She would not accept it as an excuse for herself now.  What she saw with scorn was that she was always suspecting the worst of Tommy.  Very probably there was not a thought in the book that had been put in with his old complacent waggle of the head.  “Oh, am I not a wonder!” he used to cry, when he did anything big; but that was no reason why she should suspect him of being conceited still.  Very probably he really and truly felt what he wrote—­felt it not only at the time, but also next morning.  In his boyhood Mr. Cathro had christened him Sentimental Tommy; but he was a man now, and surely the sentimentalities in which he had dressed himself were flung aside for ever, like old suits of clothes.  So Grizel decided eagerly, and she was on the point of telling him how proud she was of his book, when Tommy, who had thus far behaved so well, of a sudden went to pieces.

He and Grizel were together.  Elspeth was a little in front of them, walking with a gentleman who still wondered what they meant by saying that they had heard his baby cry.  “For he’s no here,” Corp had said earnestly to them all; “though I’m awid for the time to come when I’ll be able to bring him to the Den and let him see the Jacobites’ Lair.”

There was nothing startling in this remark, so far as Grizel could discover; but she saw that it had an immediate and incomprehensible effect on Tommy.  First, he blundered in his talk as if he was thinking deeply of something else; then his face shone as it had been wont to light up in his boyhood when he was suddenly enraptured with himself; and lastly, down his cheek and into his beard there stole a tear of agony.  Obviously, Tommy was in deep woe for somebody or something.

It was a chance for a true lady to show that womanly sympathy of which such exquisite things are said in the first work of T. Sandys:  but it merely infuriated Grizel, who knew that Tommy did not feel nearly so deeply as she this return to the Den, and, therefore, what was he in such distress about?  It was silly sentiment of some sort, she was sure of that.  In the old days she would have asked him imperiously to tell her what was the matter with him; but she must not do that now—­she dare not even rock her indignant arms; she could only walk silently by his side, longing fervently to shake him.

He had quite forgotten her presence; indeed, she was not really there, for a number of years had passed, and he was Corp Shiach, walking the Den alone.  To-morrow he was to bring his boy to show him the old Lair and other fondly remembered spots; to-night he must revisit them alone.  So he set out blithely, but, to his bewilderment, he could not find the Lair.  It had not been a tiny hollow where muddy water gathered; he remembered an impregnable fortress full of men whose armour rattled as they came and went; so this could not be the Lair.  He had taken the wrong way to it, for the way was across a lagoon, up a deep-flowing river, then by horse till the rocky ledge terrified