The parish had had
a solid week to get over its amazement. And, to put all in the
background, there had been a successful run into Portowarren and another
the same night to Balcary--a thing not often done in the very height of
summer. Yet, because the preventive men were not expecting it, perhaps
safer then than at any other time.

And above all and swamping all the endless talk of a busy, heartsome
farm-town! Ah, how good it was. Even the little god in the "ben" room,
Master Duncan Maitland MacAlpine, had times and seasons without a
worshipper, all because there was a young farmer's son in the kitchen
telling of his experiences "among the hills," with the gaugers behind
them, and the morn breaking fast ahead.

How they must get to a place where they could hide, a place with water,
where they could restore their beasts and repose themselves, a place of
great shadowing rocks in a weary land. For of a certainty the sun would
smite by day, even if the moon afforded them guidance over the waste by
night.

Or Boyd Connoway would tell of the _Golden Hind_ having been seen out in
the channel, of rafts of "buoyed" casks sunk to within three foot of the
bottom, to be fished up when on a dark night the herring craft slipped
out of Balcary or the Scaur, silent as a shadow.

Or mayhap (and this, married or single, Irma liked best of all) there
came in some shy old farmer from the uplands, or perhaps a herd, to
whose boy or girl "out at service" the mistress of Heathknowes had
brought home a Bible. These had come to thank Mary Lyon, but could not
get a word out. They sipped their currant wine as if it were medicine
and moved uneasily on the edges of their chairs. They had excellent
manners stowed away somewhere--the natural well-bredness of the hill and
the heather, but in a place like that, with so many folk, it seemed as
if they had somehow mislaid them.

Then was Irma's time. She would glide in, her face still pale, of
course, but with such a gracious sweetness upon it that the shyest was
soon at his ease. Here was a cup, an embarrassment to the hand. She
would fill its emptiness, not with Aunt Jen's currant wine, but with
good Hollands--not to the brim, because the owner would spill it over
and so add the finishing touch to his bashfulness. She sat down by the
oldest, the shaggiest, the roughest, and in a moment (as if, like a
fairy of Elfland, she had waved her wand) old Glencross of Saltflats,
who only talked in monosyll