Towns > Helensburgh > 1875 - Battrum's guide and directory to Helensburgh and neighbourhood

66 HELENSBURGH GUIDE.
wandered homewards, but by the time she reached the bum-
foot of Auchenfro the stream was a raging torrent, which
she dared not, in the darkness, cross. To return to Keppoch
was vain, and no friendly roof was nigh to shelter her. Such
poor cover as the bushes afforded was her only protection dur-
ing the long, weary darkness, and storm of the night. But the
wrath of the mistress of Keppoch, and the penance of Jane
Moore were, as many untoward accidents of our lives are,
the turning point of a brighter chapter. In her future
career we find her in London. She was there when the
great plague broke out in 1665 — a spectator and sufferer in
that divine purifying of the moral and sanitary condition of
the metropolis. She was attacked by the disease early, and
was one of the few infected who recovered from the fell
malady — a widow and friendless. The benevolence of the
woman, who helped the beggar at Keppoch, who was not ex-
hausted by her own trials, but exalted and purified ; she
devoted her energies to nursing the sick and tending the
dying around her while the pestilence lasted. Many had
none left to claim their effects when they died, and bestowed
their gold and treasures on Jane Moore. Wealth flowed in
upon her, but only to be applied to charities; and amongst
others she remembered the home of her youth. Before her
death she appointed a sum to be invested for two purposes —
vis., the erection of a bridge at the burnfoot of Auchenfro,
where she had been arrested in her flight by stress of vf eather,
and for relief of the poor of Cardross, resident between the
clachan of Lyleston and the burn of Auchenfro. By con-
fining the benefit of her bequest within these limits Kep-
poch was excluded. The lands of Mollandhu were after,
wards purchased by this bequest ; but, as in late years, the
poor entitled to receive the benefit were exceedingly few in