"Sleepin'?" he chuckled, "and over her book, the bonnie bairn! She's a teacher, a lassie dominie—they tell me. But Jeremy will learn her something this nicht that is better than a' the wisdom written in the buiks. Be never feared, lass.
"Ye are the heiress.
And I am the heir."
"But come ye wi' me, lassie, and this nicht we will drink o' the white wine and the red, till the bottom faa's oot o' the stoup. I promised it to you that, when I gat the melodeon, I wad play ye the mony grand tunes—and ye wad dance—dance, Elsie, dance, my bonnie, like a star through the meadow-mist or a dewdrap on a bit rose-leaf when the west winds swing the tree!"
All this time Elsie, gazing amazed at the man, rested silent in an awful consternation. She had never seen Mad Jeremy like this. His curly hair now hung straight and black. Perspiration stood in beads on his brow. He breathed quick and heavy, with a curious rattle in the throat. Slowly Elsie rose to her feet. She stood between my father and his view of the apartment, as it were, cutting it off. He bit his hand to keep him from doing or saying anything, knowing himself to be impotent, and that the best he could do was just to wait. Otherwise, Mad Jeremy would simply have come round and despatched him first. For never (says my father) did murder so plainly look out of a man's eyes as that night in the oven chamber.
Mad Jeremy took Elsie by the wrist.
"Come, lassie," he cried, with a lightsome skip of the foot—for, indeed, the man could not keep still a moment—"come awa'! The gray goose is gone, and the fox—the fox, the auld bauld cunnin' fox—is off to his den-O—den-O—den-O!"
And, with a turn of his lantern, he threw the candle Elsie had left burning upon the floor, trampled it out fiercely, and then, with one hand still on Elsie's wrist and the lantern swinging in the other, strode out, shouting his version of the refrain: "And the fox—the fox—the auld, yauld, bauld fox, is off to his den-O!"
But my father had been listening keenly for the click of the key in the lock. He had not heard it. The way to freedom, to help Elsie, lay open if only—ah, if only that bar would give way. And once more, in a kind of fury, he precipitated himself upon the stubborn, twisted iron.
Once outside, the freshness of the air fell upon Elsie like a blow in the face. So long confined below in her cell built of the hard whinstone of the country outcrops, she had forgotten the grip and sweetness of the wind which comes over the Cheviots—fresh and sweet even though it bring with it the snell sting of snow-filled "hopes" and the long dyke backs ridged with lingering white of last year's storms.
But there a yet greater astonishment awaited her. Jeremy's grip did not loosen upon her wrist. He led her toward the half-ruined drawbridge. It was within a few steps of the sham, ivy-grown ruin where they had emerged.