Elspeth nestled against her, crying, “My mother was thinking about Thrums, wasn’t she, Tommy?”

“I was thinking about the part o’t I’m most awid to be in,” the poor woman said, sinking back into her chair.

“It’s the Den,” Tommy told Elspeth.

“It’s the Square,” Elspeth told Tommy.

“No, it’s Monypenny.”

“No, it’s the Commonty.”

But it was none of these places.  “It’s the cemetery,” the woman said, “it’s the hamely, quiet cemetery on the hillside.  Oh, there’s mony a bonny place in my nain bonny toon, but there’s nain so hamely like as the cemetery.”  She sat shaking in the chair, and they thought she was to say no more, but presently she rose excitedly, and with a vehemence that made them shrink from her she cried:  “I winna lie in London! tell Aaron Latta that; I winna lie in London!”

For a few more days she trudged to her work, and after that she seldom left her bed.  She had no longer strength to coax up the phlegm, and a doctor brought in by Shovel’s mother warned her that her days were near an end.  Then she wrote her last letter to Thrums, Tommy and Elspeth standing by to pick up the pen when it fell from her feeble hand, and in the intervals she told them that she was Jean Myles.

“And if I die and Aaron hasna come,” she said, “you maun just gang to auld Petey and tell him wha you are.”

“But how can you be Jean Myles?” asked astounded Tommy.  “You ain’t a grand lady and—­”

His mother looked at Elspeth.  “No’ afore her,” she besought him; but before he set off to post the letter she said:  “Come canny into my bed the night, when Elspeth ’s sleeping, and syne I’ll tell you all there is to tell about Jean Myles.”

“Tell me now whether the letter is to Aaron Latta?”

“It’s for him,” she said, “but it’s no’ to him.  I’m feared he might burn it without opening it if he saw my write on the cover, so I’ve wrote it to a friend of his wha will read it to him.”

“And what’s inside, mother?” the boy begged, inquisitively.  “It must be queer things if they’ll bring Aaron Latta all the way from Thrums.”

“There’s but little in it, man,” she said, pressing her hand hard upon her chest.  “It’s no muckle mair than ’Auld Lang Syne, my dear, for Auld Lang Syne.’”

CHAPTER X

THE FAVORITE OF THE LADIES

That night the excited boy was wakened by a tap-tap, as of someone knocking for admittance, and stealing to his mother’s side, he cried, “Aaron Latta has come; hearken to him chapping at the door!”

It was only the man through the wall, but Mrs. Sandys took Tommy into bed with her, and while Elspeth slept, told him the story of her life.  She coughed feebly now, but the panting of the dying is a sound that no walls can cage, and the man continued to remonstrate at intervals.  Tommy never recalled his mother’s story without seeming, through the darkness in which it was told, to hear Elspeth’s peaceful breathing and the angry tap-tap on the wall.