quality of the man is unalterable in his love and reverence for his master!"

Then he went back to Edinburgh again, to work harder than any day-labourer. Then Lady Scott died. He hastened back to Abbotsford.

"She died at nine in the morning," he writes, "after being very ill for two days; easy at last. I arrived here late last night. Anne is worn out, and had hysterics on my arrival. Her broken accents were like those of a child; but in the gentlest voice of submission. Poor mamma !—never return again-gone for ever-a better place!' Then, when she came to herself, she spoke with sense, feeling, and strength of mind, till her weakness returned. It would have been inexpressibly moving to me as a stranger-what, then, as a father and a husband?"

Doubtless these griefs were deeply felt by Tom Purdie and Peter Mathieson. But Tom himself was nearer than any one knew to the land

"Where the wicked cease from troubling,

And the weary are at rest."

About three years after the commencement of Sir Walter's misfortunes, Tom, now upwards of sixty, but apparently in the full possession of health and vigour, leaned his head on the table one evening, and fell asleep. This was nothing uncommon in a hard-working man, and his family pursued their usual employments around him for several hours, without taking any notice. But from that sleep he never awoke in this world. At supper-time they tried to rouse him, and found life quite extinct.

"I have lost," wrote Sir Walter to a friend, "my. old and faithful servant, and am so much shocked that I really wish to be quit of the country and safe in town. I have this day laid him in the grave."

He was buried close to Melrose Abbey, and Sir Walter erected a stone over his grave, with the following inscription. On one side

IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE

OF

THE FAITHFUL AND ATTACHED SERVICES

OF

TWENTY-TWO YEARS,

AND IN SORROW

FOR THE LOSS OF A HUMBLE BUT SINCERE FRIEND,
THIS STONE WAS ERECTED

BY

SIR WALTER SCOTT, BART., OF ABBOTSFORD.

On the other

HERE LIES THE BODY

OF

THOMAS PURDIE,

WOOD-FORESTER

AT ABBOTSFORD,
WHO DIED OCTOBER 29TH, 1829,

AGED SIXTY-TWO YEARS.

"Thou hast been faithful over a few things,
I will make thee ruler over many things."

Matt. xxv., 21.

ELIZABETH MOSSE.

MISS MITFORD has left so pretty a description of her faithful old servant, Mrs. Mosse, that I cannot do better than give it in her own pleasing words slightly abridged.

"I do not know," says she, "whether I have ever hinted that I was, in my younger days, somewhat of a spoiled child. The person who, next to my father and mother, chiefly contributed to this, was an old female domestic, Mrs. Elizabeth Mosse, who, at the time of her death, had lived nearly sixty years in our house and that of my grandfather. She was a member of the family, a humble friend-happy they who have such a friend!—and lived as she liked, upstairs or down, considered, consulted, and beloved by the whole household.

66

Mossy (for by that fondling nursery name she loved to be called) had never been married, so that the family of her master and mistress had no rival in her heart. In her appearance she was highly respectable. She must have been tall when young, for, even when bent with age, she was above the middle height. She walked with feebleness and difficulty, from the attacks of gout, which even her temperance and abstinence could not ward off. Out of doors she seldom ventured, unless on some sunny afternoon I could tempt her into the open air; and then, once round the garden, or to the lawn gate and back again, was the utmost extent of her walk, propped by a very handsome walking-stick (once the property of a duchess), as tall as herself, with

a hooked ivory handle joined to the cane by a rim of gold. She must have been very handsome; indeed, she was so still, as far as delicate and regular features, a pale brown complexion, dark eyes still retaining the intelligence and animation of youth, and an expression perfectly gentle and feminine could make her so.

"Her dress stood as invariably at one point of fashion as the hand of an unwound clock stands at one hour of the day. It consisted (to begin from the feet and describe upwards), of black shoes of shining stuff, with very pointed toes, high heels, and a peak up the instep, showing to advantage her delicately white cotton stockings, and peeping from beneath petticoats so numerous as to give the appearance of a hoop. Her outer petticoat, which was always quilted, varied according to the season, from simple stuff to fine white dimity, or even silk; for, as the wardrobes of my grandfather's three wives had fallen to her lot, few gentlewomen of the last century could boast of a greater variety. Over the quilted petticoat came an open gown, whose long waist reached to the end of her stiff stays, and whose very full skirt, about six inches longer than the petticoat, would have formed a very inconvenient little train if permitted to hang down, but was always looped up so as to form behind a sort of bunchy festoon. The sleeves came down just below the elbow, and were finished by a narrow white ruffle, meeting her neat mittens. On her neck she wore a snow-white muslin kerchief, pinned over the gown in front, and confined by an apron also of muslin; and over all a handsome silk shawl, pinned back, so as to show the snowy kerchief. If she ever betrayed a sympton of old-maidishness, it was about her caps. They consisted of a fine, plain, clear-starched caul, sticking up rather high and peaked in front, plaited on a Scotch gauze headpiece (I remember there used to be exactly six plaits on each side); and, on the other side of the headpiece, a border,

consisting of a strip of fine muslin, edged with narrow lace, clear-starched and crimped, plaited on with great precision.

"I dearly loved to crimp Mossy's frills, and she, with her usual indulgence, frequently used to let me-keeping, however, a pretty close eye on her muslins and laces while I was passing them between the ribbed wooden board and the little roller. The strips did occasionally get a rent, and sometimes my fingers were well pinched; then she would threaten that I should never crimp her muslins again,—a never which seldom lasted beyond the next cap-washing. The headpiece was then concealed by a satin ribbon, fastened in a peculiar bow, something between a bow and a puffing, behind, while the front was adorned by an equally peculiar small knot, of which the two bows were pinned down flat, and the two ends left sticking up, cut into scallops. From an early age, I had bought Mossy's ribbons for her; and, indeed, at all fairs, or whenever I received a present, or entered a shop, this was the first and pleasantest purchase I could think of; so that the dear woman used to complain that Miss Mary bought her so many ribbons that they spoiled in keeping. Our tastes did not quite agree as to colours. White, we acknowledged, was the only wear for Sundays and holidays; but then she loved plain white, and I preferred figured patterns and pearl edges. If Mossy had an aversion to anything it was to a pearl edge. With regard to colours, too, we had our little differences of opinion. Both agreed as to the propriety of grave colours; but then we did not quite agree as to what was grave. She thought my greens were too green, my blues were too blue, and my crimsons too red. She had a fondness for brown, which I disliked as much as she disliked a pearl edge; indeed, I dislike it to this hour-it is such an exceedingly cross and frumpish-looking colour! Show me a brown flower, if you can! No! I never could persuade my