WILFRED CAMPBELL.

And just as Scotty entered manhood a wonderful thing happened in the
Highlands, something that amazed the neighbours and convinced them of
the instability of all things, particularly of a woman's resolution,
for Kirsty John promised to marry the Weaver. All these weary years,
as faithful as the sun and as untiring, Jimmie had been climbing the
hills to the Oa to shed the beams of his devotion unheeded at Kirsty's
doorstep; but now the long period of Jacob-like service was over, for
he had at last won his Rachel.

Some declared that this was only a new method Kirsty had found for
tormenting her hapless lover, and that after they were tied up she
would lead him a dog's life. But Long Lauchie's girls--there were
still girls at Long Lauchie's, though a goodly number of matrons looked
back to the place as their old home--declared that Jimmie no longer
dodged when Kirsty passed him, and that he even entered her house
without knocking. And Big Malcolm's wife would shake her head
smilingly at all the dark predictions and declare in her quiet, firm
way that indeed they need never fear for Jimmie.

And she was right; the Weaver was not undertaking any such hazardous
enterprise as the neighbours supposed. For a change had come over
Kirsty the winter she lost the frail little mother, and only Big
Malcolm's wife knew its depth. All Kirsty's bold courage, all her
fearless fight with poverty, had had for its inspiration the poor
sufferer on the bed in the corner of the little shanty, and when the
spring of action was removed there went also the daughter's dauntless
spirit, and nowhere was the change so strongly evinced as in this
promise to marry the Weaver.

Kirsty's grief had no bitterness in it. It had softened her greatly,
for the little mother's death had been as beautiful as her patient,
pain-filled life. And wonderful it seemed that, like that other woman
who had suffered so long before, just eighteen years of pain had been
completed when the Master called her to Him and said in His infinite
love, "Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity."

"But you will surely not be leaving me," pleaded Kirsty brokenly when
her mother told her the end could not be far off. "Ah've nobody but
you."

"Eh, ma lassie, ye'll be better wi'oot such a puir auld buddie, jist a
burden to ye a' these years."

"Oh, mother, mother, ye'll surely not be talkin' that way to me,"
sobbed her daughter.

"Eh, eh, lass!