ndow in Thrums'

There may be a few who care to know how the lives of Jess and Hendry
ended. Leeby died in the back end of the year I have been speaking of,
and as I was snowed up in the school-house at the time, I heard the news
from Gavin Birse too late to attend her funeral. She got her death on
the commonty one day of sudden rain, when she had run out to bring in
her washing, for the terrible cold she woke with next morning carried
her off very quickly. Leeby did not blame Jamie for not coming to her,
nor did I, for I knew that even in the presence of death the poor must
drag their chains. He never got Hendry's letter with the news, and we
know now that he was already in the hands of her who played the devil
with his life. Before the spring came he had been lost to Jess.

"Them 'at has got sae mony blessin's mair than the generality," Hendry
said to me one day, when Craigiebuckle had given me a lift into Thrums,
"has nae shame if they would pray aye for mair. The Lord has gi'en this
hoose sae muckle, 'at to pray for mair looks like no bein' thankfu' for
what we've got. Ay, but I canna help prayin' to Him 'at in His great
mercy he'll tak Jess afore me. Noo 'at Leeby's gone, an' Jamie never
lets us hear frae him, I canna gulp doon the thocht o' Jess bein'
left alane."

This was a prayer that Hendry may be pardoned for having so often in his
heart, though God did not think fit to grant it. In Thrums, when a
weaver died, his women-folk had to take his seat at the loom, and those
who, by reason of infirmities, could not do so, went to a place, the
name of which, I thank God, I am not compelled to write in this chapter.
I could not, even at this day, have told any episode in the life of Jess
had it ended in the poor house.

Hendry would probably have recovered from the fever had not this
terrible dread darkened his intellect when he was still prostrate. He
was lying in the kitchen when I saw him last in life, and his parting
words must be sadder to the reader than they were to me.

"Ay, richt ye are," he said, in a voice that had become a child's; "I
hae muckle, muckle to be thankfu' for, an' no the least is 'at baith me
an' Jess has aye belonged to a bural society. We hae nae cause to be
anxious aboot a' thing bein' dune respectable aince we're gone. It was
Jess 'at insisted on oor joinin': a' the wisest things I ever did I was
put up to by her."

I parted from Hendry, cheered by the doctor's report, but the old we