for a missing woman without rousing them. Why had she gone off
to London without telling anyone? Had Corp concocted that story about
her father to blind them? Had she really been as far as London? Have
you seen Sandys?--he's back. It's said Corp telegraphed to him to
Switzerland that she had disappeared. It's weel kent Corp telegraphed.
Sandys came at once. He is in a terrible state. Look how white he is
aneath that lamp. What garred them telegraph for him? How is it he is
in sic a state? Fond o' her, was he? Yea, yea, even after she gave him
the go-by. Then it's a weary Sabbath for him, if half they say be
true. What do they say? They say she was queer when she came back.
Corp doesna say that. Maybe no; but Francie Crabb does. He says he met
her on the station brae and spoke to her, and she said never a word,
but put up her hands like as if she feared he was to strike her. The
Dundas lassies saw her frae their window, and her hands were at her
ears as if she was trying to drown the sound o' something. Do you mind
o' her mother? They say she was looking terrible like her mother.

It was only between the station and Gavinia's house that she had been
seen, but they searched far afield. Tommy, accompanied by Corp, even
sought for her in the Den. Do you remember the long, lonely path
between two ragged little dykes that led from the Den to the house of
the Painted Lady? It was there that Grizel had lived with her mamma.
The two men went down that path, which is oppressed with trees.
Elsewhere the night was not dark, but, as they had known so well when
they were boys, it is always dark after evenfall in the Double Dykes.
That is the legacy of the Painted Lady. Presently they saw the
house--scarcely the house, but a lighted window. Tommy remembered the
night when as a boy, Elspeth crouching beside him, he had peered in
fearfully at that corner window on Grizel and her mamma, and the
shuddersome things he had seen. He shuddered at them again.

"Who lives there now?" he asked.

"Nobody. It's toom."

"There is a light."

"Some going-about body. They often tak' bilbie in toom houses, and
that door is without a lock; it's keepit close wi' slipping a stick
aneath it. Do you mind how feared we used to be at that house?"

"She was never afraid of it."

"It was her hame."

He meant no more than he said, but suddenly they both stopped dead.

"It's no possible," Corp said, as if in answer to a question. "It's no
possible," h