Mr.Saunderson himself seemed at times to have some vague idea of her painful services, and once mentioned her name to Carmichael in feeling terms.

There had been some delay in providing for the bodily wants of the visitor after his eight miles' walk from Drumtochty, and it seemed likely that he would be obliged to take his meal standing for want of a chair.
"While Mrs.Pitillo lived, I have a strong impression, almost amounting to certainty, that the domestic arrangements of the manse were better ordered; she had the episcopal faculty in quite a conspicuous degree, and was, I have often thought, a woman of sound judgment.
"We were not able at all times to see eye to eye, as she had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books and papers, and to arrange them after an artificial fashion.

This she called tidying, and, in its most extreme form, cleaning." [Illustration: "She had an unfortunate tendency to meddle with my books."] "With all her excellencies, there was also in her what I have noticed in most women, a certain flavour of guile, and on one occasion, when I was making a brief journey through Holland and France in search of comely editions of the fathers, she had the books carried out to the garden and dusted.

It was the space of two years before I regained mastery of my library again, and unto this day I cannot lay my hands on the service book of King Henry VIII., which I had in the second edition, to say nothing of an original edition of Rutherford's _Lex Rex_.
"It does not become me, however, to reflect on the efforts of that worthy matron, for she was by nature a good woman, and if any one could be saved by good works, her place is assured.

I was with her before she died, and her last words to me were, 'Tell Jean tae dust yir bukes aince in the sax months, and for ony sake keep ae chair for sittin' on.' It was not the testimony one would have desired in the circumstances, but yet, Mr.Carmichael, I have often thought that there was a spirit of.