The
Dundas lassies saw her frae their window, and her hands were at her
ears as if she was trying to drown the sound o' something. Do you mind
o' her mother? They say she was looking terrible like her mother.
It was only between the station and Gavinia's house that she had been
seen, but they searched far afield. Tommy, accompanied by Corp, even
sought for her in the Den. Do you remember the long, lonely path
between two ragged little dykes that led from the Den to the house of
the Painted Lady? It was there that Grizel had lived with her mamma.
The two men went down that path, which is oppressed with trees.
Elsewhere the night was not dark, but, as they had known so well when
they were boys, it is always dark after evenfall in the Double Dykes.
That is the legacy of the Painted Lady. Presently they saw the
house--scarcely the house, but a lighted window. Tommy remembered the
night when as a boy, Elspeth crouching beside him, he had peered in
fearfully at that corner window on Grizel and her mamma, and the
shuddersome things he had seen. He shuddered at them again.
"Who lives there now?" he asked.
"Nobody. It's toom."
"There is a light."
"Some going-about body.
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