Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

Or with a mandolin, of which he had somehow become possessed, he would lean against the table, stretch his long legs, shake back his snaky curls, swinging his body to and fro, and improvise such music as never has been heard on earth before.

But ever and anon, between bursts of strange melody—for there was a certain attraction in every sound he produced—he would return to the subject of the new cargo of melodeons which had just been received at Yarrow's, down in the village. He would have one he declared, whatever old Hobby might say, the skinflint—who would not let poor Jeremy have a single goldpiece of all he had won for him by his own strong hands.

He would let him see, however, when he came back, who was master. And if he would not, then he, Jeremy Orrin, knew somebody—perhaps not so far away—who would give him not only one, but many melodeons, for one smell of the fresh air.

Elsie had the presence of mind not to appear to understand that he meant my father. It was, evidently, one of Jeremy's worst days. And Elsie wished that she had been able to get her knife back from my father, who had borrowed it the night before for a special piece of filing. The work was approaching completion, but just at the last moment he had come upon a bar of iron, buried, for what purpose he could not imagine, in the thickness of the wall. It ran diagonally, and would need to be cut in two places before there was any chance of the passage being finished between their prison chambers.

But the bar once cut, and the passage clear, my father, who, as part of his business, was learned in locks, did not anticipate from Elsie's description any serious trouble. The iron door and patent safety lock of his own prison house, recently arranged for by Mr. Stennis—he remembered the transaction—was, of course, beyond him. But if all was as he had been given to expect, the fastenings of Elsie's door—which communicated with the oven corridor—were of quite another type, and need not detain him long.

It was a little after eleven of the day, as Elsie judged by the light, when Jeremy came back after a somewhat prolonged absence. He brought her a piece of made bread—by which he meant bread bought from one of the vans that passed along the highway, but none of which came up to the Moat Grange.

"Hae," he said, smiling curiously, "there's for you! I hae nae time to be baking to-day. The maister's hame. Guid luck, an' lang life to him!"

He was speaking very curiously, laughing all the time—not offering threats and complaints as he had been doing before.

"And see!" he cried out, suddenly. "He has brought Jeremy a present wi' his ain hand—ay, wi' his ain hand he gied it him!"

And, lifting his finger, he drew it along three red weals on his brow and cheek, one after the other, ending at the corner of the jaw beneath the ear, from which a drop of blood trickled. And he laughed—all the time he laughed.