ON the seashore not far from the mansion-house of Monkbarns stood the little fisherman's cottage of Saunders Mucklebackit. Saunders it was who had rigged the mast, by which Sir Arthur and his daughter were pulled to the top of the cliffs on the night of the storm. His wife came every day to the door of Monkbarns to sell fish to Miss Griselda, the Antiquary's sister, when the pair of them would stand by the hour "skirling and flyting beneath his window like so many seamaws," as Oldbuck himself said.
Besides Steenie Mucklebackit, the eldest son, the same who had assisted Edie Ochiltree to bestow a well-deserved chastisement upon Dousterswivel, and a number of merry half-naked urchins, the family included the grandmother, Elspeth Mucklebackit--a woman old, but not infirm, whose understanding appeared at most times to be asleep, but the stony terror of whose countenance often frightened the bairns more than their mother's shrill tongue and ready palm.
Elspeth seldom spoke. Indeed, she had done little for many years except twirl the distaff in her corner by the fire. Few cared to have much to do with her. She was thought to be "far from canny," and certainly she knew more about the great family of Glenallan than it was safe to speak aloud.
It chanced on the very night when Edie and Steenie had given a skinful of sore bones to the German impostor Dousterswivel, that the Countess of Glenallan, mother of the Earl, was brought to be buried at midnight among the ruins of St. Ruth.
Such had been the custom of the family from ancient times--indeed, ever since the Great Earl fell fighting at the Red Harlaw against Donald of the Isles. More recently there had been another reason for such a strange fashion of burial. For the family were Catholics, and there had long been laws in Scotland against the holding of popish ceremonials even on an occasion so solemn.
The news of the death of her ancient mistress, coming at last to the ears of old Elspeth, took such hold upon her, that she could not rest till she had sent off Edie Ochiltree to the Earl of Glenallan, at Glenallan House, with a ring for a token and the message that Elspeth of the Craigburnfoot must see him before she died. She had, Edie was to say, a secret on her soul, without revealing which she could not hope to die in peace.