The smith read Jean Myles’s last letter, with a face of growing gravity.  “Dear Double Dykes,” it said, “I send you these few scrapes to say I am dying, and you and Aaron Latta was seldom sindry, so I charge you to go to him and say to him ’Aaron Latta, it’s all lies Jean Myles wrote to Thrums about her grandeur, and her man died mony year back, and it was the only kindness he ever did her, and if she doesna die quick, her and her starving bairns will be flung out into the streets.’  If that doesna move him, say, ’Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at Inverquharity and the cushie doos?’ likewise, ’Aaron Latta, do you mind yon day at the Kaims of Airlie?’ likewise, ’Aaron Latta, do you mind that Jean Myles was ower heavy for you to lift?  Oh, Aaron, you could lift me so pitiful easy now.’  And syne says you solemnly three times, ’Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land; Aaron Latta, Jean Myles is lying dying all alone in a foreign land.’  And if he’s sweer to come, just say, ’Oh, Aaron, man, you micht; oh, Aaron, oh, Aaron, are you coming?’”

The smith had often denounced this woman, but he never said a word against her again.  He stood long reflecting, and then took the letter to Blinder and read it to him.

“She doesna say, ‘Oh, Aaron Latta, do you mind the Cuttle Well?’” was the blind man’s first comment.

“She was thinking about it,” said Auchterlonie.

“Ay, and he’s thinking about it,” said Blinder, “night and day, night and day.  What a town there’ll be about that letter, smith!”

“There will.  But I’m to take it to Aaron afore the news spreads.  He’ll never gang to London though.”

“I think he will, smith.”

“I ken him well.”

“Maybe I ken him better.”

“You canna see the ugly mark it left on his brow.”

“I can see the uglier marks it has left in his breast.”

“Well, I’ll take the letter; I can do no more.”

When the smith opened the door of Aaron’s house he let out a draught of hot air that was glad to be gone from the warper’s restless home.  The usual hallan, or passage, divided the but from the ben, and in the ben a great revolving thing, the warping-mill, half filled the room.  Between it and a pile of webs that obscured the light a little silent man was sitting on a box turning a handle.  His shoulders were almost as high as his ears, as if he had been caught forever in a storm, and though he was barely five and thirty, he had the tattered, dishonored beard of black and white that comes to none till the glory of life has gone.

Suddenly the smith appeared round the webs.  “Aaron,” he said, awkwardly, “do you mind Jean Myles?”

The warper did not for a moment take his eyes off a contrivance with pirns in it that was climbing up and down the whirring mill.

“She’s dead,” he answered.