ause of
the sound, for I woke fully conscious of the fact that Aunt Janet had
knocked and was waiting to come in. I jumped from bed, and back again
when I had unlocked the door. When Aunt Janet came in she noticed the
cold of the room.

"Save us, laddie, but ye'll get your death o' cold in this room." Then,
as she looked round and noticed the ashes of the extinct fire in the
grate:

"Eh, but ye're no that daft after a'; ye've had the sense to light yer
fire. Glad I am that we had the fire laid and a wheen o' dry logs ready
to yer hand." She evidently felt the cold air coming from the window,
for she went over and drew the curtain. When she saw the open window,
she raised her hands in a sort of dismay, which to me, knowing how little
base for concern could be within her knowledge, was comic. Hurriedly she
shut the window, and then, coming close over to my bed, said:

"Yon has been a fearsome nicht again, laddie, for yer poor auld aunty."

"Dreaming again, Aunt Janet?" I asked--rather flippantly as it seemed to
me. She shook her head:

"Not so, Rupert, unless it be that the Lord gies us in dreams what we in
our spiritual darkness think are veesions." I roused up at this. When
Aunt Janet calls me Rupert, as she always used to do in my dear mother's
time, things are serious with her. As I was back in childhood now,
recalled by her word, I thought the best thing I could do to cheer her
would be to bring her back there too--if I could. So I patted the edge
of the bed as I used to do when I was a wee kiddie and wanted her to
comfort me, and said:

"Sit down, Aunt Janet, and tell me." She yielded at once, and the look
of the happy old days grew over her face as though there had come a gleam
of sunshine. She sat down, and I put out my hands as I used to do, and
took her hand between them. There was a tear in her eye as she raised my
hand and kissed it as in old times. But for the infinite pathos of it,
it would have been comic:

Aunt Janet, old and grey-haired, but still retaining her girlish slimness
of figure, petite, dainty as a Dresden figure, her face lined with the
care of years, but softened and ennobled by the unselfishness of those
years, holding up my big hand, which would outweigh her whole arm;
sitting dainty as a pretty old fairy beside a recumbent giant--for my
bulk never seems so great as when I am near this real little good fairy
of my life--seven feet beside four feet seven.

So she beg