Even groceries, and a taste of the stuff they sell in town for "bacon ham"--to be sniffed at and to become the butt for all the goodwives in the parish--no tea, for Mary Lyon knew where that could be got better and cheaper, but a _Pilgrim's Progress_ for a neighbour lad who was known to be fond of the reading and deserved to be encouraged--lastly, as a vast secret, a gold wedding-ring which could not be bought without talk in Eden Valley itself. Grandmother did not tell us for whom this was intended. Nor did we know, till the little smile lurking at the corner of her mouth revealed the mystery, when Agnes Anne came home from the kirk and named who had been "cried" that day. It was no other than our sly Eben--and Miss Gertrude Greensleeves was the name of the bride--far too young for him, of course, but--he had taken his mother into his confidence and not a man of us dared say a word. Doubtless the women did, but even they not in the hearing of Mary Lyon. But now we were at rest, and quite ten days ago grandmother had arrived with her cargo. The commissions were all distributed. The parish had had a solid week to get over its amazement. And, to put all in the background, there had been a successful run into Portowarren and another the same night to Balcary--a thing not often done in the very height of summer. Yet, because the preventive men were not expecting it, perhaps safer then than at any other time. And above all and swamping all the endless talk of a busy, heartsome farm-town! Ah, how good it was. Even the little god in the "ben" room, Master Duncan Maitland MacAlpine, had times and seasons without a worshipper, all because there was a young farmer's son in the kitchen telling of his experiences "among the hills," with the gaugers behind them, and the morn breaking fast ahead. How they must get to a place where they could hide, a place with water, where they could restore their beasts and repose themselves, a place of great shadowing rocks in a weary land. For of a certainty the sun would smite by day, even if the moon afforded them guidance over the waste by night. Or Boyd Connoway would tell of the _Golden Hind_ having been seen out in the channel, of rafts of "buoyed" casks sunk to within three foot of the bottom, to be fished up when on a dark night the herring craft slipped out of Balcary or the Scaur, silent as a shadow. Or mayhap (and this, married or single, Irma liked best of all) there came in some shy old farmer from the uplands, or perhaps a herd, to whose boy or girl "out at service" the mistress of Heathknowes had brought home a Bible. These had come to thank Mary Lyon, but could not get a word out. They sipped their currant wine as if it were medicine and moved uneasily on the edges of their chairs. They had excellent manners stowed away somewhere--the natural well-bredness of the hill and the heather, but in a place like that, with so many folk, it seemed as if they had somehow mislaid them.