To only
two people in the house, and to one out of it, was the secret of Sir
Patrick Home's hiding-place known. With the help of a faithful friend
and retainer, Jamie Winter, the carpenter, Lady Home and her daughter
Grisell had one dark night carried bed and bedclothes to the
burying-place of the Homes, a vault under Polwarth Church, a mile from
Redbraes. A black walnut folding-bed, exactly underneath the pulpit from
which the minister of Polwarth preached every Sunday, was the fugitive's
resting-place at night, while for a month he saw no more daylight than
was able to reach him from a slit at one end of the vault. The ashes of
his ancestors were scarcely lively company, but Sir Patrick found "great
comfort and constant entertainment" by repeating to himself Buchanan's
Latin Version of the Psalms. Each night, too, the prisoner was cheered
by a visit from his daughter Grisell. Through an open glen by the
Swindon Burn, down what is called The Lady's Walk, Grisell nightly came
to the vault with her little store of provisions. She was an
imaginative, poetic little maid, and the whisper of the wind in the lime
trees that grew on either hand would make her shiver, and yet more
loudly would her heart thump when in the darkness she stumbled over the
graves in the kirkyard, and remembered all the tales she had ever heard
of bogles and of ghosts. That lonely walk in the night must always have
been full of terrors, yet Grisell's love for her father was so great
that she steadfastly braved them all. One fear only she had--that of the
soldiers. The wind moaning through the trees or rustling the long grass,
the sound of a rabbit or some other wild thing in the bracken, the
sudden bark of a dog,--all these made her sure that some spy had found
out her secret, and sent her running as fast as her little legs could
carry her to try to save her father from his captors. The first night
she went was the worst, for the minister kept dogs, and the manse was
near the church, and even her light footfall was sufficient to set every
one of them a-barking. But Lady Home sent for the minister next day, and
upon the pretence of one of them being mad, persuaded their owner to
hang them all. Grisell and her father had the same sunny nature, and
both dearly loved a joke, and each amusing little incident of the day
was saved up by the former to be told while the prisoner made a meal on
the food which she brought with her. Many a hearty laugh they had
t