Chapter 24

A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR

Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of
the Silent Pool. She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be,
and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling
bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.

It was a fit night for dark deeds.

"Methinks she cometh to her damn!"

The speaker was a masked man who had followed her--he was sniffing
ecstatically--since she left the city walls.

She seemed to possess a charmed life. He would have had her in Shovel
Gorge, but just then Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour turned the
corner.

Suddenly Gavinia felt an exquisite thrill: a man was pursuing her. She
slipped the paper-bag out of sight, holding it dexterously against her
side with her arm, so that the gravy should not spurt out, and ran.
Lights flashed, a kingly voice cried "Now!" and immediately a petticoat
was flung over her head. (The Lady Griselda looked thin that evening.)

Gavinia was dragged to the Lair, and though many a time they bumped her,
she still tenderly nursed the paper-bag with her arm, or fondly thought
she did so, for when unmuffled she discovered that it had been removed,
as if by painless surgery. And her captors' tongues were sweeping their
chins for stray crumbs.

The wench was offered her choice of Stroke's gallant fellows, but "Wha
carries me wears me," said she, promptly, and not only had he to carry
her from one end of the Den to the other, but he must do it whistling as
if barely conscious that she was there. So after many attempts (for she
was always willing to let them have their try) Corp of Corp, speaking
for Sir Joseph and the others, announced a general retreat.

Instead of taking this prisoner's life, Stroke made her his tool,
releasing her on condition that every seventh day she appeared at the
Lair with information concerning the doings in the town. Also, her name
was Agnes of Kingoldrum, and, if she said it was not, the plank. Bought
thus, Agnes proved of service, bringing such bags of news that Stroke
was often occupied now in drawing diagrams of Thrums and its
strongholds, including the residence of Cathro, with dotted lines to
show the direction of proposed underground passages.

And presently came by this messenger disquieting rumors indeed. Another
letter, being the third in six months, had reached the Dovecot,
addressed, not to Miss Ailie, but to Miss Kitty. Miss Kitty had been
dead fully six years, and Archie Piatt, the post, swore that this was
the eighteenth, if not the nineteenth, letter he had delivered to her
name since that time. They were all in the same hand, a