aver
died a few days afterward. His end was mournful, yet I can recall it now
as the not unworthy close of a good man's life. One night poor worn Jess
had been helped ben into the room, Tibbie Birse having undertaken to sit
up with Hendry.

Jess slept for the first time for many days, and as the night was dying
Tibbie fell asleep too. Hendry had been better than usual, lying
quietly, Tibbie said, and the fever was gone. About three o'clock Tibbie
woke and rose to mend the fire. Then she saw that Hendry was not in
his bed.

Tibbie went ben the house in her stocking soles, but Jess heard her.

"What is't, Tibbie?" she asked, anxiously.

"Ou, it's no naething," Tibbie said; "he's lyin' rale quiet."

Then she went up to the attic. Hendry was not in the house.

She opened the door gently and stole out. It was not snowing, but there
had been a heavy fall two days before, and the night was windy. A
tearing gale had blown the upper part of the brae clear, and from
T'nowhead's fields the snow was rising like smoke. Tibbie ran to the
farm and woke up T'nowhead.

For an hour they looked in vain for Hendry. At last some one asked who
was working in Elshioner's shop all night. This was the long
earthen-floored room in which Hendry's loom stood with three others.

"It'll be Sanders Whamond likely," T'nowhead said, and the other men
nodded.

But it happened that T'nowhead's Bell, who had flung on a wrapper, and
hastened across to sit with Jess, heard of the light in
Elshioner's shop.

"It's Hendry," she cried; and then every one moved toward the workshop.

The light at the diminutive, darn-covered window was pale and dim, but
Bell, who was at the house first, could make the most of a
cruizey's glimmer.

"It's him," she said; and then, with swelling throat, she ran back to
Jess.

The door of the workshop was wide open, held against the wall by the
wind. T'nowhead and the others went in. The cruizey stood on the little
window. Hendry's back was to the door, and he was leaning forward on the
silent loom. He had been dead for some time, but his fellow-workers saw
that he must have weaved for nearly an hour.

So it came about that for the last few months of her pilgrimage Jess was
left alone. Yet I may not say that she was alone. Jamie, who should have
been with her, was undergoing his own ordeal far away; where, we did not
now even know. But though the poorhouse stands in Thrums, where all may
see it, the neighbors did