[Illustration:  Locking-up the cupboards]

She was a little woman, with clear-cut features, and brown hair drawn backward under a cap of lace very stiffly starched.  Her tight fitting dress of blue taffeta was open in front, and looped up behind in order to show an elaborately quilted petticoat of light-blue camblet.  Her white wool stockings were clocked with blue, her high-heeled shoes cut very low, and clasped with small silver buckles.  From her trim cap to her trig shoes, she was a pleasant and comfortable picture of a happy, domestic woman; smiling, peaceful, and easy to live with.

When the last duty was finished, she let her bunch of keys fall with a satisfactory “all done” jingle, that made her Joris look at her with a smile.  “That is so,” she said in answer to it.  “A woman is glad when she gets all under lock and key for a few hours.  Servants are not made without fingers; and, I can tell thee, all the thieves are not yet hung.”

“That needs no proving, Lysbet.  But where, then, is Joanna and the little one?  And Bram should be home ere this.  He has stayed out late more than once lately, and it vexes me.  Thou art his mother, speak to him.”

“Bram is good; do not make his bridle too short.  Katherine troubles me more than Bram.  She is quiet and thinks much; and when I say, ’What art thou thinking of?’ she answers always, ‘Nothing, mother.’  That is not right.  When a girl says, ‘Nothing, mother,’ there is something—­perhaps, indeed, somebody—­on her mind.”

“Katherine is nothing but a child.  Who would talk love to a girl who has not yet taken her first communion?  What you think is nonsense, Lysbet;” but he looked annoyed, and the comfort of his pipe was gone.  He put it down, and walked to a side-door, where he stood a little while, watching the road with a fretful anxiety.

“Why don’t the children come, then?  It is nearly dark, and the dew falls; and the river mist I like not for them.”

“For my part, I am not uneasy, Joris.  They were to drink a dish of tea with Madam Semple, and Bram promised to go for them.  And, see, they are coming; but Bram is not with them, only the elder.  Now, what can be the matter?”

“For every thing, there are more reasons than one; if there is a bad reason, Elder Semple will be sure to croak about it.  I could wish that just now he had not come.”

“But then he is here, and the welcome must be given to a caller on the threshold.  You know that, Joris.”

“I will not break a good custom.”

Elder Alexander Semple was a great man in his sphere.  He had a reputation for both riches and godliness, and was scarcely more respected in the market-place than he was in the Middle Kirk.  And there was an old tie between the Semples and the Van Heemskirks,—­a tie going back to the days when the Scotch Covenanters and the Netherland Confessors clasped hands as brothers in their “churches under the cross.”  Then one of the Semples had fled for life from Scotland to Holland, and been sheltered in the house of a Van Heemskirk; and from generation to generation the friendship had been continued.  So there was much real kindness and very little ceremony between the families; and the elder met his friend Joris with a grumble about having to act as “convoy” for two lasses, when the river mist made the duty so unpleasant.