e fire and warms
themsels at the gloze. And the last time they came they forgot the
shawl."

"I dinna like to think the Painted Lady has been up here, Tommy."

"But she has. You ken how, when she has a daft fit, she wanders the Den
trysting the man that never comes. Has she no been seen at all hours o'
the night, Grizel following a wee bit ahint, like as if to take tent o
her?"

"They say that, and that Grizel canna get her to go home till the daft
fit has passed."

"Well, she has that kechering hoast and spit now, and so Grizel brings
her up here out o' the blasts."

"But how could she be got to come here, if she winna go home?"

"Because frae here she can watch for the man."

Elspeth shuddered. "Do you think she's here often, Tommy?" she asked.

"Just when she has a daft fit on, and they say she's wise sax days in
seven."

This made the Jacobite meetings eerie events for Elspeth, but Tommy
liked them the better; and what were they not to Grizel, who ran to them
with passionate fondness every Saturday night? Sometimes she even
outdistanced her haunting dreads, for she knew that her mother did not
think herself seriously ill; and had not the three gentlemen made light
of that curious cough? So there were nights when the lair saw Grizel go
riotous with glee, laughing, dancing, and shouting over-much, like one
trying to make up for a lost childhood. But it was also noticed that
when the time came to leave the Den she was very loath, and kissed her
hands to the places where she had been happiest, saying, wistfully, and
with pretty gestures that were foreign to Thrums, "Good-night, dear
Cuttle Well! Good-by, sweet, sweet Lair!" as if she knew it could not
last. These weekly risings in the Den were most real to Tommy, but it
was Grizel who loved them best.

CHAPTER XXIV

A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR

Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of
the Silent Pool. She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be,
and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling
bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.

It was a fit night for dark deeds.

"Methinks she cometh to her damn!"

The speaker was a masked man who had followed her--he was sniffing
ecstatically--since she left the city walls.

She seemed to possess a charmed life. He would have had her in Shovel
Gorge, but just then Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrym