doctors did to dying people to make them live a little longer, and she watched his straiking to be able to do it to her mamma when the time came.  She was sure none of the women would consent to straik her mamma.  On the previous night, she could not say at what hour, she had been awakened by a cold wind, and so she knew that the door was open.  She put out her hand in the darkness and found that her mamma was not beside her.  It had happened before, and she was not frightened.  She had hidden the key of the door that night and nailed down the window, but her mamma had found the key.  Grizel rose, lit the lamp, and, having dressed hurriedly, set off with wraps to the Den.  Her mamma was generally as sensible as anybody in Thrums, but sometimes she had shaking fits, and after them she thought it was the time of long ago.  Then she went to the Den to meet a man who had promised, she said, to be there, but he never came, and before daybreak Grizel could usually induce her to return home.  Latterly she had persuaded her mamma to wait for him in the old Lair, because it was less cold there, and she had got her to do this last night.  Her mamma did not seem very unwell, but she fell asleep, and she died sleeping, and then Grizel went back to Double Dykes for linen and straiked her.

Some say in Thrums that a spade was found in the Lair, but that is only the growth of later years.  Grizel had done all she could do, and through the long Saturday she sat by the side of the body, helpless and unable to cry.  She knew that it could not remain there much longer, but every time she rose to go and confess, fear of the indignities to which the body of her darling mamma might be subjected pulled her back.  The boys had spoken idly, but hunted Grizel, who knew so much less and so much more than any of them, believed it all.

It was she who had stood so near Gavinia in the ruined house.  She had only gone there to listen to human voices.  When she discovered from the talk of her friends that she had left a light burning at Double Dykes and the door open, fear of the suspicions this might give rise to had sent her to the house on the heels of the two boys, and it was she who had stolen past them in the mist to put out the light and lock the door.  Then she had returned to her mamma’s side.

The doctor was among the listeners, almost the only dry-eyed one, but he was not dry-eyed because he felt the artless story least.  Again and again he rose from his chair restlessly, and Grizel thought he scowled at her when he was really scowling at himself; as soon as she had finished he cleared the room brusquely of all intruders, and then he turned on her passionately.

“Think shame of yoursel’,” he thundered, “for keeping me in the dark,” and of course she took his words literally, though their full meaning was, “I shall scorn myself from this hour for not having won the poor child’s confidence.”

Oh, he was a hard man, Grizel thought, the hardest of them all.  But she was used to standing up to hard men, and she answered, defiantly:  “I did mean to tell you, that day you sent me with the bottle to Ballingall, I was waiting at the surgery door to tell you, but you were cruel, you said I was a thief, and then how could I tell you?”