Chapter 31 - Page 2

Elspeth was clinging to him, terrified and sobbing, and he cried to her,
"Shut your een," and then led her tenderly away. He was always good to
Elspeth.

* * * * *

There was no lack of sympathy with Grizel when the news spread through
the town, and unshod men with their gallowses hanging down, and women
buttoning as they ran, hurried to the Den. But to all the questions put
to her and to all the kindly offers made, as the body was carried to
Double Dykes, she only rocked her arms, crying, "I don't want anything
to eat. I shall stay all night beside her. I am not frightened at my
mamma. I won't tell you why she was in the Den. I am not sure how long
she has been dead. Oh, what do these little things matter?"

The great thing was that her mamma should be buried in the cemetery, and
not in unconsecrated ground with a stake through her as the boys had
predicted, and it was only after she was promised this that Grizel told
her little tale. She had feared for a long time that her mamma was dying
of consumption, but she told no one, because everybody was against her
and her mamma. Her mamma never knew that she was dying, and sometimes
she used to get so much better that Grizel hoped she would live a long
time, but that hope never lasted long. The reason she sat so much with
Ballingall was just to find out what doctors did to dying people to make
them live a little longer, and she watched his straiking to be able to
do it to her mamma when the time came. She was sure none of the women
would consent to straik her mamma. On the previous night, she could not
say at what hour, she had been awakened by a cold wind, and so she knew
that the door was open. She put out her hand in the darkness and found
that her mamma was not beside her. It had happened before, and she was
not frightened. She had hidden the key of the door that night and nailed
down the window, but her mamma had found the key. Grizel rose, lit the
lamp, and, having dressed hurriedly, set off with wraps to the Den. Her
mamma was generally as sensible as anybody in Thrums, but sometimes she
had shaking fits, and after them she thought it was the time of long
ago. Then she went to the Den to meet a man who had promised, she said,
to be there, but he never came, and before daybreak Grizel could usually
induce her to return home. Latterly she had persuaded her mamma to wait
for him in the old Lair, because it was less cold there, and she had got
her to do this last night. Her mamma did not seem very unwell, but she
fell asleep, and she died sleeping, and then Grizel went back to Double
Dykes for linen and straiked her.

Some say in Thrums that a spade was found in the Lair, but that is only
the growth of later years. Grizel had done