d, gave back
gaily enough the mellow glow of a hundred candles all of wax.

"Dance, Elsie woman!" cried Mad Jeremy, emptying a tumbler at a gulp.
"But first drink ye also, lassie. That will bring back your bonnie
colour! What has come to ye, bairn? Ye are pale as a bit snaw-drap
that sets its head through a wreath at a dyke-back. But red, red, red
as ony rose shall ye be, I'se warrant ye! Dance, lassie, dance!"

And with a jingle of bells he struck in the "Reel o' Bogie." Elsie did
no more than set her lips to her glass. But she obeyed, for Jeremy was
in no mood to be countered. Then, taking up her gown daintily on both
sides, as the dance ordains, she danced it alone. And every time as
she turned, her eyes caught the door of the weaving-room, and the heart
within her became as water for what she had seen through that little
black mark of exclamation which was the keyhole.

Yet somehow the situation stirred her, too. There is a vast deal of
desperate courage in a woman. A man laughs at this because he is
exempt from the fears of mice and minor creeping things. He may as
well think, as he often does, the better of himself, on the strength of
the beard on his chin. But in the desperate passes of life, woman is
apt to lead the forlorn hopes. And why should she not? Her kind have
been accustomed to them ever since, in the forlorn coppices outside
Eden, one Eve gave birth to her firstborn, and called him--being, like
a woman, deceived--"My possession."

And with the blank midnight pressing against the huge windows of the
facade, and the white lights and red candle stems reflected a thousand
times in the sullen moat, Elsie danced. The irregular wind moaned
about the house, and as the brand-new melodeon whined and crew,
flinging a weird rhythm to the tremulous candle flames, something like
the fast-running "Broom o' the Cowdenkynwes," "Logan Braes," "Green
Grows the Rushes," or "Bonnie Dundee," emerged. Elsie danced to them
all. She danced as the fluted candles burned down nearer to their
sockets.

And all the while, now with one leg on the table, and swinging his body
to the time of the music, or crouched in a corner nursing his melodeon
against him as if he were a beast ready for the spring, Jeremy beat the
measure with his foot.

Sometimes he would spring up and sing a stave which struck him, in a
high, screeching voice--sometimes drain a cup of wine or spirits out of
the nearest bottle, stopping in