Had she stood erect it would not have touched the floor.

This was the staff that Jess shook so joyfully at her boy the forenoon in May when he ran out to his death.

Joey, however, was associated in Jess's memory with her staff in less painful ways.

When she spoke of him she took the dwarf of a staff in her hands and looked at it softly.
"It's hard to me," she would say, "to believe 'at twa an' twenty years hae come and gone since the nicht Joey hod (hid) my staff.

Ay, but Hendry was straucht in thae days by what he is noo, an' Jamie wasna born.