A ROMANCE OF TWO OLD MAIDS AND A STOUT BACHELOR Came Gavinia, a burgess of the besieged city, along the south shore of the Silent Pool.

She was but a maid seeking to know what love might be, and as she wandered on, she nibbled dreamily at a hot sweet-smelling bridie, whose gravy oozed deliciously through a bursting paper-bag.
It was a fit night for dark deeds.
"Methinks she cometh to her damn!" The speaker was a masked man who had followed her--he was sniffing ecstatically--since she left the city walls.
She seemed to possess a charmed life.

He would have had her in Shovel Gorge, but just then Ronny-On's Jean and Peter Scrymgeour turned the corner.
Suddenly Gavinia felt an exquisite thrill: a man was pursuing her.

She slipped the paper-bag out of sight, holding it dexterously against her side with her arm, so that the gravy should not spurt out, and ran.
Lights flashed, a kingly voice cried "Now!" and immediately a petticoat was flung over her head.

(The Lady Griselda looked thin that evening.) Gavinia was dragged to the Lair, and though many a time they bumped her, she still tenderly nursed the paper-bag with her arm, or fondly thought she did so, for when unmuffled she discovered that it had been removed, as if by painless surgery.