the water. But at night! To test your nerves you walked
alone between the double dykes, and the popular practice was to start
off whistling, which keeps up the courage. At the point where you turned
to run back (the Painted Lady after you, or so you thought) you dropped
a marked stone, which told next day how far you had ventured. Corp
Shiach long held the championship, and his stone was ostentatiously
fixed in one of the dykes with lime. Tommy had suffered at his hands for
saying that Shovel's mark was thirty yards farther on.

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