a grey-green dress of rough
stuff hardly ankle-long, and once when the bell-rope broke and I had
sprained my ankle she mounted instead of me, running along the rigging
of the roofs to ring the bell as active as a lamplighter. I liked her
for this, also because she was pretty, or at least the short grey-green
dress made her look it. Her name was Gertrude Gower, but Gerty
Greensleeves was what she was most frequently called, except, of course,
when I called the roll before morning and afternoon.

I had had a talk with Sandy Webb, the guard, as he paused to take in the
mails. My father was also village postmaster, but, though there was a
girl in the office to sell stamps and revenue licences, and my mother
behind to say "that she did not know" in reply to any question
whatsoever, I was much more postmaster than my father, though I suppose
he really had the responsibility.

Sandy Webb always brought a deal of news to Eden Valley. And as I had
official and private dealings with him--the public relating to way-bills
and bag-receipts, and the private to a noggin of homebrewed out of the
barrel in the corner of our cellar--he always gave me the earliest news,
before he hurried away--as it were, the firstlings of the flock.

"There's a stir at Cairn Edward," he said casually, as he set down his
wooden cup. "John Aitken, the mason, has fallen off a scaffolding and
broken----"

"Not his leg?" I interrupted anxiously, for John was a third cousin of
my mother's.

"No, more miraculous than that!" the guard averred serenely.

"His back?" I gasped--for John Aitken, as well as a relation, was a
fellow-elder of my father's, and the two often met upon sacramental
occasions.

"No," said Sandy, enjoying his grave little surprise, "only the trams of
his mortar-barrow! And there's that noisy tinkler body, Tim Cleary, the
Shire Irishman, in the lock-up for wanting to fight the Provost of
Dumfries, and he'll get eight days for certain. But the Provost is
paying the lodgings of his wife and family in the meantime. It will be a
rest for them, poor things."

It was at this moment that Sandy Webb, square, squat, many-wrinkled man,
sounded his horn and swung himself into his place as the driver, Andrew
Haugh, gathered up his reins. But I knew his way, and waited
expectantly. He always kept the pick of his news to the end, then let it
off like a fire-cracker, and departed in a halo of dusty glory.

"Your private ghost is making himself co