"I dinna believe't," said Hendry, but when he and I were alone he told me, "There's no a doubt she could mak it. Ye heard her say she had ta'en the shape? Ay, that shows she's rale set on a cloak." Had Jess known that Hendry had been saving up for months to buy her material for a cloak, she would not have let him do it. She could not know, however, for all the time he was scraping together his pence, he kept up a ring-ding-dang about her folly. Hendry gave Jess all the wages he weaved, except threepence weekly, most of which went in tobacco and snuff. The dulseman had perhaps a halfpenny from him in the fortnight. I noticed that for a long time Hendry neither smoked nor snuffed, and I knew that for years he had carried a shilling in his snuff-mull. The remainder of the money he must have made by extra work at his loom, by working harder, for he could scarcely have worked longer. It was one day shortly before Jamie's return to Thrums that Jess saw Hendry pass the house and go down the brae when he ought to have come in to his brose. She sat at the window watching for him, and by and by he reappeared, carrying a parcel. "Whaur on earth hae ye been?" she asked, "an' what's that you're carryin'?" "Did ye think it was an eleven an' a bit?" said Hendry. "No, I didna," answered Jess, indignantly. Then Hendry slowly undid the knots of the string with which the parcel was tied. He took off the brown paper. "There's yer cloth," he said, "an' here's one an' saxpence for the beads an' the buttons." While Jess still stared he followed me ben the house. "It's a terrible haver," he said, apologetically, "but she had set her heart on't." CHAPTER IX THE POWER OF BEAUTY One evening there was such a gathering at the pig-sty that Hendry and I could not get a board to lay our backs against. Circumstances had pushed Pete Elshioner into the place of honour that belonged by right of mental powers to Tammas Haggart, and Tammas was sitting rather sullenly on the bucket, boring a hole in the pig with his sarcastic eye. Pete was passing round a card, and in time it reached me. "With Mr. and Mrs. David Alexander's compliments," was printed on it, and Pete leered triumphantly at us as it went the round. "Weel, what think ye?" he asked, with a pretence at modesty. "Ou," said T'nowhead, looking at the others like one who asked a question, "ou, I think; ay, ay." The others seemed to agree with him, all but Tammas, who did not care to tie himself down to an opinion. "Ou ay," T'nowhead continued, more confidently, "it is so, deceededly." "Ye'll no ken," said Pete, chuckling, "what it means?" "Na," the farmer admitted, "na, I canna say I exac'ly ken that." "I ken, though," said Tammas, in his keen way. "Weel, then, what is't?" demanded Pete, who had never properly come under Tammas's spell. "I ken," said Tammas. "Oot wi't then."