Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

"A bonnie present," he repeated, "think ye not so, bonnie birdie? Ye never gat the like, and him your ain grandfather. Ah, but he's kind to Jeremy! And Jeremy will never forget it. Na—Jeremy followed him, like pussy cat after a plate of cream, to the March dyke, to the very door o' Bailiff Ball's house. Jeremy wadna let ony ill befall his maister this day. If a wulf, or a lion, or a bear had leaped upon Hobby Stennis, Jeremy wad hae strangled them like this—chirt—wi' his hands, as easy as ony thing. Ay, he wad that! For the kind kind present he fetched his faithfu' servant, naebody shall lay a hand on Hobby Stennis this day—except, maybe, Jeremy himsel'—ay, maybe, juist Jeremy himsel'. Ow, ay, but a' in the way o' kindness! the same as Hobby himsel'!"

And with that he picked up his Jew's-harp and breathed a fierce anger and scorn into the familiar words that was positively shocking to listen to—

Be it ever so humble,
There's no place like ho-o-o-me.

And he stopped to laugh between the lines. Elsie says that it fairly turned her cold to hear him. Though at that time she had, as she remembers, no fear for herself—which, when you come to think of it, was a very curious circumstance indeed. But then her turn was yet to come.

In Jeremy's absence, Elsie tried to tell my father all about it. But the coming and going of the madman that day were so uncertain, and his moods so dangerous, that she could not get matters half explained; nor yet any advice from my father, except not to cross the maniac, save in the last extremity. He offered to pass her back the knife, but Elsie, hearing that one end of the bar was already severed, and the other well through, refused, like the little brick she was, to take it.

Now, this part which follows can only be known imperfectly, because it concerns what happened when Hobby Stennis went back to his own house of the Moat Grange. There were two other sources of information—Jeremy's wild talk afterwards to Elsie, and certain signs and marks not easy of interpretation, which, however, tend to confirm in most points the madman's version.

After Mad Jeremy had come back from watching his master carefully into the house of the bailiff, he visited Elsie, and spoke the words, little reassuring, which I have already written down.

Then going up to the great parlour, out of which opened Mr. Stennis's weaving-room, he lit a lire of wood, which burned with much cheerful blaze. In front of this he sat down, with his fiddle in his hand. He had only drawn the bow across it, and began to tune up when his master walked in.

Possibly the noise irritated Hobby Stennis's none too steady nerves. Possibly, also, he was nettled at Jeremy's insistent request for the loan of a couple of sovereigns in order to go down and "price" the new cargo of melodeons received at Yarrow's, in the village. They had been ordered by my father before his disappearance, to satisfy a temporary local musical fever, and had only just arrived.

How exactly the thing happened is not known, but, at any rate, it is certain that Mr. Stennis refused to give Jeremy a farthing for any such purpose, and at the first sullen retort of the madman, turned fiercely upon him, wrenched from his hands the violin on which he had been fitfully playing and threw it on the fire. As the light dry wood caught and the varnish crackled, Mr. Stennis strode off, fuming, to his weaving-room to calm himself with a turn at the famous hand-loom. He sat down before it, and as the shuttle began to pass back and forth, his passion fell away in proportion as the fascination of the perfect handicraft gained on him.