of the
grammar school, where she was drilled with a class of boys, used to
shift the marker of woven silk back ten pages or so in the godly book
over which her foster mother fell asleep on Sabbath afternoons. By
which means Mistress Comline was induced to peruse the same improving
passage at least fifty times in the course of a year, yet without once
discovering, or for a moment suspecting the fact.

"For all that, she saw to it that Elsie did her nightly school tasks,
recommending the master to 'palmie' her well if she should ever come to
school unprepared. But, being a quick and ready learner, the young
lass needed the less encouragement of that kind.

"As she grew older, too, Elsie would upon occasions serve a customer in
the shop, though Margaret Comline never allowed her to stand on the
street among the babble of tongues at the market stalls. In a little
time she could distinguish the hanks of yarn and thread, the webs of
wincey, and bolts of linen as well as her mistress, and was counted a
shrewd and capable hand at a bargain before she was fifteen.

"All this time her grandfather, the old miser Hobby, lived on in the
little white house up among the fir-woods of Breckonside, growing ever
harder and richer, at least according to the clashes of the country
folk. By day, and sometimes far into the night, the click of his
shuttle was never silent, and, being an old man, it was thought a
marvel how he could sit so long at his loom. And still Daft Jeremy
abode with him and filled his pirns. Sometimes the 'naiteral' would
sit on the dyke top at the end of the cottage and laugh at the farmers
as they rode by, crying names and unco words after them, so that many
shunned to pass that way in the gloaming, for fear of the half-witted,
strong creature that mopped and mowed and danced at the lonely gable
end. And they were of excellent judgment who did so.

"For Riddick of Langbarns disappeared frae the face o' the earth, being
last seen within half a mile of Laird Stennis's loaning, and, less than
a month after that, Lang Hutchins, who came to Longtown with all his
gains frae a year's trading padded inside his coat, so folks said,
started out of Longtown at dusk and was never seen in Breckonside
again. There were those who began to whisper fearsome things about the
innocent-appearing white cot at the top of the Lang Wood o' Breckonside.

"Yet there were others again, and they a stout-hearted majority, who
scoffed