"I promised Elspie," she whispered, "that I'd never, never give him to
another."
"Ay," said Donald, as he kissed her. "He's your bairn, my Katie. Ye'll
be content wi' me, Katie?"
"Yes, Donald, if I make you content," she replied; and a look of
heavenly peace spread over her face.
The next morning Katie went alone to Elspie's grave. It seemed to her
that only there could she venture to look her new future in the face. As
she knelt by the low mound, her tears falling fast, she murmured,--
"Eh, my bonny Elspie, ye'd the best o' his love. But it's me that'll be
doin' for him till I die, an' that's better than a' the love."
Dandy Steve.
Everything in this world is relative, and nothing more so than the
significance of the same word in different localities. If Dandy Steve
had walked Broadway in the same clothes which he habitually wore in the
Adirondack wilderness, not only would nobody have called him a dandy,
but every one would have smiled sarcastically at the suggestion of that
epithet's being applied to him. Nevertheless, "Dandy Steve" was the name
by which he was familiarly known all through the Saranac region; and
judging by the wilderness standard, the adjective was not undeserved.
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