Erskine at last began to
suspect that the handkerchiefs were stolen by some of the old women who
lined the pulpit stairs. So both to baulk and detect the culprit she
sewed a corner of the handkerchief to one of the pockets of his coat
tails. Half way up the pulpit stairs the good doctor felt a tug,
whereupon he turned round to the old woman whose was the guilty hand, to
say, with great gentleness and simplicity:--
"No' the day, honest woman, no' the day. Mrs. Erskine has sewed it in!"
A BRAVE WIFE.
In 1872 a storm overtook a Boston ship on the banks of Newfoundland. The
captain--Captain Wilson--had his shoulder-blade broken by the fall of a
mast, and the first mate and part of the crew were at the same time
disabled.
No sooner, however, had the captain been carried to his cabin than his
wife, a woman of one-and-twenty, hurried on deck, told the men to work
with a will, and she would take them into port. The wreckage was
cleared, the pumps manned, and the gale was weathered. Then a jury-mast
was rigged, the ship put before the wind, and in twenty-one days she
reached St.
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