ay not always interfere with his
story, and if I had altered the end of "A Window in Thrums" I think I
should never have had any more respect for myself. It is a sadder book
to me than it can ever be to anyone else. I see Jess at her window
looking for the son who never came back as no other can see her, and I
knew that unless I brought him back in time the book would be a pain to
me all my days, but the thing had to be done.

I think there are soft-hearted readers here and there who will be glad
to know that there never was any Jess. There is a little house still
standing at the top of the brae which can be identified as her house, I
chose it for her though I was never in it myself, but it is only the
places in my books about Thrums that may be identified. The men and
women, with indeed some very subsidiary exceptions, who now and again
cross the square, are entirely imaginary, and Jess is of them. But
anything in her that was rare or beautiful she had from my mother; the
imaginary woman came to me as I looked into the eyes of the real one.
And as it is the love of mother and son that has written everything of
mine that is of any worth, it was natural that the awful horror of the
untrue son should dog my thoughts and call upon me to paint the
picture. That, I believe now, though I had no idea of it at the time,
is how "A Window in Thrums" came to be written, less by me than by an
impulse from behind. And so it wrote itself, very quickly. I have
read that I rewrote it eight times, but it was written once only,
nearly every chapter, I think, at a sitting.

A WINDOW IN THRUMS

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE ON THE BRAE

On the bump of green round which the brae twists, at the top of the
brae, and within cry of T'nowhead Farm, still stands a one-storey
house, whose whitewashed walls, streaked with the discoloration that
rain leaves, look yellow when the snow comes. In the old days the
stiff ascent left Thrums behind, and where is now the making of a
suburb was only a poor row of dwellings and a manse, with Hendry's cot
to watch the brae. The house stood bare, without a shrub, in a garden
whose paling did not go all the way round, the potato pit being only
kept out of the road, that here sets off southward, by a broken dyke of
stones and earth. On each side of the slate-coloured door was a window
of knotted glass. Ropes were flung over the thatch to keep the roof on
in wind.

Into this humble abode I would