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 not think only of themselves.

Than Tammas Haggart there can scarcely have been a poorer man, but Tammas was the first to come forward with offer of help.  To the day of Jess’s death he did not once fail to carry her water to her in the morning, and the luxuriously living men of Thrums in these present days of pumps at every corner, can hardly realize what that meant.  Often there were lines of people at the well by three o’clock in the morning, and each had to wait his turn.  Tammas filled his own pitcher and pan, and then had to take his place at the end of the line with Jess’s pitcher and pan, to wait his turn again.  His own house was in the Tenements, far from the brae in winter time, but he always said to Jess it was “naething ava.”

Every Saturday old Robbie Angus sent a bag of sticks and shavings from the sawmill by his little son Rob, who was afterward to become a man for speaking about at nights.  Of all the friends that Jess and Hendry had, T’nowhead was the ablest to help, and the sweetest memory I have of the farmer and his wife is the delicate way they offered it.  You who read will see Jess wince at the offer of charity.  But the poor have fine feelings beneath the grime, as you will discover if you care to look for them; and when Jess said she would bake if anyone would buy, you would wonder to hear how many kindly folk came to her door for scones.

She had the house to herself at nights, but Tibbie Birse was with her early in the morning, and other neighbors dropped in.  Not for long did she have to wait the summons to the better home.

“Na,” she said to the minister, who has told me that he was a better man from knowing her, “my thocht is no nane set on the vanities o’ the world noo.  I kenna hoo I could ever hae haen sic an ambeetion to hae thae stuff-bottomed chairs.”

I have tried to keep away from Jamie, whom the neighbors sometimes upbraided in her presence.  It is of him you who read would like to hear, and I cannot pretend that Jess did not sit at her window looking for him.

“Even when she was bakin’,” Tibbie told me, “she aye had an eye on the brae.  If Jamie had come at ony time when it was licht she would hae seen ’im as sune as he turned the corner.”

“If he ever comes back, the sacket” (rascal), T’nowhead said to Jess, “we’ll show ’im the door gey quick.”

Jess just looked, and all the women knew how she would take Jamie to her arms.

We did not know of the London woman then, and Jess never knew of her.  Jamie’s mother never for an hour allowed that he had become anything but the loving laddie of his youth.