"Nonsense," said Elsie, "take us across, and be done with it. Is it not your own land, your own flowers, and I your nearest of kin?" "Aye," said the old man, shaking his head, "it will be true enough. Ye mind me of Bell's mother--my wife that was. God rest her soul--and her tongue! Ye are never a Stennis. And High Heaven pity the man that is going to run away with you, as I did with your grandam!" Elsie indicated me with her thumb. "Joe is," she said coolly. The Golden Farmer turned and looked me over from head to foot, and I own that with the thought of all we had seen and all that we might yet see, I shook like a leaf. I never had Elsie's assurance, or, more properly, cheek, but followed obediently, and I must own that generally it came out all right when I did as Elsie told me. "Then I pity him," quoth her grandfather, grimly; "but since you will, follow me." And he led the way, first to the tree where he had tethered his beast, and afterwards to the narrow wooden bridge, like a drawbridge in chivalry books, which spans the oily black water of the moat. I came behind with Elsie. All the time I kept putting my hand on her arm to stop her. For I believed that we should never, never cross that bridge again. If Elsie had no fear of her grandfather, I had! And besides, there was Jeremy Orrin with his big knife. Such at least was the idea that kept recurring to my disturbed brain. I could see him swimming the moat with it yet, wild to get at us. There were also the mad sisters, and all the linked terrors of Deep Moat Grange. But not the least bit of notice did Elsie take. She shook my hand off her arm, and told me that if I was afraid I could go back to the school green and play marbles with the little boys. So of course I said no more, but came meekly behind Elsie, and she followed her grandfather. He was leading his horse, that lifted its feet gingerly at the crossing of the wooden bridge, not liking the noise, as horses are wont to do on gangways of ships and when they lead them into trucks at railway stations. In another minute Elsie and I stood within the Moat. And turning round, what was my horror to see the bridge rising slowly into the air behind me, and in a little house at the side, bent double over a wheel, I caught sight of the "mounster," Jeremy Orrin, with a grin on his face and all his dark ringlets shaking and dancing. As we went past he set his head out and called these words after us: "Rats in a trap!" he cried, "rats in a trap!" And I can tell you that I for one felt just as he said. But Elsie followed her grandfather step for step and took no notice. You would have thought she was the crowned queen of the place. CHAPTER VII FAMILY DISCIPLINE As nobody had seen Deep Moat Grange since it had been taken over by Mr. Hobby Stennis and the crew he had gathered about him, it may be as well to describe it as I saw it--now that it is swept from off the face of the earth.