of stockings, without the Ardoch folk over the hill hearing all about
it.

But I am telling of the well-house.

"Give me your hand," said the lass Maisie down from the trap-door. It is
a strange thing that I never dreamed of disobeying. So I put out my
hand, and in a trice I was up beside her.

My mother followed us and we looked about. It was a little room and had
long been given over to the birds. I marvelled much that in our
adventurous youth, Sandy and I had never lighted upon it. But I knew the
reason to be that we had a wholesome dread of the well, having been told
a story about a little boy who tumbled into it in the act of
disobedience and so was drowned. We heard also what had become of him
afterwards, which discouraged us from the forbidden task of exploration.

I think no one had been in the place since the joiners left it, for the
shavings yet lay in the corner, among all that the birds and the wild
bees had brought to it since.

My mother stayed beside me while Maisie went to bring me a hot drink,
for the shuddering grew upon me, and I began to have fierce pains in my
back and legs. My mother told me how that the main guard of the soldiers
had been a week away over in the direction of Minnyhive, all but a
sergeant's file that were left to keep the castle. To-day all these men,
except the sentry, were down drinking at the change-house in the
clachan, and not till about midnight would they come roaring home.

She also told me (which I much yearned to know), that the Duchrae had at
last been turned out, and that old Anton had betaken himself to the
hills. Maisie, his daughter, had come to the neighbourhood with Margaret
Wilson of Glen Vernock, the bright little lass from the Shireside whom I
had first seen during my sojourn in Balmaghie. Margaret Wilson had
friends over at the farm of Bogue on the Garpelside. Very kind to the
hill-folk they were, though in good enough repute with the Government up
till this present time. From there Maisie Lennox had come up to
Earlstoun, to tell my mother all that she knew of myself and my cousin
Wat. Then, because the two women loved to talk the one to the other, at
Earlstoun she abode ever since, and there I found her.

So in the well-house I remained day by day in safety all through my
sickness.

The chamber over the well was a fine place for prayer and meditation. At
first I thought that each turn of the sentry would surely bring him up
the trap-door with sword an