“They are good words, sir.  I could not bear Him to think of me and my sins both at once.”

I could not help thinking of the words of Macbeth, “To know my deed, ’twere best not know myself.”

The old woman lay quiet after this, relieved in mind, though not in body, by the communication she had made with so much difficulty, and I hastened home to send some coals and other things, and then call upon Dr Duncan, lest he should not know that his patient was so much worse as I had found her.

From Dr Duncan’s I went to see old Samuel Weir, who likewise was ailing.  The bitter weather was telling chiefly upon the aged.  I found him in bed, under the old embroidery.  No one was in the room with him.  He greeted me with a withered smile, sweet and true, although no flash of white teeth broke forth to light up the welcome of the aged head.

“Are you not lonely, Mr Weir?”

“No, sir.  I don’t know as ever I was less lonely.  I’ve got my stick, you see, sir,” he said, pointing to a thorn stick which lay beside him.

“I do not quite understand you,” I returned, knowing that the old man’s gently humorous sayings always meant something.

“You see, sir, when I want anything, I’ve only got to knock on the floor, and up comes my son out of the shop.  And then again, when I knock at the door of the house up there, my Father opens it and looks out.  So I have both my son on earth and my Father in heaven, and what can an old man want more?”

“What, indeed, could any one want more?”

“It’s very strange,” the old man resumed after a pause, “but as I lie here, after I’ve had my tea, and it is almost dark, I begin to feel as if I was a child again.—­They say old age is a second childhood; but before I grew so old, I used to think that meant only that a man was helpless and silly again, as he used to be when he was a child:  I never thought it meant that a man felt like a child again, as light-hearted and untroubled as I do now.”

“Well, I suspect that is not what people do mean when they say so.  But I am very glad—­you don’t know how pleased it makes me to hear that you feel so.  I will hope to fare in the same way when my time comes.”

“Indeed, I hope you will, sir; for I am main and happy.  Just before you came in now, I had really forgotten that I was a toothless old man, and thought I was lying here waiting for my mother to come in and say good-night to me before I went to sleep.  Wasn’t that curious, when I never saw my mother, as I told you before, sir?”

“It was very curious.”

“But I have no end of fancies.  Only when I begin to think about it, I can always tell when they are fancies, and they never put me out.  There’s one I see often—­a man down on his knees at that cupboard nigh the floor there, searching and searching for somewhat.  And I wish he would just turn round his face once for a moment that I might see him.  I have a notion always it’s my own father.”