ogether in that dark, dismal place, and often Grisell stayed so late
that she had to run up the glen, so as to get home before day dawned.
The difficulties she encountered in securing food enough for her father
without arousing the suspicion of the servants was always a subject for
jest, for, more often than not, the only possible means of getting the
food was by surreptitiously conveying it, during a meal, from her own
plate into her lap. Her amazing appetite was bound to be commented upon,
but never did she surprise her brothers and sisters more than on a day
when the chief dish at dinner was her father's favourite one--sheep's
head. While the younger members of the family were very busy over their
broth, Grisell conveyed to her lap the greater part of the head. Her
brother Sandy, afterwards Lord Marchmont, dispatched his plateful first,
looked up, and gave a shout of amazement.

"Mother!" he cried, "will ye look at Grisell! while we have been eating
our broth, she has eaten up the whole sheep's heid!"

"Sandy must have an extra share of the next sheep's heid," said the
laughing father when he heard the tale.

During the month that Sir Patrick Home lay hid in the vault, it was not
only by collecting food for him by day, and by taking it to him by
night, that his young daughter gave proof of her devotion. In a room of
which Grisell kept the key, on the ground floor at Redbraes Castle, she
and Jamie Winter worked in the small hours, making a hiding-place for
the fugitive. Underneath a bed which drew out they lifted up the boards,
and with their hands, scraped and burrowed in the earth to make a hole
large enough for a man to lie in. To prevent making a noise they used no
tools, and as they dug out the earth it was packed in a sheet, put on
Jamie's back, and carried, Grisell helping, out at the window into the
garden. Not a nail was left upon her fingers when the task was
completed, and a sorely unslept little maid she must have looked at the
end of a month's foraging by day and hard work by night, with that
nerve-tearing walk as a beginning to her nightly labours. The hole being
ready, Jamie Winter conveyed to it a large deep wooden box which he had
made at home, with air-holes in the lid, and furnished with mattress and
bedding, and this was fitted into the place made for it. It was then
Grisell's duty to examine it daily, and to keep the air-holes clean
picked, and when it had for some weeks stood trial of no water c