‘Na,’ returned Steenie; ‘ye only said yon hole wasna that place. Ye said the bonny man _was_ there, though I michtna see him. Ye didna say the pictur wasna there.’ ‘The pictur’s no there, Steenie.--We’ve come upon a hole, mother, ’at we want to gang doon intil and see what it’s like,’ said Kirsty. ‘The weicht o’ my feet brak throu intil ’t,’ added Steenie. ‘Preserve ’s, lassie! tak tent whaur ye cairry the bairn!’ cried the mother. ‘But, eh, tak him whaur ye like,’ she substituted, correcting herself. ‘Weel ken I ye’ll tak him naegait but whaur it’s weel he sud gang! The laddie needs twa mithers, and the Merciful has gien him the twa! Ye’re full mair his mither nor me, Kirsty!’ She asked no more questions, but got them the candle and let them go. They hastened back, Steenie in his most jubilant mood, which seemed always to have in it a touch of deathly frost and a flash as of the primal fire. What could be the strange displacement or maladjustment which, in the brain harbouring the immortal thing, troubled it so, and made it yearn after an untasted liberty? The source of his jubilance now was easy to tell: the idea of the bonny man was henceforth, in that troubled brain of his, associated with the place into which they were about to descend. The moment they reached the spot, Kirsty, to the renewed astonishment of Steenie, dived at once into the ground at her feet, and disappeared. ‘Kirsty! Kirsty!’ he cried out after her, and danced like a terrified child. Then he shook with a fresh dismay at the muffled sound that came back to him in answer from the unseen hollows of the earth. Already Kirsty stood at the bottom of the sloping tunnel, and was lighting her candle. When it burned up, she found herself looking into a level gallery, the roof of which she could touch. It was not an excavation, but had been trenched from the surface, for it was roofed with great slabs of stone. Its sides, of rough stones, were six or seven feet apart at the floor, which was paved with small boulders, but sloped so much toward each other that at the top their distance was less by about two and a half feet. Kirsty was, as I have said, a keen observer, and her power of seeing had been greatly developed through her constant conscientious endeavour to realize every description she read. She went on about ten or twelve yards, and came to a bend in the gallery, succeeded by a sort of chamber, whence branched a second gallery, which soon came to an end. The place was in truth not unlike a catacomb, only its two galleries were built, and much wider than the excavated thousands in the catacombs. She turned back to the entrance, there left her candle alight, and again startled Steenie, still staring into the mouth of the hole, with her sudden reappearance. ‘Wud ye like to come doon, Steenie?’ she said. ‘It’s a queer place.’ ‘Is ’t awfu’ fearsome?’ asked Steenie, shrinking.