son looked wistfully at Mrs. Pitillo,
and once opened his mouth as if to speak, from which she gathered that he
was grateful for her kindness, but dared not yield any further to the
luxuries of the flesh.

What this worthy woman endured in securing a succession of reliable
house-keepers for Mr. Saunderson and over-seeing the interior of that
remarkable home she was never able to explain to her own satisfaction,
though she made many honest efforts, and one of her last intelligible
utterances was a lamentable prophecy of the final estate of the Free
Church manse of Kilbogie. Mr. Saunderson himself seemed at times to have
some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her name to
Carmichael of Drumtochty in feeling terms. There had been some delay in
providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles' walk
from the glen, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to take his
meal standing for want of a chair.

"While Mrs. Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting
to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better
ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree, and
was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.

"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an
unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange
them after an artificial fashion. This she called tidying, and, in its
most extreme form, cleaning.

"With all her excellences, there was also in her what I have noticed in
most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I was
making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of comely
editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the garden and
dusted. It was the space of two years before I regained mastery of my
library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on the
service-book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second edition, to
say nothing of an original edition of Rutherford's _Lex Rex_.

"It does not become me, however, to reflect on the efforts of that worthy
matron, for she was by nature a good woman, and if any one could be saved
by good works, her place is assured. I was with her before she died, and
her last words to me were, 'Tell Jean tae dust yir bukes aince in the sax
months, and for ony sake keep ae chair for sittin' on.' It was not
perhaps quite the testimony one would have desired in the circumstances,