“Unless what?” asked the man, impatiently, but still the two boys only stared at each other.  “The Den’s no mous the night,” said Corp at last, in a low voice, and his unspoken fears spread to the womankind, so that Miss Ailie shuddered and Elspeth gripped Tommy with both hands and Gavinia whispered, “Let’s away hame, we can come back in the daylight.”

But McLean chafed and pressed upward, and next moment a girl’s voice was heard, crying:  “It is no business of yours; I won’t let you touch her.”

“Grizel!” exclaimed Tommy and his crew, simultaneously, and they had no more fear until they were inside the Lair.  What they saw had best be described very briefly.  A fire was burning in a corner of the Lair, and in front of it, partly covered with a sheet, lay the Painted Lady, dead.  Grizel stood beside the body guarding it, her hands clenched, her eyes very strange.  “You sha’n’t touch her!” she cried, passionately, and repeated it many times, as if she had lost the power to leave off, but Corp crept past her and raised the coverlet.

“She’s straikit!” he shouted.  “Did you do it yoursel’, Grizel?  God behears, she did it hersel’!”

A very long silence it seemed to be after that.

Miss Ailie would have taken the motherless girl to her arms, but first, at Corp’s discovery, she had drawn back in uncontrollable repulsion, and Grizel, about to go to her, saw it, and turned from her to Tommy.  Her eyes rested on him beseechingly, with a look he saw only once again in them until she was a woman, but his first thought was not for Grizel.  Elspeth was clinging to him, terrified and sobbing, and he cried to her, “Shut your een,” and then led her tenderly away.  He was always good to Elspeth.

* * * * *

There was no lack of sympathy with Grizel when the news spread through the town, and unshod men with their gallowses hanging down, and women buttoning as they ran, hurried to the Den.  But to all the questions put to her and to all the kindly offers made, as the body was carried to Double Dykes, she only rocked her arms, crying, “I don’t want anything to eat.  I shall stay all night beside her.  I am not frightened at my mamma.  I won’t tell you why she was in the Den.  I am not sure how long she has been dead.  Oh, what do these little things matter?”

The great thing was that her mamma should be buried in the cemetery, and not in unconsecrated ground with a stake through her as the boys had predicted, and it was only after she was promised this that Grizel told her little tale.  She had feared for a long time that her mamma was dying of consumption, but she told no one, because everybody was against her and her mamma.  Her mamma never knew that she was dying, and sometimes she used to get so much better that Grizel hoped she would live a long time, but that hope never lasted long.  The reason she sat so much with Ballingall was just to find out what