of "lousing"
from their looms, removing the chains, and there is something woeful in
that. But pity poor Nanny Coutts, who took her chains to bed with her.

Nanny was buried a month or more before I came to the house on the
brae, and even in Thrums the dead are seldom remembered for so long a
time as that. But it was only after Sanders was left alone that we
learned what a woman she had been, and how basely we had wronged her.
She was an angel, Sanders went about whining when he had no longer a
woman to ill-treat. He had this sentimental way with him, but it lost
its effect after we knew the man.

"A deevil couldna hae deserved waur treatment," Tammas Haggart said to
him; "gang oot o' my sicht, man."

"I'll blame mysel till I die," Jess said, with tears in her eyes, "for
no understandin' puir Nanny better."

So Nanny got sympathy at last, but not until her forgiving soul had
left her tortured body. There was many a kindly heart in Thrums that
would have gone out to her in her lifetime, but we could not have loved
her without upbraiding him, and she would not buy sympathy at the
price. What a little story it is, and how few words are required to
tell it! He was a bad husband to her, and she kept it secret. That is
Nanny's life summed up. It is all that was left behind when her coffin
went down the brae. Did she love him to the end, or was she only doing
what she thought her duty? It is not for me even to guess. A good
woman who suffers is altogether beyond man's reckoning. To such
heights of self-sacrifice we cannot rise. It crushes us; it ought to
crush us on to our knees. For us who saw Nanny, infirm, shrunken, and
so weary, yet a type of the noblest womanhood, suffering for years, and
misunderstood her to the end, what expiation can there be? I do not
want to storm at the man who made her life so burdensome. Too many
years have passed for that, nor would Nanny take it kindly if I called
her man names.

Sanders worked little after his marriage. He had a sore back, he said,
which became a torture if he leant forward at his loom. What truth
there was in this I cannot say, but not every weaver in Thrums could
"louse" when his back grew sore. Nanny went to the loom in his place,
filling as well as weaving, and he walked about, dressed better than
the common, and with cheerful words for those who had time to listen.
Nanny got no approval even for doing his work as well as her own, for
they were und