"And now, my pretties," he said, "what may you be seeking in Deep Moat Hollow?"

CHAPTER VI

THICKER THAN WATER

Now I do not deny that I was frightened out of my life by the sudden appearing of the Golden Farmer. But it was different with Elsie.

Perhaps it ran in the blood. For, though most people in Breckonside were feared of my father and his long arm, I am not--no, nor ever could be. And so, in that moment of panic, it was given to Elsie to be able to speak serenely to her grandfather.

Yet I could see that the little man was all in a fume of anger, and kept it badly down, too.

"What are the two of you doing here?" he cried, dancing about and shaking his stick at us. "Where do you belong, and what ill purpose fetched ye to Deep Moat Grange?"

"One question at a time," said Elsie, standing quietly before him, with one thumb tucked in a leather strap about her waist. "'Who are we?'

say you. I will tell you, grandfather----"

"Grandfather----!"

You should have seen the little wizened man jump at the word.

"Grandfather!" he repeated in a kind of skirl, or scream, as of a bagpipe. "Ye are no blood kin of mine---!"

"Am I no?" said Elsie. "I am Bell Stennis's daughter, and a daughter, too, of one Ensign Stennis, a British officer----"

"A devil--a black devil," cried the wizened little man, shaking his stick, as it were, at the four winds of heaven; "bride-bed or bairn-cot, shroud or bier, I have no word to say to any connected with Bell Stennis or the man that she counted her husband----!"

"Except to give her a decent burial, as ye did," said Elsie. "I have seen her name on the stone in Breckonside churchyard, and the s.p.a.ce for your own beneath----!"

"Any one with eyes might have seen as much. But surely I am not expected to own you for a granddaughter just because ye have looked over the cemetery wall!"

"Neither have you a right to be angry because Joe Yarrow and I look across the ditch at the flower beds of Deep Moat Grange----"

There appeared to be some hidden sting in this saying of Elsie's. For a moment the old man looked perfectly murderous. But he quickly recovered himself.

"Faith," he cried, "but it would have been telling your mother, if indeed she be my daughter Bell--if she had had the gift o' the gab like you! But that's no proof. I have ever been a silent man myself!"

"Maybe you had need, grandfather!" cried Elsie merrily, as if it were all a joke, even when I knew that our lives hung, of a certainty, in the balance between his goodwill and his anger at our intrusion.

Certainly, however, Elsie had a curious power over the old man, and instead of getting angry, he actually laughed, a queer, crackling laugh, caught perhaps from living so long among mad folk. I have heard doctors out of lunatic asylums laugh like that. There is nothing so catching as crack-brainedness. A lot of people have it at Breckonside--maybe because the East Dene Asylum is so near. Perhaps not.

"I see," said old Mr. Stennis, "that you have upon your body day-linen of my weaving. That is a waste. I only weave now to amuse myself, and sometimes for the great of the land--because no one can weave like Hobby Stennis. Therefore the webs I have sent that old wretch Mrs.

Comline in the town of Dumfries, and now yearly to Nance at the bridge-end, ought to have been put carefully away, and not cut up to make fal-lals for a daft hempie of your age! Nance ought to know better. She is old enough and ugly enough for that!"

"Then if I am your daughter's daughter, as I see you admit," said Elsie, taking his words as an admission, "let us go across and view the bonnie flowers over yonder, the bedded tulips, the Lent lilies, and all the flowers of the spring."

Then, for the first time the old man had a look of fear, almost of revolt.

"La.s.sie," he cried, "ye have no knowledge of what you ask. Bide where you are, and go your way backward from this side of the moat."

He bent toward us as if whispering, though he had no need, all being clear behind and around us for a long way on every side.

"There are folk that are not canny on yon side of the moat!" he said, with the same curious shrinking look over his shoulder. "I can hardly manage them myself!"

"Nonsense," said Elsie, "take us across, and be done with it. Is it not your own land, your own flowers, and I your nearest of kin?"

"Aye," said the old man, shaking his head, "it will be true enough. Ye mind me of Bell's mother--my wife that was. G.o.d rest her soul--and her tongue! Ye are never a Stennis. And High Heaven pity the man that is going to run away with you, as I did with your grandam!"

Elsie indicated me with her thumb.

"Joe is," she said coolly.

The Golden Farmer turned and looked me over from head to foot, and I own that with the thought of all we had seen and all that we might yet see, I shook like a leaf. I never had Elsie's a.s.surance, or, more properly, cheek, but followed obediently, and I must own that generally it came out all right when I did as Elsie told me.

"Then I pity him," quoth her grandfather, grimly; "but since you will, follow me."

And he led the way, first to the tree where he had tethered his beast, and afterwards to the narrow wooden bridge, like a drawbridge in chivalry books, which spans the oily black water of the moat.

I came behind with Elsie. All the time I kept putting my hand on her arm to stop her. For I believed that we should never, never cross that bridge again. If Elsie had no fear of her grandfather, I had! And besides, there was Jeremy Orrin with his big knife. Such at least was the idea that kept recurring to my disturbed brain. I could see him swimming the moat with it yet, wild to get at us. There were also the mad sisters, and all the linked terrors of Deep Moat Grange.

But not the least bit of notice did Elsie take. She shook my hand off her arm, and told me that if I was afraid I could go back to the school green and play marbles with the little boys.

So of course I said no more, but came meekly behind Elsie, and she followed her grandfather. He was leading his horse, that lifted its feet gingerly at the crossing of the wooden bridge, not liking the noise, as horses are wont to do on gangways of ships and when they lead them into trucks at railway stations.

In another minute Elsie and I stood within the Moat. And turning round, what was my horror to see the bridge rising slowly into the air behind me, and in a little house at the side, bent double over a wheel, I caught sight of the "mounster," Jeremy Orrin, with a grin on his face and all his dark ringlets shaking and dancing.

As we went past he set his head out and called these words after us:

"Rats in a trap!" he cried, "rats in a trap!"

And I can tell you that I for one felt just as he said.

But Elsie followed her grandfather step for step and took no notice.

You would have thought she was the crowned queen of the place.

CHAPTER VII

FAMILY DISCIPLINE

As n.o.body had seen Deep Moat Grange since it had been taken over by Mr.

Hobby Stennis and the crew he had gathered about him, it may be as well to describe it as I saw it--now that it is swept from off the face of the earth.

The old, many-gabled, brick-built house was ivy-covered--in poor repair, but clean. Curious-looking, stocking-shaped contrivances cowled the chimneys, or such of them as were used. The Grange was set so deep in the woods that when the wind blew with any violence, and apparently from any quarter, it raced and gusted and whirled down the chimneys so as to blow the f.a.ggots out on the hearths.

But without and within the house, it was anything but dirty. That is, so far as I--no great judge, mayhap--could make out. At times Jeremy Orrin, who now followed us, laughing and jeering, could work like a demon, clearing up some debris. And Mr. Stennis kept poking his nose here and there into the outhouses and cart sheds with a curious, dithering thrill of apprehension, not at all like a master coming back to his own house, or looking if his servants' work were well performed.