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‘indecency’, most of them agreed that he was interfering and inquisitive and not seldom ‘tipsy’. One young lady who refrained from coming forward could have gone even further; for in the spring of 1852, he being then rising eighty by his present reckoning, he had been suddenly smitten by his conscience and made a voluntary confession to the Moderator and elders of his kirk that he had been guilty of the sin of fornication and had an illegitimate child by one Janet Dunsmore, a domestic servant. He was rebuked and admonished and then all was forgiven; for never had the witnesses seen so striking and edifying a display of remorse.
    Miss Dunsmore did not come forward at Jessie’s trial or at the subsequent enquiry, but Mary M’Kinnon, foster-sister of Jess, said again that Jess was tormented by the old man, that he was an old devil; the doorbell couldn’t ring without his poking his head out of his bedroom window, or coming downstairs, to find out what it was about and he was for ever hanging about her kitchen; her heart was broken with him, and when she’d completed this six months’ service she’d give in her notice. And to Elizabeth Halliday, at that time a fellow-servant with her at the house in Dunoon, she had said—as much as three years ago—that he was ‘a nasty body or a dirty body’; she had been left alone with him recently at Dunoon, and Elizabeth got the impression, though it was not openly stated, that he had been behaving indecently. She was surprised when Jess, having left to open her shop and the venture having failed, went back into the service of the Fleming family.
    By the summer of 1862, however, Jess had had enough of it. She was seriously thinking—perhaps because her child was there?—of emigrating to Australia.
    Jessie had not been round to Sandyford Place for a couple of weeks. The fact of the matter was that she had pawned her cloak. She was, as ever, weighed down by money troubles, and £4 19 s in arrears with her rent. She paid 5 s a week, quarterly, for her ‘house’ and had to be constantly dunned for it—though dunned may be too hard a word, for the agents obviously liked her andwere sorry for her and made things as easy as they could: a kindly fabrication had even been built up allowing her to believe that she had still two months’ grace before she must settle. But the rent was not all; and now even her cloak was in pawn and, though the weather was fine, it was still early in July and, delicate as she was, she could not go out at night without it. She wanted to leave her visit till late: if she went too early the old man would still be up and they couldn’t talk freely before him—last time she and her husband had gone there together, though Jess had taken them into her own room, he followed them there and resolutely sat them out. She would leave it till ten, by which time he should have gone off to bed. But it meant that she must have her cloak. She got hold of Mary Adams, who was in the house that morning doing some washing for the lodger, Mrs Campbell, and asked her to go to the pawn for her. She gave her a dressing glass and told her to ask for six shillings on it, ‘lift’ the cloak out of pawn and come back with the change. So off went Mrs Adams and returned triumphantly with the cloak and one and fourpence ha’penny left over.
    Mrs M’Lachlan, thanking her, explained that she wanted the cloak to go round and see Jess, by whom Mary Adams understood Jess M’Pherson, whom she herself knew very well. Nor was she surprised when Mrs M’Lachlan explained that she was going late to try to avoid the old man. And by the way, she added, would Mary Adams drop in on her way home at the locksmith’s at the foot of Carrick Street and ask him to call round for the check key to the front door—it would have to be repaired, the door wouldn’t open from the outside without it, and