e bonnie bairn! She's a
teacher, a lassie dominie--they tell me. But Jeremy will learn her
something this nicht that is better than a' the wisdom written in the
buiks. Be never feared, lass.

"Ye are the heiress.
And I am the heir."

"But come ye wi' me, lassie, and this nicht we will drink o' the white
wine and the red, till the bottom faa's oot o' the stoup. I promised
it to you that, when I gat the melodeon, I wad play ye the mony grand
tunes--and ye wad dance--dance, Elsie, dance, my bonnie, like a star
through the meadow-mist or a dewdrap on a bit rose-leaf when the west
winds swing the tree!"

All this time Elsie, gazing amazed at the man, rested silent in an
awful consternation. She had never seen Mad Jeremy like this. His
curly hair now hung straight and black. Perspiration stood in beads on
his brow. He breathed quick and heavy, with a curious rattle in the
throat. Slowly Elsie rose to her feet. She stood between my father
and his view of the apartment, as it were, cutting it off. He bit his
hand to keep him from doing or saying anything, knowing himself to be
impotent, and that the best he could do was just to wait. Otherwise,
Mad Jeremy would simply have come round and despatched him first. For
never (says my father) did murder so plainly look out of a man's eyes
as that night in the oven chamber.

Mad Jeremy took Elsie by the wrist.

"Come, lassie," he cried, with a lightsome skip of the foot--for,
indeed, the man could not keep still a moment--"come awa'! The gray
goose is gone, and the fox--the fox, the auld bauld cunnin' fox--is off
to his den-O--den-O--den-O!"

And, with a turn of his lantern, he threw the candle Elsie had left
burning upon the floor, trampled it out fiercely, and then, with one
hand still on Elsie's wrist and the lantern swinging in the other,
strode out, shouting his version of the refrain: "And the fox--the
fox--the auld, yauld, bauld fox, is off to his den-O!"

But my father had been listening keenly for the click of the key in the
lock. He had not heard it. The way to freedom, to help Elsie, lay
open if only--ah, if only that bar would give way. And once more, in a
kind of fury, he precipitated himself upon the stubborn, twisted iron.

Once outside, the freshness of the air fell upon Elsie like a blow in
the face. So long confined below in her cell built of the hard
whinstone of the country outcrops, she had forgotten the grip and
sweetness of th