Deep Moat Grange

by S. R. Crockett

"The young English minister from Over Breckonton."

"Yes," Nance went on to give details, finding that nobody exclaimed at her news; "as fine an Englisher as ever was, with a bit cambric handkerchief that wad hae been little use to a man wi' a cauld in his heid, and a black cane wi' real silver bands. Extraordinary civil he was, and bode near an hour talkin' to puir auld Nance, and speirin' where ye were, Elsie, and what time ye wad be hame!"

I looked at Elsie. She was busily engaged in tying up some sprays of early heath, which we had gathered on the steep sides of Brom Beacon. She did not seem to be listening. But she heard well enough, as her words proved.

"Oh, yes, Mr. Ralph Ablethorpe! Joe and I met him by chance on the way to my grandfather's the other day."

Now the vixen knew very well that there would be no more question of the "coming of the Englishy minister" after an announcement like that. Nance was all agog to hear of the wonders of Deep Moat Grange, which she had never seen except from the outside, and news of the mad people my lassie's granddad had gathered about him. Small wonder, either! For, indeed, no one had crossed the Moat for years except the High-Church curate, who (as they said) went periodically to "confess" Miss Orrin.

Even such things as coals and provisions were brought by the bailiff to the end of the drawbridge in sacks, and from thence carried across on the back of the powerful Jeremy, the same Jeremy whom we had seen that day weeping like a child.

But it was then that I began first to understand what absence at college might cost me. I looked at Elsie. She was still tying up the little pink bundles of "bell heather," but her face was held down, and there was a little conscious flush upon her cheek. I had never thought it before, and it came on me like a judgment. Elsie was pretty.

I did not exactly wish she hadn't been, but oh, I did wish that nobody had been able to see it but myself!

That English curate, with his curly poll and clear blue eyes, rode me like a nightmare. I resolved to break his head, handsome as it looked—aye, if he were the best man that ever stepped in shoe leather, and had climbed all the mountains in Switzerland and given all that he got for doing it to the poor, as they said he had done. I did not care how good he was. I was desperate at the thought of losing Elsie. Not for love—oh no, thank you. I had more sense than that. But just to go about with, and be my little 'panion, as she had always said she would be, and as I expected her to remain.

But the curate did not let grass grow under his footsteps. It was only two days before he was back again at the little cottage at the Bridge End. Nance had work that day, and if I had not had the sense to play truant he would have found Elsie by herself, as no doubt he expected to do. But I was there seated on the table, swinging my legs.