he has
been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By
and by, however, he is at his work--among the turnip-shoots,
say--guffawing and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy
meditation, and there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the
back-end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the
reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the
ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out
he only puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle
Well. This well has the reputation of being the place where it is most
easily said.

The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western
edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone's throw
you may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise
from the bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the
heavens before they are on a level with Nether Drumley's farmland. In
shape it is almost a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the
maid. If she be with you, the Den is so large that you must rest here
and there; if you are after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well,
which was the trysting-place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his
boots; if you are of those self-conscious ones who look behind to see
whether jeering blades are following, you may crouch and wriggle your
way onward and not be with her in half an hour.

Old Petey had told Tommy that, on the whole, the greatest pleasure in
life on a Saturday evening is to put your back against a stile that
leads into the Den and rally the sweethearts as they go by. The lads,
when they see you, want to go round by the other stile, but the lasses
like it, and often the sport ends spiritedly with their giving you a
clout on the head.

Through the Den runs a tiny burn, and by its side is a pink path, dyed
this pretty color, perhaps, by the blushes the ladies leave behind them.
The burn as it passes the Cuttle Well, which stands higher and just out
of sight, leaps in vain to see who is making that cooing noise, and the
well, taking the spray for kisses, laughs all day at Romeo, who cannot
get up. Well is a name it must have given itself, for it is only a
spring in the bottom of a basinful of water, where it makes about as
much stir in the world as a minnow jumping at a fly. They say that if a
boy, by making a bowl of his hands, should suddenly carry off all the
water, a quick girl could thread her needle at the spring. But it is a
spring that will not wait a moment.

Men who have been lads in Thrums sometimes go back to it from London or
from across the seas, to look again at some battered little house and
feel the blasts of their bairnhood playing through the old wynds, and
they may take with them a foreign wife. They show her everything, except
the Cuttle Well; they often go there alone. The well is sacred to the
memory of first love. You may walk from the well to the round cemetery
in ten minutes. It is a common walk for those who go back.

First love is but a boy and girl playing at the Cuttle Well with a
bird's egg. They blow it on one summer evening in the long grass, and on
the next it is borne away on a coarse laugh, or it breaks beneath the
burden of a tear. And yet--I once saw an aged woman, a widow of many
years, cry softly at mention of the Cuttle Well. "John was a good man to
you," I said, for John had been her husband. "He was a leal man to me,"
she answered with wistful eyes, "ay, he was a leal man to me--but it
wasna John I was thinking o'. You dinna ken what makes me greet so
sair," she added, presently, and though I thought I knew now I was
wrong. "It's because I canna mind his name," she said.

So the Cuttle Well has its sad memories and its bright ones, and many of
the bright memories have become sad with age, as so often happens to
beautiful things, but the most mournful of all is the story of Aaron
Latta and Jean Myles. Beside the well there stood for long a great pink
stone, called the Shoaging, Stone, because it could be rocked like a
cradle, and on it lovers used to cut their names. Often Aaron Latta and
Jean Myles sat together on the Shoaging Stone, and then there came a
time when it bore these words cut by Aaron Latta:

HERE LIES THE MANHOOD OF AARON LATTA, A FOND SON, A FAITHFUL FRIEND
AND A TRUE LOVER, WHO VIOLATED THE FEELINGS OF SEX ON THIS SPOT, AND IS
NOW THE SCUNNER OF GOD AND MAN

Tommy's mother now heard these words for the first time, Aaron having
cut them on the stone after she left Thrums, and her head sank at each
line, as if someone had struck four blows at her.

The stone was no longer at the Cuttle Well. As the easiest way of
obliterating the words, the minister had ordered it to be broken, and of
the pieces another mason had made stands for watches, one of which was
now in Thrums Street.

"Aaron Latta ain't a mason now," Tommy rattled on: "he is a warper,
because he can warp in his own house without looking on mankind or
speaking to mankind. Auld Petey said he minded the day when Aaron Latta
was a merry loon, and then Andrew McVittie said, 'God behears, to think
that Aaron Latta was ever a merry man!' and Baker Lumsden said, 'Curse
her!'"

His mother shrank in her chair, but said nothing, and Tommy explained:
"It was Jean Myles he was cursing; did you ken her, mother? she ruined
Aaron Latta's life."

"Ay, and wha ruined Jean Myles's life?" his mother cried passionately.

Tommy did not know, but he thought that young Petey might know, for
young Petey had said: "If I had been Jean Myles I would have spat in
Aaron's face rather than marry him."

Mrs. Sandys seemed pleased to hear this.

"They wouldna tell me what it were she did," Tommy went on; "they said
it was ower ugly a story, but she were a bad one, for they stoned her
out of Thrums. I dinna know where she is now, but she were stoned out of
Thrums!"

"No alane?"

"There was a man with her, and his name was--it was--"

His mother clasped her hands nervously while Tommy tried to remember the
name. "His name was Magerful Tam," he said at length.

"Ay," said his mother, knitting her teeth, "that was his name."

"I dinna mind any more," Tommy concluded. "Yes, I mind they aye called
Aaron Latta 'Poor Aaron Latta.'"

"Did they? I warrant, though, there wasna one as said 'Poor Jean
Myles'?"

She began the question in a hard voice, but as she said "Poor Jean
Myles" something caught in her throat, and she sobbed, painful dry sobs.

"How could they pity her when she were such a bad one?" Tommy answered
briskly.

"Is there none to pity bad ones?" said his sorrowful mother.

Elspeth plucked her by the skirt. "There's God, ain't there?" she said,
inquiringly, and getting no answer she flopped upon her knees, to say a
babyish prayer that would sound comic to anybody except to Him to whom
it was addressed.

