inter her master who died very suddenly by the bursting of a
blood-vessel in the brain. After that she went to live with the widow in
lodgings in Edinburgh; and from her, some fifteen months later, I received
the news, in a letter most neatly indited, that Mrs. Johnstone had
perished by her own hand, and a request to impart it to all in this parish
whom it might concern. The main facts she told me then in writing, but
the circumstances (being ever a sensible girl) she kept to transmit to me
by word of mouth, rightly judging that the public enquiry had no business
with them.

It seems, then, that Kirstie's first introduction to Mrs. Johnstone was
none too cheerful; indeed, it came near to scaring her out of her senses.
She arrived duly at Givens shortly before five of the afternoon
(a warm day in June) and went straight to the manse, where the door was
opened to her by Mr. Johnstone, who had seen her from the parlour window.
He led the way back to the parlour, and, after a question or two upon her
journey, took her up the main stairs to the landing. Here he halted and
directed her up a narrow flight to her garret, which lay off to the right,
at the very top.

The door stood ajar, and facing it was another door, wide open,
through which a ray of the evening sun slanted across the stairhead.
Kirstie, with her bundle in one hand and the other upon the hasp, turned
to look down upon the minister, to make sure she was entering the right
chamber. He stood at the foot of the stairs, and his eyes were following
her (as she thought) with a very curious expression; but before he could
nod she happened to throw a glance into the room opposite, and very nearly
dropped her bundle.

Yet there was nothing to be scared at; merely the figure of an elderly
woman in black bent over her spinning-wheel there in the dim light.
It was Mrs. Johnstone, of course, seated at her work; but it came upon the
girl with suddenness, like an apparition, and the fright, instead of
passing, began to take hold of her as the uncanny woman neither spoke nor
looked up. The room about her was bare, save for some hanks of yarn
littered about the boards and a great pile of it drying on a tray by the
window. The one ray of sunlight seemed to pass over this without
searching the corners under the sloping roof, and fell at Kirstie's feet.

She has told me that she must have stood there for minutes with her heart
working like a pump. When she looked down