“Tell me about the Painted Lady,” Tommy said to her.  “Is it true she’s a witch?” But Mrs. Sandys had never heard of any woman so called:  the Painted Lady must have gone to Thrums after her time.

“There ain’t no witches now,” said Elspeth tremulously; Shovel’s mother had told her so.

“Not in London,” replied Tommy, with contempt; and this is all that was said of the Painted Lady then.  It is the first mention of her in these pages.

The people Mrs. Sandys wanted to hear of chiefly were Aaron Latta and Jean Myles, and soon Tommy brought news of them, but at the same time he had heard of the Den, and he said first: 

“Oh, mother, I thought as you had told me about all the beauty places in Thrums, and you ain’t never told me about the Den.”

His mother heaved a quick breath.  “It’s the only place I hinna telled you o’,” she said.

“Had you forget, it mother?”

Forget the Den!  Ah, no, Tommy, your mother had not forgotten the Den.

“And, listen, Elspeth, in the Den there’s a bonny spring of water called the Cuttle Well.  Had you forgot the Cuttle Well, mother?”

No, no; when Jean Myles forgot the names of her children she would still remember the Cuttle Well.  Regardless now of the whispering between Tommy and Elspeth, she sat long over the fire, and it is not difficult to fathom her thoughts.  They were of the Den and the Cuttle Well.

Into the life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage.  A girl gives him the jag, and it brings out the perspiration.  Of the issue elsewhere of this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect is to make the callant’s body take a right angle to his legs, for he has been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded.  By and by, however, he is at his work—­among the turnip-shoots, say—­guffawing and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy meditation, and there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the back-end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the ribs.  Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out he only puts the women’s dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle Well.  This well has the reputation of being the place where it is most easily said.

The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone’s throw you may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise from the bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the heavens before they are on a level with Nether Drumley’s farmland.  In shape it is almost a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the maid.  If she be with you, the Den is so large that you must rest here and there; if you are after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well, which was the trysting-place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his boots; if you are of those self-conscious ones who look behind to see whether jeering blades are following, you may crouch and wriggle your way onward and not be with her in half an hour.