was thinking about
Thrums, wasn't she, Tommy?"

"I was thinking about the part o't I'm most awid to be in," the poor
woman said, sinking back into her chair.

"It's the Den," Tommy told Elspeth.

"It's the Square," Elspeth told Tommy.

"No, it's Monypenny."

"No, it's the Commonty."

But it was none of these places. "It's the cemetery," the woman said,
"it's the hamely, quiet cemetery on the hillside. Oh, there's mony a
bonny place in my nain bonny toon, but there's nain so hamely like as
the cemetery." She sat shaking in the chair, and they thought she was to
say no more, but presently she rose excitedly, and with a vehemence that
made them shrink from her she cried: "I winna lie in London! tell Aaron
Latta that; I winna lie in London!"

For a few more days she trudged to her work, and after that she seldom
left her bed. She had no longer strength to coax up the phlegm, and a
doctor brought in by Shovel's mother warned her that her days were near
an end. Then she wrote her last letter to Thrums, Tommy and Elspeth
standing by to pick up the pen when it fell from her feeble hand, and in
the intervals she told them that she was Jean Myles.

"And if I die and Aaron hasna come," she said, "you maun just gang to
auld Petey and tell him wha you are."

"But how can you be Jean Myles?" asked astounded Tommy. "You ain't a
grand lady and--"

His mother looked at Elspeth. "No' afore her," she besought him; but
before he set off to post the letter she said: "Come canny into my bed
the night, when Elspeth 's sleeping, and syne I'll tell you all there is
to tell about Jean Myles."

"Tell me now whether the letter is to Aaron Latta?"

"It's for him," she said, "but it's no' to him. I'm feared he might burn
it without opening it if he saw my write on the cover, so I've wrote it
to a friend of his wha will read it to him."

"And what's inside, mother?" the boy begged, inquisitively. "It must be
queer things if they'll bring Aaron Latta all the way from Thrums."

"There's but little in it, man," she said, pressing her hand hard upon
her chest. "It's no muckle mair than 'Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld
Lang Syne.'"

CHAPTER X

THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES

That night the excited boy was wakened by a tap-tap, as of someone
knocking for admittance, and stealing to his mother's side, he cried,
"Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at the door!"

It was only the man through the wall, but Mrs. Sandys to