“No wonder Donald loves her so,—­the bonny thing!” thought Katie.  “God knows I’d grudge ye nothing on earth, Elspie,” she said, in a voice so earnest that Elspie looked wonderingly at her.

“Is it a very dear flower, sister?” she said penitently.  “Does it cost too much money for Elspie?”

“No, bairn, it’s not too dear,” said Katie, herself again.  “The lilies were dearer.  But ye’ll have the heather an’ welcome, if ye will; an’ I doubt not it’ll look all right in Donald’s eyes when he sees it this time.”

It was indeed a good home that Donald made for his wife and her sister.  He was better to do in worldly goods than they had supposed.  His long years of seclusion from society had been years of thrift and prosperity.  No more milliner-work for Katie.  Donald would not hear of it.  So she was driven to busy herself with the house, keeping from Elspie’s willing and eager hands all the harder tasks, and laying up stores of fine-spun linen and wool for future use in the family.  It was a marvel how content Katie found herself as the winter flew by.  The wedding had taken place at Christmas, and the two sisters and Donald had gone together from the church to Donald’s new house, where, in a day or two, everything had settled into peaceful grooves of simple, industrious habit, as if they had been there all their lives.

Donald’s happiness was of the deep and silent kind.  Elspie did not realize the extent of it.  A freer-spoken, more demonstrative lover would have found heartier response and more appreciation from her.  But she was a loyal, loving, contented little wife, and there could not have been found in all Charlottetown a happier household, to the eye, than was Donald’s for the first three months after his marriage.

Then a cloud settled on it.  For some inexplicable reason the blooming Elspie, who had never had a day’s illness in her life, drooped in the first approach of the burden of motherhood.  A strange presentiment also seized her.  After the first brief gladness at the thought of holding a child of her own in her arms, she became overwhelmed with a melancholy certainty of her own death.

“I’ll never live to see it, Katie,” she said again and again.  “It’ll be your bairn, an’ not mine.  Ye’ll never give it up, Katie?—­promise me.  Ye’ll take care of it all your life?—­promise.”  And Katie, terrified by her earnestness, promised everything she asked, all the while striving to reassure her that her fears were needless.

No medicines did Elspie good; mind and body alike reacted on each other; she failed hour by hour till the last; and when her time of trial came, the sad presentiment fulfilled itself, and she died in giving birth to her babe.

When Katie brought the child to the stunned and stricken Donald, saying, “Will ye not look at him, Donald? it is as fine a man-child’s was ever seen,” he pushed her away, saying in a hoarse whisper,—­

“Never let me see its face.  She said it was to be your bairn and not hers.  Take it and go.  I’ll never look on it.”