IT is ill enough to have to die in Glenaora at any season, but to get the word for travelling from it on yon trip in the spring of the year is hard indeed. The gug-gug will halloo in your ears to bid you bide a wee and see the red of the heather creep on Tom-an-dearc; the soft and sap-scented winds will come in at the open door, and you will mind, maybe, of a day long-off and lost when you pulled the copper leaves of the bursting oak and tossed them among a girl's hair. Oh! the long days and the strong days! They will come back to you like the curious bit in a tune that is vexatious and sweet, and not for words or a set thought. You will think of the lambs on the slopes, of the birds tearing through the thousand ways in the woods, of the magic hollows in below the thick-sown pines, of the burns, deep at the bottom of eas and corri, spilling like gold on a stair. And then, it may be, Solomon Carrier's cart goes by to the town, the first time since the drifts went off the high road; you hear the clatter of the iron shoes, and your mind will go with him to the throng street where the folks are so kind and so free.

But to turn your back for the last at that time on Lecknamban must come sorest of all. For Lecknamban has seven sheilings hidden in its hills, where the grass is long and juicy, and five burns that are aye on the giggle like girls at a wedding, and the Aora daunders down in front of the knowe, full of fish for the Duke alone, but bonny for earl or caird.

It was in this same glen, in this same Lecknamban, in the spring of a year, a woman was at her end. She was a woman up in years but not old, a black Bana-Mhuileach who had seen pleasant things and trials like all who come to this queer market-place; but now when the time was come to take the long road with no convoy, only the good times were in her recollection. And though Glenaora was not her calf-country (for she came but a year ago to bide with a friend), she was swear't to turn heel on a place so cosy.

She sat propped up in a box-bed, on pillows, with her face to the open door, and the friendly airs of the country-side came in to stir her hair. With them came scents of the red earth and the grass, birch-tree and myrtle, from the moor. But more than all they brought her who was at her end a keen craving for one more summer of the grand world. Strong in her make and dour at the giving-in, she kept talking of the world's affairs and foolishness to the folk about her who were waiting the Almighty's will and the coming of the stretching-board. Her fingers picked without a stop at the woolly bits of the blankets, and her eyes were on as much of the knowe below the house as she could see out at the open door. It was yellow at the foot with flowers, and here and there was a spot of blue from the cuckoo-brogue.

“Women, women,” she said with short breaths, “I'm thinking aye, when I see the flowers, of a man that came from these parts to Duart. He sang 'Mo Nighean Dubh' in a style was never heard before in our place, and he once brought me the scented cuckoo-brogues from Aora.”

Said the goodwife, “Aoirig, poor woman, it is not the hour for ancient old sgeuls; be thinking of a canny going.”

“Going! it was aye going with me,” said the woman in the bed. “And it was aye going when things were at their best and I was the keener for them.”

“It's the way of God, my dear, ochanie!” said one of the two Tullich sisters, putting a little salt in a plate for-the coming business.

“O God! it's the hard way, indeed. And I'm not so old as you by two or three clippings.”

“Peace, Aoirig, heart; you had your own merry times, and that's as much as most of us have claim to.”

“Merry times! merry times!” said Aoirig, humped among the bedding, her mind wandering.

Curls of the peat-reek coiled from the floor among the cabars or through the hole in the roof; a lamb ran by the door bleating for its mother, and the whistling of an uiseag high over the grass where his nest lay ran out to a thin thread of song. The sound of it troubled the dying woman, and she asked her friends to shut the door. Now and again Maisie would put a wet cloth to her lips and dry the death-sweat from her face. The goodwife was throng among chests and presses looking for sheets, shrouds, and dead-caps.

“It's a pity,” said she, “you brought no grave-clothes with you from Mull, my dear.”

“Are you grudging me yours?” asked Aoirig, coming round from wandering.

“No, nor grudging; fine ye ken it, cousin. But I know ye have them, and it's a pity you should be dressed in another's spinning than your own.”

“Ay, they're yonder sure enough: clean and ready. And there's more than that beside them. The linen I should have brought to a man's home.”

“You and your man's home! Is it Duart, my dear, among your own folk, or down to Inishail, you would have us take you?” Aoirig coughed till the red froth was at her lips.

“Duart is homely and Inishail is holy, sure enough, but I would have it Kilmalieu. They tell me it's a fine kirkyard; but I never had the luck to see it.”

“It's well enough, I'll not deny, and it would not be so far to take you. Our folk have a space of their own among the MacVicars, below the parson.”

The woman in the bed signed for a sip of water, and they had it fast at her lips.

