“It’s the pair o’ them,” Tommy said to Elspeth at the first opportunity, “that sometimes comes here at nights and kindles the fire and warms themsels at the gloze.  And the last time they came they forgot the shawl.”

“I dinna like to think the Painted Lady has been up here, Tommy.”

“But she has.  You ken how, when she has a daft fit, she wanders the Den trysting the man that never comes.  Has she no been seen at all hours o’ the night, Grizel following a wee bit ahint, like as if to take tent o her?”

“They say that, and that Grizel canna get her to go home till the daft fit has passed.”

“Well, she has that kechering hoast and spit now, and so Grizel brings her up here out o’ the blasts.”

“But how could she be got to come here, if she winna go home?”

“Because frae here she can watch for the man.”

Elspeth shuddered.  “Do you think she’s here often, Tommy?” she asked.

“Just when she has a daft fit on, and they say she’s wise sax days in seven.”

This made the Jacobite meetings eerie events for Elspeth, but Tommy liked them the better; and what were they not to Grizel, who ran to them with passionate fondness every Saturday night?  Sometimes she even outdistanced her haunting dreads, for she knew that her mother did not think herself seriously ill; and had not the three gentlemen made light of that curious cough?  So there were nights when the lair saw Grizel go riotous with glee, laughing, dancing, and shouting over-much, like one trying to make up for a lost childhood.  But it was also noticed that when the time came to leave the Den she was very loath, and kissed her hands to the places where she had been happiest, saying, wistfully, and with pretty gestures that were foreign to Thrums, “Good-night, dear Cuttle Well!  Good-by, sweet, sweet Lair!” as if she knew it could not last.  These weekly risings in the Den were most real to Tommy, but it was Grizel who loved them best.

CHAPTER XXIV

A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR

Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of the Silent Pool.  She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be, and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.

It was a fit night for dark deeds.

“Methinks she cometh to her damn!”

The speaker was a masked man who had followed her—­he was sniffing ecstatically—­since she left the city walls.

She seemed to possess a charmed life.  He would have had her in Shovel Gorge, but just then Ronny-On’s Jean and Peter Scrymgeour turned the corner.

Suddenly Gavinia felt an exquisite thrill:  a man was pursuing her.  She slipped the paper-bag out of sight, holding it dexterously against her side with her arm, so that the gravy should not spurt out, and ran.  Lights flashed, a kingly voice cried “Now!” and immediately a petticoat was flung over her head. (The Lady Griselda looked thin that evening.)