* * * * *
He died the next forenoon while I was still on my rounds. And when I went in to look at him, the picture had disappeared. I questioned the old crone who had watched his last moments and afterwards prepared him for burial.
"He had something in his hand," she answered, "but I couldna steer it. His fingers grippit it like a smith's vice."
I looked, and there from between the clenched fingers of the dead right hand the eyes of Ailie Campbell smiled out at me—blue and false as her own Forget-me-not.
LOWE'S SEAT
Elspeth did not mean to go to Lowe's Seat. She had indeed no business there. For she was the minister's daughter, and at this time of the day ought to have been visiting the old wives in the white-washed "Clachan" on the other side of the river, showing them how to render their patchwork quilts less hideous, compassionating them on their sons' ungrateful silence (letters arrive so seldom from the "States"). Yet here was Elspeth Stuart under the waving boughs, seated upon the soft grassy turf, and employed in nothing more utilitarian than picking a gowan asunder petal by petal. It was the middle of an August afternoon, and as hot as it ever is in Scotland.
Why then had Elspeth gone to Lowe's Seat? It seemed a mystery. It was to the full as pleasant on the side of the river where dwelt her father, where complained her maiden aunt, and where after their kind racketed and stormed her roving vagabond bird-nesting brothers. On the Picts' Mound beside the kirk (an ancient Moothill, so they say, upon which justice of the rudest and readiest was of old dispensed) there were trees and green depths of shade. She might have stayed and read there—the "Antiquary" perhaps, or "Joseph Andrews," or her first favourite "Emma," all through the long sweet drowsing summer's afternoon. But somehow up at Lowe's Seat, the leaves of the wood laughed to a different tune and the Airds woods were dearer than all sweet Kenside.
So in spite of all Elspeth Stuart had crossed in her father's own skiff, which he used for his longer ministerial excursions "up the water," and her brothers Frank and Sandy for perch-fishing and laying their "ged" lines. There was indeed a certain puddock in a high state of decomposition in a locker which sadly troubled Elspeth as she bent to the oars. And now she was at Lowe's Seat.
It is strange to what the love of poetry will drive a girl. Elspeth tossed back the fair curls which a light wind persisted in flicking ticklingly over her brow. With a coquettish, blushful, half-indignant gesture she thrust them back with her hand, as if they ought to have known better than to intrude upon a purpose so serious as hers in coming to Lowe's Seat.
"Here was the place," she murmured to herself, explanatorily, "where the poor boy hid himself to write his poem—a hundred years ago! Was it really a hundred years ago?"