But at night! To test your nerves you walked alone between the double dykes, and the popular practice was to start off whistling, which keeps up the courage.

At the point where you turned to run back (the Painted Lady after you, or so you thought) you dropped a marked stone, which told next day how far you had ventured.

Corp Shiach long held the championship, and his stone was ostentatiously fixed in one of the dykes with lime.

Tommy had suffered at his hands for saying that Shovel's mark was thirty yards farther on.
With head bent to the level of the dykes, though it was almost a mirk night beneath the trees, and one arm outstretched before him straight as an elvint, Tommy faced this fearful passage, sometimes stopping to touch cold iron, but on the whole hanging back little, for Elspeth was in peril.

Soon he reached the paling that was not needed to keep boys out of the Painted Lady's garden, one of the prettiest and best-tended flower-gardens in Thrums, and crawling through where some spars had fallen, he approached the door as noiseless as an Indian brave after scalps.