She bent over quickly, and kissed him on lips and brow.
"There—and there! Now if you die, I will die too. Remember that! And I do not care now. I will go!"
Saying this, she rushed from the room.
* * * * *
It was a strange visitor who came to the house of the Elder's daughter that evening, as the gloaming fell darker, her feet making no sound on the deserted and grass-grown streets.
"A young laddie wants to see you, father," said John Allanson's married daughter, with whom he had been lodging for a night when the plague came, in a single hour putting a great gulf between town and country. Then, finding his minister alone, he was not the man to leave him to fight the battle single-handed.
Shamefacedly Elspeth crept in. The old man and his daughter were by themselves, the husband not yet home from the joiner's shop, where the hammers went tap-tap at the plain deal coffins all day and all night.
"The minister is dying—come and help him or he will die!" she cried, as they sat looking curiously at her in the clear, leaping red of the firelight.
"Who are you, laddie?" said the elder.
"I am no laddie," said Elspeth, redder than the peat ashes. "Oh, I am shamed—I am shamed! But I could not help it. And I am not sorry! They told me he was dead. I am Elspeth Stuart, of the Dullarg Manse."