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must stay at home with George, the youngest, who was thought too delicate to be abroad in foul weather, whether he had a cough or no. Thus my sister was left with only old sobersides—me—for company.
    Betty soon tired of walking in the gloomy shade of the kirkyard. “Would you like to see the inside of the church, Patrick? It isn’t grand at all compared to the kirk in Edinburgh, but there’s a pretty colored window. I like to see the sun making rainbows through the glass. I thought I might try to sketch them. Will you come?”
    I shook my head. On such a gray day as this, I thought little of her chances of seeing rainbows in sun shafts. “Go along, Betty,” I said. “I am happy out here, parsing the words on these headstones.”
    She looked doubtful. “All right, but if it begins to rain, you must promise me that you will come inside. You mustn’t take a chill.”
    I assured her that, as I had no wish to catch my death in a kirkyard, I would come in the moment a drop of rain touched my cheek. With that she was satisfied, and she left me at last in peace. I strolled among the rows of headstones, more preoccupied with my own thoughts than with concern for the dear departed. Once I thought I saw a stoat slink down past a stone mausoleum in the distance. Hunting church mice, I thought, or perhaps young rabbits too fresh from the nest to know the dangers. Bit early for a stoat to be out hunting, though, surely, even if the day was dreary.
    *   *   *
    I had wandered alone for a wee while after Betty departed, reading the epitaphs, and wondering what my own might say in the fullness of time. The place made thoughts of death inevitable, even for a merry lass like my sister, much more so for her dour younger brother.
    A soft voice startled me out of my reverie.
    â€œThere are better tombstones in Strachur.”
    I spun round, alarm giving way to annoyance at being thus rudely accosted. “Who the de’il?”
    In the shadow of the great tree stood a lass who looked no older than I. Great green eyes peered out at me from a whey face beneath a gray hooded cloak, the color of the rain clouds. Beneath the cloak she wore a dark homespun dress, and I glimpsed wisps of damp red hair curling at her temples. She had knelt down before a headstone, and was tracing its lettering with one bony finger.
    The wind bit into me, and I shivered as I peered over her shoulder, attempting to make out the faint inscription, half worn away by weathering. The only word on the stone that yet remained discernible was “Ferguson.”
    â€œThat is my name,” I said aloud.
    The pale girl nodded. “Aye. ’Tis. There be Fergusons buried at Strachur as well.”
    â€œAre you connected to the family?” I asked her.
    Solemnly she nodded again. She did not look up at me when she said it, for she was intent upon her tracery of the lettering.
    I thought, though, by the clarty look of her homespun clothing and her rough speech that she was not of the gentry. A servant girl perhaps, or a nursemaid, brought hence with some family, working on a neighboring farm. “I am Patrick Ferguson of Pitfour,” I said, drawing myself up to not much height. “My father is a lawyer in Edinburgh.”
    I suppose I expected her to be covered with confusion upon hearing whom she had disturbed with her ill-mannered prating, but she only shrugged, as if she had known that already and it did not trouble her overmuch. She seemed intent upon studying the stones. I wondered if she could read them or if her scrutiny was only for show.
    â€œAnd who are you?”
    â€œNobody,” she said. I heard no bitterness in her voice. So simply was it said that it nettled me, as if to mock my own pride in my rank and lineage.
    â€œI intend to be somebody one day,” I said. “Do you live near here?”
    Solemnly she nodded. “Quite near indeed.”
    I waited, but she