'To keep a corpse out of its grave!' retorted the old lady, almost
fiercely, only she was too old and weak to be fierce. 'Why should you
keep a soul that's longing to depart and go to its own people,
lingering on in the coffin? What better than a coffin is this withered
body? The child is old enough to understand me. Leave him with me for
half an hour, and I shall trouble you no longer. I shall at least wait
my end in peace. But I think I should die before the morning.'

Ere grannie had finished this sentence, I had shrunk from her again and
retreated behind my uncle.

'There!' she went on, 'you make my own child fear me. Don't be
frightened, Willie dear; your old mother is not a wild beast; she loves
you dearly. Only my grand-children are so undutiful! They will not let
my own son come near me.'

How I recall this I do not know, for I could not have understood it at
the time. The fact is that during the last few years I have found
pictures of the past returning upon me in the most vivid and
unaccountable manner, so much so as almost to alarm me. Things I had
utterly forgotten--or so far at least that when they return, they must
appear only as vivid imaginations, were it not for a certain conviction
of fact which accompanies them--are constantly dawning out of the past.
Can it be that the decay of the observant faculties allows the memory
to revive and gather force? But I must refrain, for my business is to
narrate, not to speculate.

My uncle took me by the hand, and turned to leave the room. I cast one
look at grannie as he led me away. She had thrown her head back on her
chair, and her eyes were closed; but her face looked offended, almost