Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

"'And wha has a better richt!' the shopkeeper would add, perhaps to salve her conscience in the matter.

"But, indeed, it was but seldom, the pocket-book once safe in the drawer, that she thought about the matter at all. For Margaret Comline was a busy woman of affairs, having under her serving lassies and prentice loons, a shop on the ground floor of a house in the Vennel, and a well-patronized stall in the market. All day she went to and fro, busily commending her goods and reproving her underlings with equal earnestness and point. Sunday and Saturday the wrinkle was never off her brow. Like Martha in the Scripture, she was careful and troubled about many things. She read but seldom, and when she did her memory retained not long the imprint of what she read. So that our young monkey, Elsie, being fresh from the mischief-making of the grammar school, where she was drilled with a class of boys, used to shift the marker of woven silk back ten pages or so in the godly book over which her foster mother fell asleep on Sabbath afternoons. By which means Mistress Comline was induced to peruse the same improving passage at least fifty times in the course of a year, yet without once discovering, or for a moment suspecting the fact.

"For all that, she saw to it that Elsie did her nightly school tasks, recommending the master to 'palmie' her well if she should ever come to school unprepared. But, being a quick and ready learner, the young lass needed the less encouragement of that kind.

"As she grew older, too, Elsie would upon occasions serve a customer in the shop, though Margaret Comline never allowed her to stand on the street among the babble of tongues at the market stalls. In a little time she could distinguish the hanks of yarn and thread, the webs of wincey, and bolts of linen as well as her mistress, and was counted a shrewd and capable hand at a bargain before she was fifteen.

"All this time her grandfather, the old miser Hobby, lived on in the little white house up among the fir-woods of Breckonside, growing ever harder and richer, at least according to the clashes of the country folk. By day, and sometimes far into the night, the click of his shuttle was never silent, and, being an old man, it was thought a marvel how he could sit so long at his loom. And still Daft Jeremy abode with him and filled his pirns. Sometimes the 'naiteral' would sit on the dyke top at the end of the cottage and laugh at the farmers as they rode by, crying names and unco words after them, so that many shunned to pass that way in the gloaming, for fear of the half-witted, strong creature that mopped and mowed and danced at the lonely gable end. And they were of excellent judgment who did so.

"For Riddick of Langbarns disappeared frae the face o' the earth, being last seen within half a mile of Laird Stennis's loaning, and, less than a month after that, Lang Hutchins, who came to Longtown with all his gains frae a year's trading padded inside his coat, so folks said, started out of Longtown at dusk and was never seen in Breckonside again. There were those who began to whisper fearsome things about the innocent-appearing white cot at the top of the Lang Wood o' Breckonside.

"Yet there were others again, and they a stout-hearted majority, who scoffed, and told how Riddick had been seen in market carrying more than his load of whisky, and that as for Lang Hutchins, had he not dared his Maker that very day to strike him dead if he spoke not the truth—all that heard him well knowing that even as he uplifted his hand he lied in his throat.

"Nor was Elsie wholly forgotten by her only near of kin. Twice or thrice a year there came from the cottage a web of fine cloth, woven as only Laird Stennis could weave it, with the inscription written plainly thereon, 'To be sold for the benefit of the upkeep of my granddaughter, Elsie Stennis.'

"After his accident, which nobody could explain and, indeed, few dared to ask about, Laird Stennis took a disgust at the Weaver's Cot by the burnside. He got his miserly money out, and with it he bought the estate of Deep Moat Hollow, that had been in the market for long—and they say that he got it for a song, the late owner's need being great and money terrible scarce. Then he and Daft Jeremy removed thither, and they had Jeremy's sister, a queer old maid (madder, they said, than himself), to keep house for the pair of them. Then the Laird Stennis rode ever the more to market and tryst, and waxed ever the richer, laying field to field, as is forbidden in the Holy Book. Then good Mrs. Comline died, and, though I was no better than a field worker, I posted off to Dumfries, and took ye home to dwell with me in this house which is my very own. All for fear that your grandfather would claim you and take you to bide in the same house as Mad Jeremy and his sisters. Oh, yes, there are more of them, and, indeed, by what I can see and hear the place is like an asylum. Such antics were never heard tell of, and the poor creatures going dressed like zanies out of a booth at the Thorsby wakes."

Then we both cried out to Nance to know if she had seen these strange people, and to tell us what they were like.