Her
brother Sandy, afterwards Lord Marchmont, dispatched his plateful first,
looked up, and gave a shout of amazement.
"Mother!" he cried, "will ye look at Grisell! while we have been eating
our broth, she has eaten up the whole sheep's heid!"
"Sandy must have an extra share of the next sheep's heid," said the
laughing father when he heard the tale.
During the month that Sir Patrick Home lay hid in the vault, it was not
only by collecting food for him by day, and by taking it to him by
night, that his young daughter gave proof of her devotion. In a room of
which Grisell kept the key, on the ground floor at Redbraes Castle, she
and Jamie Winter worked in the small hours, making a hiding-place for
the fugitive. Underneath a bed which drew out they lifted up the boards,
and with their hands, scraped and burrowed in the earth to make a hole
large enough for a man to lie in. To prevent making a noise they used no
tools, and as they dug out the earth it was packed in a sheet, put on
Jamie's back, and carried, Grisell helping, out at the window into the
garden. Not a nail was left upon her fingers when the task was
completed, and a sorely unslept little maid she must have looked at the
end of a month's foraging by day and hard work by night, with that
nerve-tearing walk as a beginning to her nightly labours.
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