here will be no last night. Amen."

It was a silent kitchen after that, though the lamp burned long in
Jess's window. By its meagre light you may take a final glance at the
little family; you will never see them together again.

CHAPTER XXI

JESS LEFT ALONE

There may be a few who care to know how the lives of Jess and Hendry
ended. Leeby died in the back-end of the year I have been speaking of,
and as I was snowed up in the school-house at the time, I heard the
news from Gavin Birse too late to attend her funeral. She got her
death on the commonty one day of sudden rain, when she had run out to
bring in her washing, for the terrible cold she woke with next morning
carried her off very quickly. Leeby did not blame Jamie for not coming
to her, nor did I, for I knew that even in the presence of death the
poor must drag their chains. He never got Hendry's letter with the
news, and we know now that he was already in the hands of her who
played the devil with his life. Before the spring came he had been
lost to Jess.

"Them 'at has got sae mony blessin's mair than the generality," Hendry
said to me one day, when Craigiebuckle had given me a lift into Thrums,
"has nae shame if they would pray aye for mair. The Lord has gi'en
this hoose sae muckle, 'at to pray for muir looks like no bein'
thankfu' for what we've got. Ay, but I canna help prayin' to Him 'at
in His great mercy he'll take Jess afore me. No 'at Leeby's gone, an'
Jamie never lets us hear frae him, I canna gulp doon the thocht o' Jess
bein' left alane."

This was a prayer that Hendry may be pardoned for having so often in
his heart, though God did not think fit to grant it. In Thrums, when a
weaver died, his womenfolk had to take his seat at the loom, and those
who, by reason of infirmities, could not do so, went to a place the
name of which, I thank God, I am not compelled to write in this
chapter. I could not, even at this day, have told any episodes in the
life of Jess had it ended in the poorhouse.

Hendry would probably have recovered from the fever had not this
terrible dread darkened his intellect when he was still prostrate. He
was lying in the kitchen when I saw him last in life, and his parting
words must be sadder to the reader than they were to me.

"Ay, richt ye are," he said, in a voice that had become a child's; "I
hae muckle, muckle, to be thankfu' for, an' no the least is 'at baith
me an' Jess has aye belonged to a bural