CHAPTER XVI.
GRANNIE'S COTTAGE.
But she had not to pass many houses before she came to that of her grandfather's mother, an aged woman, I need not say, but in very tolerable health and strength nevertheless.

She sat at her spinning wheel, with her door wide open.

Suddenly, and, to her dulled sense, noiselessly, Aggie came staggering in with her burden.

She dropped him on the old woman's bed, and herself on the floor, her heart and lungs going wildly.
"I' the name o' a'!" cried her great-grandmother, stopping her wheel, breaking her thread, and letting the end twist madly up amongst the revolving iron teeth, emerging from the mist of their own speed, in which a moment before they had looked ethereal as the vibration-film of an insect's wings.
She rose with a haste marvellous for her years, and approaching, looked down on the prostrate form of the girl.
"It can never be my ain Aggie," she faltered, "to rush intil my quaiet hoose that gait, fling a man upo' my bed, an' fa' her len'th upo' my flure!" But Agnes was not yet able to reply.

She could only sign with her hand to the bed, which she did with such energy that her great-grandmother--GRANNIE, she called her, as did the whole of the village--turned at once thitherward.