The present case had been one of life and death.
She found no further occasion to visit Mrs Forbes before Kate and Alec
were both gone.
CHAPTER LI.
On a sleepy summer afternoon, just when the sunshine begins to turn
yellow, Annie was sitting with Tibbie on the grass in front of her
little cottage, whose door looked up the river. The cottage stood on a
small rocky eminence at the foot of the bridge. Underneath the approach
to it from the bridge, the dyer's mill-race ran by a passage cut in the
rock, leading to the third arch of the bridge built over the Glamour.
Towards the river, the rock went down steep to the little meadow. It
was a triangular piece of smooth grass growing on the old bed of the
river, which for many years had been leaving this side, and wearing
away the opposite bank. It lay between the river, the dyer's race, and
the bridge, one of the stone piers of which rose from it. The grass
which grew upon it was short, thick, and delicate. On the opposite side
of the river lay a field for bleaching the linen, which was the chief
manufacture of that country. Hence it enjoyed the privilege of immunity
from the ploughshare. None of its daisies ever met the fate of Burn's
"Wee, modest, crimson-tippit flower.
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