"You ain't praying for a woman as was a disgrace to Thrums!" Tommy
cried, jealously, and he was about to raise her by force, when his
mother stayed his hand.

"Let her alane," she said, with a twitching mouth and filmy eyes. "Let
her alane. Let my bairn pray for Jean Myles."




CHAPTER VII

COMIC OVERTURE TO A TRAGEDY


"Jean Myles bides in London" was the next remarkable news brought by
Tommy from Thrums Street. "And that ain't all, Magerful Tam is her man;
and that ain't all, she has a laddie called Tommy and that ain't all,
Petey and the rest has never seen her in London, but she writes letters
to Thrums folks and they writes to Petey and tells him what she said.
That ain't all neither, they canna find out what street she bides in,
but it's on the bonny side of London, and it's grand, and she wears silk
clothes, and her Tommy has velvet trousers, and they have a servant as
calls him 'sir.' Oh, I would just like to kick him! They often looks for
her in the grand streets, but they're angry at her getting on so well,
and Martha Scrymgeour said it were enough to make good women like her
stop going reg'lar to the kirk."

"Martha said that!" exclaimed his mother, highly pleased. "Heard you
anything of a woman called Esther Auld? Her man does the orra work at
the Tappit Hen public in Thrums."

"He's head man at the Tappit Hen public now," answered Tommy; "and she
wishes she could find out where Jean Myles bides, so as she could write
and tell her that she is grand too, and has six hair-bottomed chairs."

"She'll never get the satisfaction," said his mother triumphantly. "Tell
me more about her."

"She has a laddie called Francie, and he has yellow curls, and she
nearly greets because she canna tell Jean Myles that he goes to a school
for the children of gentlemen only. She is so mad when she gets a letter
from Jean Myles that she takes to her bed."

"Yea, yea!" said Mrs. Sandys cheerily.

"But they think Jean Myles has been brought low at last," continued
Tommy, "because she hasna wrote for a long time to Thrums, and Esther
Auld said that if she knowed for certain as Jean Myles had been brought
low, she would put a threepenny bit in the kirk plate."

"I'm glad you've telled me that, laddie," said Mrs. Sandys, and next
day, unknown to her children, she wrote another letter. She knew she ran
a risk of discovery, yet it was probable that Tommy would only hear her
referred to in Thrums Street by her maiden name, which he had never
heard from her, and as for her husband he had been Magerful Tam to
everyone. The risk was great, but the pleasure--

Unsuspicious Tommy soon had news of another letter from Jean Myles,
which had sent Esther Auld to bed again.

"Instead of being brought low," he announced, "Jean Myles is grander
than ever. Her Tommy has a governess."

"That would be a doush of water in Esther's face?" his mother said,
smiling.

"She wrote to Martha Scrymgeour," said Tommy, "that it ain't no pleasure
to her now to boast as her laddie is at a school for gentlemen's
children only. But what made her maddest was a bit in Jean Myles's
letter about chairs. Jean Myles has give all her hair-bottomed chairs to
a poor woman and buyed a new kind, because hair-bottomed ones ain't
fashionable now. So Esther Auld can't not bear the sight of her chairs
now, though she were windy of them till the letter went to Thrums."

"Poor Esther!" said Mrs. Sandys gaily.

"Oh, and I forgot this, mother. Jean Myles's reason for not telling
where she bides in London is that she's so grand that she thinks if auld
Petey and the rest knowed where the place was they would visit her and
boast as they was her friends. Auld Petey stamped wi' rage when he heard
that, and Martha Scrymgeour said, 'Oh, the pridefu' limmer!'"

"Ay, Martha," muttered Mrs. Sandys, "you and Jean Myles is evens now."

But the passage that had made them all wince the most was one giving
Jean's reasons for making no calls in Thrums Street. "You can break it
to Martha Scrymgeour's father and mither," the letter said, "and to
Petey Whamond's sisters and the rest as has friends in London, that I
have seen no Thrums faces here, the low part where they bide not being
for the like of me to file my feet in. Forby that, I could not let my
son mix with their bairns for fear they should teach him the vulgar
Thrums words and clarty his blue-velvet suit. I'm thinking you have to
dress your laddie in corduroy, Esther, but you see that would not do for
mine. So no more at present, and we all join in compliments, and my
little velvets says he wishes I would send some of his toys to your
little corduroys. And so maybe I will, Esther, if you'll tell Aaron
Latta how rich and happy I am, and if you're feared to say it to his
face, tell it to the roaring farmer of Double Dykes, and he'll pass it
on."

"Did you ever hear of such a woman?" Tommy said indignantly, when he had
repeated as much of this insult to Thrums as he could remember.

But it was information his mother wanted.

"What said they to that bit?" she asked.

At first, it appears, they limited their comments to "Losh, losh,"
"keeps a'," "it cows," "my eertie," "ay, ay," "sal, tal," "dagont" (the
meaning of which is obvious). But by and by they recovered their breath,
and then Baker Lamsden said, wonderingly:

"Wha that was at her marriage could have thought it would turn out so
weel? It was an eerie marriage that, Petey!"

"Ay, man, you may say so," old Petey answered. "I was there; I was one
o' them as went in ahint Aaron Latta, and I'm no' likely to forget it."

"I wasna there," said the baker, "but I was standing at the door, and I
saw the hearse drive up."

"What did they mean, mother?" Tommy asked, but she shuddered and
replied, evasively, "Did Martha Scrymgeour say anything?"

"She said such a lot," he had to confess, "that I dinna mind none on it.
But I mind what her