago."
"And have they heard nothing of him since?" asked Edward.
"Nothing good,—nothing good," said the bed-maker.
"Stories did travel up the valley now and then; but for five years there has been no word of him. They say Merchant Langton, Ellen's father, met him in foreign parts, and would have made a man of him; but there was too much of the wicked one in him for that. Well, poor woman! I wonder who'll preach her funeral sermon."
"Dr. Melmoth, probably," observed the student.
"No, no! The doctor will never finish his journey in time. And who knows but his own funeral will be the end of it," said Dolly, with a sagacious shake of her head.