) If there are holes in the garments of thy loyal followers,
I will come and mend them, and have a needle and thread in my pocket.
(Tommy, there is another button off your shirt! Have you got the
button?")

"(It's down my breeks.) So be it, proud girl, come!"

It was Grizel who made masks out of tin rags, picked up where tinkers
had passed the night, and musical instruments out of broken reeds that
smelled of caddis and Jacobite head-gear out of weaver's night-caps; and
she kept the lair so clean and tidy as to raise a fear that intruders
might mistake its character. Elspeth had to mind the pot, which Aaron
Latta never missed, and Corp was supposed to light the fire by striking
sparks from his knife, a trick which Tommy considered so easy that he
refused to show how it was done. Many strange sauces were boiled in that
pot, a sort of potato-turnip pudding often coming out even when not
expected, but there was an occasional rabbit that had been bowled over
by Corp's unerring hand, and once Tommy shot a--a haunch of venison,
having first, with Corp's help, howked it out of Ronny-On's swine, then
suspended head downward, and open like a book at the page of contents,
steaming, dripping, a tub beneath, boys with bladders in the distance.
When they had supped they gathered round the fire, Grizel knitting a
shawl for they knew whom, but the name was never mentioned, and Tommy
told the story of his life at the French court, and how he fought in the
'45 and afterward hid in caves, and so did he shudder, as he described
the cold of his bracken beds, and so glowed his face, for it was all
real to him, that Grizel let the wool drop on her knee, and Corp
whispered to Elspeth, "Dinna be fleid for him; I'se uphaud he found a
wy." Those quiet evenings were not the least pleasant spent in the Den.

But sometimes they were interrupted by a fierce endeavor to carry the
lair, when boys from Cathro's climbed to it up each other's backs, the
rope, of course, having been pulled into safety at the first sound, and
then that end of the Den rang with shouts, and deeds of valor on both
sides were as common as pine needles, and once Tommy and Corp were only
saved from captors who had them down, by Grizel rushing into the midst
of things with two flaring torches, and another time bold Birkie, most
daring of the storming party, was seized with two others and made to
walk the plank. The plank had been part of a gate, and was suspended
over the bank