"'I guddled in that burn when I was a boy,' he says; and I cud ha' grat. It was like a drink o' cauld water.... I aye likit rinnin' water. Mony a time I've sat by that window on a simmer's nicht and made masel' believe that I could hear Tweed. It ran in ma ears for thirty years, an' a body disna forget. There's a bit in the Bible about a river ... read it."
Elizabeth lifted the Bible and looked at it rather hopelessly.
"I'm afraid I don't know where to find it," she confessed.
"Tuts, lassie, yer faither would ha' kent," said Mrs. Veitch.
"There is a river," Elizabeth quoted from memory,—"there is a river the streams whereof shall make glad the city of God."
"Ay! that's it." She lay quiet, as if satisfied.
"Mother," said Kate. "Oh! Mother!"
The sick woman turned to her daughter.
"Ay, Kate. Ye've been a guid lassie to me, and noo ye'll gang to Maggie in Ameriky. The money is there, an' I can gang content. Ye wudna keep me Kate, when I've waited so lang? I'll gang as blythe doon to the River o' Death as I gaed fifty years syne to ma trystin', and Alec will meet me at the ither side as he met me then ... and John, ma kind son, will be waitin' for me, an' ma wee Hughie——"
"And your Saviour, Mother," Kate reminded her anxiously.