No, no; when Jean Myles forgot the names of her children she would still
remember the Cuttle Well. Regardless now of the whispering between Tommy
and Elspeth, she sat long over the fire, and it is not difficult to
fathom her thoughts. They were of the Den and the Cuttle Well.

Into the life of every man, and no woman, there comes a moment when he
learns suddenly that he is held eligible for marriage. A girl gives him
the jag, and it brings out the perspiration. Of the issue elsewhere of
this stab with a bodkin let others speak; in Thrums its commonest effect
is to make the callant's body take a right angle to his legs, for he has
been touched in the fifth button, and he backs away broken-winded. By
and by, however, he is at his work--among the turnip-shoots,
say--guffawing and clapping his corduroys, with pauses for uneasy
meditation, and there he ripens with the swedes, so that by the
back-end of the year he has discovered, and exults to know, that the
reward of manhood is neither more nor less than this sensation at the
ribs. Soon thereafter, or at worst, sooner or later (for by holding out
he only puts the women's dander up), he is led captive to the Cuttle
Well. This well has the reputation of being the place where it is most
easily said.

The wooded ravine called the Den is in Thrums rather than on its western
edge, but is so craftily hidden away that when within a stone's throw
you may give up the search for it; it is also so deep that larks rise
from the bottom and carol overhead, thinking themselves high in the
heavens before they are on a level with Nether Drumley's farmland. In
shape it is almost a semicircle, but its size depends on you and the
maid. If she be with you, the Den is so large that you must rest here
and there; if you are after her boldly, you can dash to the Cuttle Well,
which was the trysting-place, in the time a stout man takes to lace his