He had made no mistake about the warper, however.  Aaron was gone, and ten days elapsed before he was again seen in Thrums.

CHAPTER XII

A CHILD’S TRAGEDY

No one in Thrums ever got a word from Aaron Latta about how he spent those ten days, and Tommy and Elspeth, whom he brought back with him, also tried to be reticent, but some of the women were too clever for them.  Jean and Aaron did not meet again.  Her first intimation that he had come she got from Shovel, who said that a little high-shouldered man in black had been inquiring if she was dead, and was now walking up and down the street, like one waiting.  She sent her children out to him, but he would not come up.  He had answered Tommy roughly, but when Elspeth slipped her hand into his, he let it stay there, and he instructed her to tell Jean Myles that he would bury her in the Thrums cemetery and bring up her bairns.  Jean managed once to go to the window and look down at him, and by and by he looked up and saw her.  They looked long at each other, and then he turned away his head and began to walk up and down again.

At Tilliedrum the coffin was put into a hearse and thus conveyed to Monypenny, Aaron and the two children sitting on the box-seat.  Someone said, “Jean Myles boasted that when she came back to Thrums it would be in her carriage and pair, and she has kept her word,” and the saying is still preserved in that Bible for week-days of which all little places have their unwritten copy, one of the wisest of books, but nearly every text in it has cost a life.

About a score of men put on their blacks and followed the hearse from the warper’s house to the grave.  Elspeth wanted to accompany Tommy, but Aaron held her back, saying, quietly, “In this part, it’s only men that go to burials, so you and me maun bide at name,” and then she cried, no one understood why, except Tommy.  It was because he would see Thrums first; but he whispered to her, “I promise to keep my eyes shut and no look once,” and so faithfully did he keep his promise on the whole that the smith held him by the hand most of the way, under the impression that he was blind.

But he had opened his eyes at the grave, when a cord was put into his hand, and then he wept passionately, and on his way back to Monypenny, whether his eyes were open or shut, what he saw was his mother being shut up in a black hole and trying for ever and ever to get out.  He ran to Elspeth for comfort, but in the meantime she had learned from Blinder’s niece that graves are dark and cold, and so he found her sobbing even like himself.  Tommy could never bear to see Elspeth crying, and he revealed his true self in his way of drying her tears.

“It will be so cold in that hole,” she sobbed.

“No,” he said, “it’s warm.”

“It will be dark.”

“No, it’s clear.”

“She would like to get out.”