Kings & rulers > More leaves from the journal of a life in the Highlands from 1862 to 1882

-98
Widow Grant, 1869.
On Sunday, August 22, 1869, I went to see old
Mrs. Grant, whom I was grieved to see sitting in her
chair supported by pillows, and her poor feet raised
upon cushions, very much altered in her face, and, I
fear, dying of dropsy.
On August 26 I again saw her, and gave her a
shawl and pair of socks, and found the poor old soul
in bed, looking very weak and very ill, but bowing
her head and thanking me in her usual way. I took
her hand and held it.
On the 27th she died.
On the 28th I stopped at her cottage and went in
with Louise and Leopold. We found all so clean and
tidy, but all so silent. Mrs. Gordon, her daughter, was
there, having arrived just in time to spend the last
evening and night with her; and then she lifted the
sheet, and there the poor old woman, whom we had
known and seen from the first here these twenty-one
years, lay on a bier in her shroud, but with her usual
cap on, peaceful and little altered, her dark skin taking
away from the usual terrible pallor of death. She had
on the socks I gave her the day before yesterday. She
was in her eighty-ninth year.