For the first week she met with no adventures. Her aunt, a bustling, busy, thrifty Scotswoman, worked a great deal up at the big house; her uncle assisted in the manufacture of the “superfine broadcloth” for which the little village used to be famous, and Maggie was left to do much as she pleased. Her cough left her, and the color came into her pale cheeks, and the sun set his mark upon the bridge of her nose in the shape of a band of the dearest little brown freckles.
Hitherto she had not gone far into the woods, but with returning health came a spirit of adventure. One afternoon she wandered on and on, singing softly to herself a ditty relating that “Kitty Bairdie had a coo,” going on to describe minutely, and at length, the various animals owned by this worthy lady, and concluding each verse with the cheerful injunction, “Dance, Kitty Bairdie!”
Everything seemed to want to sing that afternoon, and did sing, too, lustily and long. Unconsciously Maggie raised her voice till the final “Dance, Kitty Bairdie!” had quite a rollicking sound, and she found herself doing a sort of double shuffle among the ground ivy and foxgloves.
It is not easy to dance in and out of ground ivy and brambles, and Maggie paused for breath, only to catch it again in a perfect agony of fear, as, not five yards from her, she beheld a big white figure, apparently just risen out of the ground.
Paralyzed with terror, she stood staring at the vision. A tall man it was—she was sure it was a man, and no ghost—clad in curious flowing robes of soft whitey flannel, falling to his feet in innumerable folds, while in his hand he held what Maggie took to be some instrument of torture. It was a butterfly net; but Maggie did not know this, for people did not catch many butterflies in Commercial Street, Leith.
The whole dreadful truth flashed upon her. This was one of the monks! Had she not read in a guide to the neighborhood that “The Dominican Priory of the Annunciation is a large and handsome building; here candidates for the priesthood pursue a course of study in divinity and philosophy. It is under the government of a Prior.” This, then, must be one of the priests, and having been very well brought up in the strictest sect of the Free Kirk, she was sure that if only he succeeded in “catching her,” she would be put to unspeakable tortures, or forced to recant her faith.
Had she not with her own eyes seen her mother hastily slam the door of their flat in the face of a woman wearing a queer head-dress and long cloak, who had come to beg for money?
“I’ll ha’e none o’ they Papishes here!” her mother exclaimed angrily, and then—for it was just before Maggie came south—“and you, Maggie, if you see ony o’ them when you’re wi’ your aunty, just turn and flee. I’m told there’s a whole clamjamfray o’ them there, an’ ye can never tell what they Jesuits will be at.”
So, having found her breath sufficiently to give a wild cry, Maggie turned and fled.
The queer white man, who, as she afterward remembered, looked astonished, called something after her. But Maggie’s heart was thumping in her ears to the exclusion of every other sound, and she ran blindly on till one treacherous little foot, more used to pavements than rough forest ground, gave under her with a horrid wrench, and she fell forward in a terrified little heap just as she reached a footpath leading she knew not whither.