At last their old mother fell sick, and told her sons she was dying, as in truth she was.

The elder son said to her, 'Mother, you'll soon be with my father; no doubt you'll have much to tell him; but dinna forget this, mother, mind ye, tell him _the house is freed_.

He'll be glad to hear that.'" A similar feeling is manifest in the following conversation, which, I am assured, is authentic:--At Hawick the people used to wear wooden clogs, which make a _clanking_ noise on the pavement.

A dying old woman had some friends by her bedside, who said to her, "Weel, Jenny, ye are gaun to heeven, an' gin you should see oor folk, you can tell them that we're a' weel." To which Jenny replied, "Weel, gin I should see them I'se tell them, but you manna expect that I am to gang clank clanking through heevan looking for your folk." But of all stories of this class, I think the following deathbed conversation between a Scottish husband and wife is about the richest specimen of a dry Scottish matter-of-fact view of a very serious question:--An old shoemaker in Glasgow was sitting by the bedside of his wife, who was dying.

She took him by the hand.