; but this I know,
that the grandparents of most of these boys and girls were once young
with me. If I see the sons and daughters of my friends grown old, I
also see the grandchildren spinning the peerie and hunkering at
I-dree-I-dree--I-droppit-it--as we did so long ago. The world remains
as young as ever. The lovers that met on the commonty in the gloaming
are gone, but there are other lovers to take their place, and still the
commonty is here. The sun had sunk on a fine day in June, early in the
century, when Hendry and Jess, newly married, he in a rich moleskin
waistcoat, she in a white net cap, walked to the house on the brae that
was to be their home. So Jess has told me. Here again has been just
such a day, and somewhere in Thrums there may be just such a couple,
setting out for their home behind a horse with white ears instead of
walking, but with the same hopes and fears, and the same love light in
their eyes. The world does not age. The hearse passes over the brae
and up the straight burying-ground road, but still there is a cry for
the christening robe.

Jess's window was a beacon by night to travellers in the dark, and it
will be so in the future when there are none to remember Jess. There
are many such windows still, with loving faces behind them. From them
we watch for the friends and relatives who are coming back, and some,
alas! watch in vain. Not every one returns who takes the elbow of the
brae bravely, or waves his handkerchief to those who watch from the
window with wet eyes, and some return too late. To Jess, at her window
always when she was not in bed, things happy and mournful and terrible
came into view. At this window she sat for twenty years or more
looking at the world as through a telescope; and here an awful ordeal
was gone through after her sweet untarnished soul had been given back
to God.

CHAPTER II

ON THE TRACK OF THE MINISTER

On the afternoon of the Saturday that carted me and my two boxes to
Thrums, I was ben in the room playing Hendry at the dambrod. I had one
of the room chairs, but Leeby brought a chair from the kitchen for her
father. Our door stood open, and as Hendry often pondered for two
minutes with his hand on a "man," I could have joined in the gossip
that was going on but the house.

"Ay, weel, then, Leeby," said Jess, suddenly, "I'll warrant the
minister 'll no be preachin' the morn."

This took Leeby to the window.

"Yea, yea," she said