ffed with rags. But it is the other window I turn to,
with a pain at my heart, and pride and fondness too, the square foot of
glass where Jess sat in her chair and looked down the brae.

[Illustration: The square foot of glass where Jess sat in her chair and
looked down the brae.]

Ah, that brae! The history of tragic little Thrums is sunk into it
like the stones it swallows in the winter. We have all found the brae
long and steep in the spring of life. Do you remember how the child
you once were sat at the foot of it and wondered if a new world began
at the top? It climbs from a shallow burn, and we used to sit on the
brig a long time before venturing to climb. As boys we ran up the
brae. As men and women, young and in our prime, we almost forgot that
it was there. But the autumn of life comes, and the brae grows
steeper; then the winter, and once again we are as the child pausing
apprehensively on the brig. Yet are we no longer the child; we look
now for no new world at the top, only for a little garden and a tiny
house, and a handloom in the house. It is only a garden of kail and
potatoes, but there may be a line of daisies, white and red, on each
side of the narrow footpath, and honeysuckle over the door. Life is
not always hard, even after backs grow bent, and we know that all braes
lead only to the grave.

This is Jess's window. For more than twenty years she had not been
able to go so far as the door, and only once while I knew her was she
ben in the room. With her husband, Hendry, or their only daughter,
Leeby, to lean upon, and her hand clutching her staff, she took twice a
day, when she was strong, the journey between her bed and the window
where stood her chair. She did not lie there looking at the sparrows
or at Leeby redding up the house, and I hardly ever heard her complain.
All the sewing was done by her; she often baked on a table pushed close
to the window, and by leaning forward she could stir the porridge.
Leeby was seldom off her feet, but I do not know that she did more than
Jess, who liked to tell me, when she had a moment to spare, that she
had a terrible lot to be thankful for.

To those who dwell in great cities Thrums is only a small place, but
what a clatter of life it has for me when I come to it from my
school-house in the glen. Had my lot been cast in a town I would no
doubt have sought country parts during my September holiday, but the
school-house is quiet even when the