the pulpit juist as he said he would do. I seen him
gien me the look he spoke o'--ay, he looks my wy first, an' I ken it's
him. Naebody sees him but me, but I see him gien me the look he
promised. He's so terrible near me, an' him dead, 'at wen my time
comes I'll be rale willin' to go. I dinna say that to Jamie, because
he all trembles; but I'm auld noo, an' I'm no nane loth to gang."

Jess's staff probably had a history before it became hers, for, as
known to me, it was always old and black. If we studied them
sufficiently we might discover that staves age perceptibly just as the
hair turns grey. At the risk of being thought fanciful I dare to say
that in inanimate objects, as in ourselves, there is honourable and
shameful old age, and that to me Jess's staff was a symbol of the good,
the true. It rested against her in the window, and she was so helpless
without it when on her feet, that to those who saw much of her it was
part of herself. The staff was very short, nearly a foot having been
cut, as I think she once told me herself, from the original, of which
to make a porridge thieval (or stick with which to stir porridge), and
in moving Jess leant heavily on it. Had she stood erect it would not
have touched the floor. This was the staff that Jess shook so joyfully
at her boy the forenoon in May when he ran out to his death. Joey,
however, was associated in Jess's memory with her staff in less painful
ways. When she spoke of him she took the dwarf of a staff in her hands
and looked at it softly.

"It's hard to me," she would say, "to believe 'at twa an' twenty years
hae come and gone since the nicht Joey hod (hid) my staff. Ay, but
Hendry was straucht in thae days by what he is noo, an' Jamie wasna
born. Twa' an' twenty years come the back end o' the year, an' it
wasna thocht 'at I could live through the winter. 'Ye'll no last mair
than anither month, Jess,' was what my sister Bell said, when she came
to see me, and yet here I am aye sittin' at my window, an' Bell's been
i' the kirkyard this dozen years.

"Leeby was saxteen month younger than Joey, an' mair quiet like. Her
heart was juist set on helpin' aboot the hoose, an' though she was but
fower year auld she could kindle the fire an' red up (clean up) the
room. Leeby's been my savin' ever since she was fower year auld. Ay,
but it was Joey 'at hung aboot me maist, an' he took notice 'at I wasna
gaen out as I used to do. Since sune after my mar