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.
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