“Could you be putting me near the Macnicols?” she asked in a weakening voice. “The one I speak of was a Macnicol.”

“Ay, ay,” said the goodwife; “they were aye gallant among the girls.”

“Gallant he was,” said the one among the blankets. “I see him now. The best man ever I saw. It was at a wedding——”

The woman's breast racked and the spume spattered over the home-spun blankets.

Maisie was heating a death-shift at the peat-fire, turning it over in her hands, letting the dry airs into every seam and corner.

Looking at her preparation, the dying woman caught back her breath to ask why such trouble with a dead-shift.

“Ye would not have it on damp and cold,” said Maisie, settling the business. “I doubt it'll be long in the sleeves, woman, for the goodwife has a lengthy reach.”

“It was at a marriage in Glenurchy,” said Aoirig in a haver, the pillows slipping down behind her back. “Yonder he is. A slim straight lad. Ronnal, O Ronnal my hero! What a dancer! not his match in Mull. Aye so——”

A foot could be heard on the road, and one of the two sisters ran out, for she knew whom it would be. They had sent word to the town by Solomon in the morning for Macnicol the wright to come up with the stretching-board, thinking there was but an hour more for poor Macnicol's were the footsteps, and there he was with the stretching-board under his arm—a good piece of larch rubbed smooth by sheet and shroud, and a little hollow worn at the head. He was a fat man, rolling a bit to one side on a short leg, gross and flabby at the jowl, and thick-lipped; but he might have been a swanky lad in his day, and there was a bit of good-humour in the corner of his eye, where you will never see it when one has been born with the uneasy mind. He was humming to himself as he came up the brae a Badenoch ditty they have in these parts on the winter nights, gossiping round the fire. Whom he was going to stretch he had no notion, except that it was a woman and a stranger to the glen.

The sister took him round to the corner of the house and in at the byre door, and told him to wait. “It'll not be long now,” she said.

“Then she's still to the fore,” said the wright. “I might have waited on the paymaster's dram at Three Bridges if I had ken't. Women are aye thrawn about dying. They'll put it off to the last, when a man would be glad to be taking the road. Who is she, poor woman?”

“A cousin-german of Nanny's,” said the sister, putting a bottle before him, and whipping out for some bannock and cheese. He sat down on a shearing-stool, facing the door, half open, between the byre he was in and the kitchen where Aoirig was at the dying. The stretching-board leaned against the wall outside.

“Aye so gentle, so kind,” the woman in the bed was saying in her last dover. “He kissed me first on a day like this. And the blue flowers from Aora?”

In the byre the wright was preeing the drink and paying little heed to food. It was the good warm stuff they brew on the side of Lochow, the heart of the very heart of the barley-fields, with the taste of gall and peat, and he mellowed with every quaich, and took to the soft lilting of Niall Ban's song:—

Ben the house the goodwife was saying the prayers for the dying woman the woman should have said for herself while she had the wind for it, but Aoirig harped on her love-tale. She was going fast, and the sisters, putting their hands to her feet, could feel that they were cold as the rocks. Maisie's arms were round her, and she seemed to have the notion that here was the grip of death, for she pushed her back.

“I am not so old—so old. There is Seana, my neighbour at Duart—long past the fourscore and still spinning—I am not so old—God of grace—so old—and the flowers——”

A grey shiver went over her face; her breast heaved and fell in; her voice stopped with a gluck in the throat.

The women stirred round fast in the kitchen. Out on the clay floor the two sisters pushed the table and laid a sheet on it, the goodwife put aside the pillows and let Aoirig's head fall back on the bed. Maisie put her hand to the clock and stopped it.

“Open the door, open the door!” cried the goodwife, turning round in a hurry and seeing the door still shut.

One of the sisters put a finger below the sneck and did as she was told, to let out the dead one's ghost.

Outside, taking the air, to get the stir of the strong waters out of his head, was the wright.

He knew what the opening of the door meant, and he lifted his board and went in with it under his arm. A wafting of the spring smells came in at his back, and he stood with his bonnet in his hand.

“So this is the end o't?” he said in a soft way, stamping out the fire on the floor.

He had but said it when Eurig sat up with a start in the bed, and the women cried out. She opened her eyes and looked at the man, with his fat face, his round back, and ill-made clothes, and the death-deal under his oxter, and then she fell back on the bed with her face stiffening.

“Here's the board for ye,” said the wright, his face spotted white and his eyes staring. “I'll go out a bit and take a look about me. I once knew a woman who was terribly like you, and she came from Mull.”