"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.