With head bent to the level of the dykes, though it was almost a mirk night beneath the trees, and one arm outstretched before him straight as an elvint, Tommy faced this fearful passage, sometimes stopping to touch cold iron, but on the whole hanging back little, for Elspeth was in peril.  Soon he reached the paling that was not needed to keep boys out of the Painted Lady’s garden, one of the prettiest and best-tended flower-gardens in Thrums, and crawling through where some spars had fallen, he approached the door as noiseless as an Indian brave after scalps.  There he crouched, with a heart that was going like a shuttle on a loom, and listened for Elspeth’s voice.

On a night he had come nearly as far as this before, but in the tail of big fellows with a turnip lantern.  Into the wood-work of the east window they had thrust a pin, to which a button was tied, and the button was also attached to a long string.  They hunkered afar off and pulled this string, and then the button tapped the death-rap on the window, and the sport was successful, for the Painted Lady screamed.  But suddenly the door opened and they were put to flight by the fierce barking of a dog.  One said that the brute nabbed him in the leg, another saw the vive tongue of it, a third played lick at it with the lantern; this was before they discovered that the dog had been Grizel imitating one, brave Grizel, always ready to protect her mother, and never allowed to cherish the childish fears that were hers by birthright.

Tommy could not hear a sound from within, but he had startling proof that Elspeth was near.  His foot struck against something at the door, and, stooping, he saw that it was a little bundle of the treasures she valued most.  So she had indeed come to stay with the Painted Lady if Grizel proved merciless!  Oh, what a black he had been!

Though originally a farm-house, the cottage was no larger than Aaron’s, and of its two front windows only one showed a light, and that through a blind.  Tommy sidled round the house in the hope that the small east window would be more hospitable, and just as he saw that it was blindless something that had been crouching rose between him and it.

“Let go!” he cried, feeling the Painted Lady’s talons in his neck.

“Tommy!” was the answer.

“It’s you, Elspeth?”

“Is it you, Tommy?”

“Of course.  Whisht!”

“But say it is.”

“It is.”

“Oh, Tommy, I’m so fleid!”

He drew her farther from the window and told her it had all been a wicked lie, and she was so glad that she forgot to chide him, but he denounced himself, and he was better than Elspeth even at that.  However, when he learned what had brought her here he dried his eyes and skulked to the door again and brought back her belongings, and then she wanted him to come away at once.  But the window fascinated him; he knew he should never find courage to come here again,