rand. And that's a
deal mair than maist braw folk can say o' their fiddles. For they are
maistly made i' the Gressmarket o' Edinbory! There's a melodeon,
though, wi' silver keys, that's better still. But Hobby winna gie
Jeremy the siller to buy it. It's in Lithgow's window at Langtoon, and
some day it will be Jeremy's ain. Maybe afore ye think. Then he will
come and play ye the bonnie music. Ye can dance, Elsie? Eh, that's
weel. Jeremy canna dance, but he can play the bonnie music to dance
till, and it's the finest sicht in the world to see a feat young lass
footing it dentily to 'The Wind that Shakes the Barley' or
'Tullochgorum.'"

After Jeremy was gone, I went over many things in my mind. Whatever
part my grandfather Stennis had taken in the disappearances of Harry
Foster, Riddick of Langbarns, Lang Hutchins the drover, and Joe
Yarrow's father, obviously he had nothing to do with this. Therefore,
I could only hope and pray that he was alike innocent of the others.

Not that the justice, or injustice, of the country would in any case
hold him guiltless. He it was who had brought this wild crew about the
lonely and formidable House of the Grange. Because of them the Deep
Moat glimmered through a mist of fear, and the sullen expanse of the
Moat Pond had its waters, like once on a time the Nile, turned by the
evening sun into blood.

Still, I should be glad, even in my own heart, to be able to think
better of my mother's father, even if no one agreed with me.

Having seen the disturbances which followed the disappearances of Harry
Foster and Mr. Yarrow, I pleased myself with the thought that soon my
prison house would be broken open, and this foul brood of birds of prey
compelled to flee for their lives. But I had not forgotten that it was
the return of Harry's blood-stained mail cart which had awakened
suspicion, and in the case of Joe's father, the coming back of the mare
by way of the locked door of the yard. But a girl with half a dozen
books under her arm, on her way to teach a few infants in a school,
would be in a very different position. Joe and Nance Edgar would ask
questions, doubtless. But I had quarrelled with the one, and never
really been open or companionable with the other. So it might be said
(was indeed said) that I had taken French leave of Breckonside in a fit
of temper, and had gone off to meet friends, or to teach in a school
for which I had long been applying. Indeed, the po