Her brothers somehow found this attitude excessively provoking.
Thus exercised in mind and body, and presently also fortified by the mid-day meal, the company declared its kind readiness to hear the rest of The Antiquary. It was not Rob Roy, of course—but a snowy day brought with it certain compensations. So to the crackle of the wood fire and the click and shift of the knitting needles, I began the final tale from The Antiquary.
THE THIRD TALE FROM "THE ANTIQUARY"
I. THE EARL'S SECRET
On the seashore not far from the mansion-house of Monkbarns stood the little fisherman's cottage of Saunders Mucklebackit. Saunders it was who had rigged the mast, by which Sir Arthur and his daughter were pulled to the top of the cliffs on the night of the storm. His wife came every day to the door of Monkbarns to sell fish to Miss Griselda, the Antiquary's sister, when the pair of them would stand by the hour "skirling and flyting beneath his window like so many seamaws," as Oldbuck himself said.
Besides Steenie Mucklebackit, the eldest son, the same who had assisted Edie Ochiltree to bestow a well-deserved chastisement upon Dousterswivel, and a number of merry half-naked urchins, the family included the grandmother, Elspeth Mucklebackit—a woman old, but not infirm, whose understanding appeared at most times to be asleep, but the stony terror of whose countenance often frightened the bairns more than their mother's shrill tongue and ready palm.
Elspeth seldom spoke. Indeed, she had done little for many years except twirl the distaff in her corner by the fire. Few cared to have much to do with her. She was thought to be "far from canny," and certainly she knew more about the great family of Glenallan than it was safe to speak aloud.
It chanced on the very night when Edie and Steenie had given a skinful of sore bones to the German impostor Dousterswivel, that the Countess of Glenallan, mother of the Earl, was brought to be buried at midnight among the ruins of St. Ruth.