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 society.  We hae nae cause to be anxious aboot a’ thing bein’ dune respectable aince we’re gone.  It was Jess ‘at insisted on oor joinin’:  a’ the wisest things I ever did I was put up to by her.”

I parted from Hendry, cheered by the doctor’s report, but the old weaver 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.