of them a-barking.  But Lady Home sent for the minister next day, and upon the pretence of one of them being mad, persuaded their owner to hang them all.  Grisell and her father had the same sunny nature, and both dearly loved a joke, and each amusing little incident of the day was saved up by the former to be told while the prisoner made a meal on the food which she brought with her.  Many a hearty laugh they had together in that dark, dismal place, and often Grisell stayed so late that she had to run up the glen, so as to get home before day dawned.  The difficulties she encountered in securing food enough for her father without arousing the suspicion of the servants was always a subject for jest, for, more often than not, the only possible means of getting the food was by surreptitiously conveying it, during a meal, from her own plate into her lap.  Her amazing appetite was bound to be commented upon, but never did she surprise her brothers and sisters more than on a day when the chief dish at dinner was her father’s favourite one—­sheep’s head.  While the younger members of the family were very busy over their broth, Grisell conveyed to her lap the greater part of the head.  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.  The hole being ready, Jamie Winter conveyed to it a large deep wooden box which he had made at home, with air-holes in the lid, and furnished with mattress and bedding, and this was fitted into the place made for it.  It was then Grisell’s duty to examine it daily, and to keep the air-holes clean picked, and when it had for some weeks stood trial of no water coming into it from its being sunk so low in the ground, Sir Patrick one night came home.  For a couple of weeks only was Redbraes his sanctuary, for, on Christmas Day, upon Grisell lifting the boards as usual to see that all was well with the lair that her father was to retire to in case of a sudden surprise, the mattress bounced to the top, the box being full of water.  The poor child nearly fainted from horror, but Sir Patrick remained quite calm.