Chapter 11 - Page 2

passed monotony
again reigned, and Dite crossed to the smithy window, though none of the
letters could be for him. He could read the addresses on six of them,
but the seventh lay on its back, and every time he rose on his tip-toes
to squint down at it, the spout pushed his bonnet over his eyes.

"Smith," he cried in at the door, "to gang hame afore I ken wha that
letter's to is more than I can do."

The smith good-naturedly brought the letter to him, and then glancing at
the address was dumfounded. "God behears," he exclaimed, with a sudden
look at the distant cemetery, "it's to Double Dykes!"

Dite also shot a look at the cemetery. "He'll never get it," he said,
with mighty conviction.

The two men gazed at the cemetery for some time, and at last Dite
muttered, "Ay, ay, Double Dykes, you was aye fond o' your joke!"

"What has that to do wi' 't?" rapped out the smith, uncomfortably.

Dite shuddered. "Man," he said, "does that letter no bring Double Dykes
back terrible vive again! If we was to see him climbing the cemetery
dyke the now, and coming stepping down the fields in his moleskin
waistcoat wi' the pearl buttons--"

Auchterlonie stopped him with a nervous gesture.

"But it couldna be the pearl buttons," Dite added thoughtfully, "for
Betty Finlayson has been wearing them to the kirk this four year. Ay,
ay, Double Dykes, that puts you farther awa' again."

The smith took the letter to a neighbor's house to ask the advice of old
Irons, the blind tailor, who when he lost his sight had given himself
the name of Blinder for bairns to play with.

"Make your mind easy, smith," was Blinder's counsel. "The letter is
meant for the Painted Lady. What's Double Dykes? It's but the name of a
farm, and we gave it to Sanders because he was the farmer. He's dead,
and them that's in the house now become Double Dykes in his place."

But the Painted Lady only had the house, objected Dite; Nether Drumgley
was farming the land, and so he was the real Double Dykes. True, she
might have pretended to her friends that she had the land also.

She had no friends, the smith said, and since she came to Double Dykes
from no one could find out where, though they knew her furniture was
bought in Tilliedrum, she had never got a letter. Often, though, as she
passed his window she had keeked sideways at the letters, as bairns
might look at parlys. If he made a tinkle with his hammer at such times
off she went at once, for she was as easily flichtered as a field of
crows, that take wing if you tap your pipe on the loof of your hand. It
was true she had spoken to him