the child, who trotted through the now
deserted High Street, into the Canongate. By the time he got to the Old
Playhouse Close, Hugh had revived his memory of Mary Duff: a lively girl
who had been bred up beside him in Cromarty. The last time he had seen
her was at a brother mason's marriage, where Mary was "best maid," and
he "best man." He seemed still to see her bright young careless face,
her tidy short gown, and her dark eyes, and to hear her bantering, merry
tongue.

Down the close went the ragged little woman, and up an outside stair,
Hugh keeping near her with difficulty; in the passage she held out her
hand and touched him; taking it in his great palm, he felt that she
wanted a thumb. Finding her way like a cat through the darkness, she
opened a door, and saying "That's her!" vanished. By the light of a
dying fire he saw lying in the corner of the large empty room something
like a woman's clothes, and on drawing nearer became aware of a thin
pale face and two dark eyes looking keenly but helplessly up at him. The
eyes were plainly Mary Duff's, though he could recognize no other
feature. She wept silently, gazing steadily at him. "Are you Mary Duff?"
"It's a' that's o' me, Hugh." She then tried to speak to him, something
plainly of great urgency, but she couldn't, and seeing that she was very
ill, and was making herself worse, he put half-a-crown into her feverish
hand, and said he would call again in the morning. He could get no
information about her from the neighbors; they were surly or asleep.

When he returned next morning, the little girl met him at the
stair-head, and said, "She's deid." He went in, and found that it was
true; there she lay, the fire out, her face placid, and the likeness to
her maiden self restored. Hugh thought he would have known her now, even
with those bright black eyes closed as they were, _in aeternum_.

Seeking out a neighbor, he said he would like to bury Mary Duff, and
arranged for the funeral with an undertaker in the close. Little seemed
to be known of the poor outcast, except that she was a "licht," or, as
Solomon would have said, a "strange woman." "Did she drink?" "Whiles."

On the day of the funeral one or two residents in the close accompanied
him to the Canongate Churchyard. He observed a decent looking little old
woman watching them, and following at a distance, though the day was wet
and bitter. After the grave was filled, and he had taken off his hat, as
the men f