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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Minister, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Minister
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Illustrator: C. Allen Gilbert
+
+Release Date: October 29, 2010 [EBook #33901]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MINISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Katherine Ward, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+The Little Minister
+
+_By_
+
+J. M. BARRIE
+
+Maude Adams Edition
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  R. H. RUSSELL: Publisher
+  1898
+
+  Copyright 1891 and 1895
+  By UNITED STATES BOOK CO.
+
+  Copyright 1898
+  By ROBERT HOWARD RUSSELL
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+        I. The Love-Light.                                           1
+       II. Runs Alongside the Making of a Minister.                  7
+      III. The Night-Watchers.                                      17
+       IV. First Coming of the Egyptian Woman.                      30
+        V. A Warlike Chapter, Culminating in the Flouting of the
+               Minister by the Woman.                               42
+       VI. In Which the Soldiers Meet the Amazons of Thrums.        50
+      VII. Has the Folly of Looking into a Woman's Eyes by way
+               of Text.                                             62
+     VIII. 3 A.M.--Monstrous Audacity of the Woman.                 69
+       IX. The Woman Considered in Absence--Adventures of a
+               Military Cloak.                                      79
+        X. First Sermon Against Women.                              89
+       XI. Tells in a Whisper of Man's Fall During the Curling
+               Season.                                             100
+      XII. Tragedy of a Mud House.                                 110
+     XIII. Second Coming of the Egyptian Woman.                    117
+      XIV. The Minister Dances to the Woman's Piping.              125
+       XV. The Minister Bewitched--Second Sermon against Women.    135
+      XVI. Continued Misbehaviour of the Egyptian Woman.           143
+     XVII. Intrusion of Haggart into These Pages against the
+               Author's Wish.                                      151
+    XVIII. Caddam--Love Leading to a Rupture.                      161
+      XIX. Circumstances Leading to the First Sermon in Approval
+               of Women.                                           169
+       XX. End of the State of Indecision.                         177
+      XXI. Night--Margaret--Flashing of a Lantern.                 186
+     XXII. Lovers.                                                 196
+    XXIII. Contains a Birth, Which is Sufficient for One
+               Chapter.                                            205
+     XXIV. The New World, and the Woman Who May Not Dwell
+               Therein.                                            211
+      XXV. Beginning of the Twenty-Four Hours.                     217
+     XXVI. Scene at the Spittal.                                   225
+    XXVII. First Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the
+               Twenty-Four Hours.                                  232
+   XXVIII. The Hill before Darkness Fell--Scene of the Impending
+               Catastrophe.                                        237
+     XXIX. Story of the Egyptian.                                  244
+      XXX. The Meeting for Rain.                                   252
+     XXXI. Various Bodies Converging on the Hill.                  259
+    XXXII. Leading Swiftly to the Appalling Marriage.              268
+   XXXIII. While the Ten O'Clock Bell Was Ringing.                 274
+    XXXIV. The Great Rain.                                         281
+     XXXV. The Glen at Break of Day.                               285
+    XXXVI. Story of the Dominie.                                   299
+   XXXVII. Second Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the
+               Twenty-Four Hours.                                  308
+  XXXVIII. Thrums during the Twenty-Four Hours--Defence of the
+               Manse.                                              315
+    XXXIX. How Babbie Spent the Night of August Fourth.            324
+       XL. Babbie and Margaret--Defence of the Manse Continued.    330
+      XLI. Rintoul and Babbie--Breakdown of the Defence of the
+               Manse.                                              337
+     XLII. Margaret, the Precentor, and God Between.               345
+    XLIII. Rain--Mist--The Jaws.                                   353
+     XLIV. End of the Twenty-Four Hours.                           363
+      XLV. Talk of a Little Maid Since Grown Tall.                 369
+
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL GI'E YOU MY RABBIT," MICAH SAID, "IF YOU'LL GANG
+AWA'."--PAGE 215.]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The illustrations in this book have been made especially for this
+edition of The Little Minister by arrangement with Mr. Charles
+Frohman, through whose courtesy they are here reproduced. Many of them
+were drawn by C. Allen Gilbert, while others are from photographs
+which appear here for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One.
+
+THE LOVE-LIGHT.
+
+
+Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king's
+soldier without whistling impudently, "Come ower the water to
+Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something
+happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed
+in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was
+white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The meeting had only one
+witness, a weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards, "They didna speak,
+but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in
+their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being now living
+ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered
+weaver makes them human to us for ever.
+
+It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know
+that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many
+readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was
+one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met
+them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.
+
+Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and his mother came to
+Thrums, light-hearted like the traveller who knows not what awaits him
+at the bend of the road. It was the time of year when the ground is
+carpeted beneath the firs with brown needles, when split-nuts patter
+all day from the beech, and children lay yellow corn on the dominie's
+desk to remind him that now they are needed in the fields. The day was
+so silent that carts could be heard rumbling a mile away. All Thrums
+was out in its wynds and closes--a few of the weavers still in
+knee-breeches--to look at the new Auld Licht minister. I was there
+too, the dominie of Glen Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums;
+and heavy was my heart as I stood afar off so that Gavin's mother
+might not have the pain of seeing me. I was the only one in the crowd
+who looked at her more than at her son.
+
+Eighteen years had passed since we parted. Already her hair had lost
+the brightness of its youth, and she seemed to me smaller and more
+fragile; and the face that I loved when I was a hobbledehoy, and loved
+when I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always shall love till
+I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old woman, and she was only
+forty-three; and I am the man who made her old. As Gavin put his eager
+boyish face out at the carriage window, many saw that he was holding
+her hand, but none could be glad at the sight as the dominie was glad,
+looking on at a happiness in which he dared not mingle. Margaret was
+crying because she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor sons
+to be proud of, good mothers, but I would not have you dry those
+tears.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN THRUMS.]
+
+When the little minister looked out at the carriage window, many of
+the people drew back humbly, but a little boy in a red frock with
+black spots pressed forward and offered him a sticky parly, which
+Gavin accepted, though not without a tremor, for children were more
+terrible to him then than bearded men. The boy's mother, trying not to
+look elated, bore him away, but her face said that he was made for
+life. With this little incident Gavin's career in Thrums began. I
+remembered it suddenly the other day when wading across the wynd where
+it took place. Many scenes in the little minister's life come back to
+me in this way. The first time I ever thought of writing his love
+story as an old man's gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one
+night while I sat alone in the school-house; on my knees a fiddle that
+has been my only living companion since I sold my hens. My mind had
+drifted back to the first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together,
+and what set it wandering to that midnight meeting was my garden gate
+shaking in the wind. At a gate on the hill I had first encountered
+these two. It rattled in his hand, and I looked up and saw them, and
+neither knew why I had such cause to start at the sight. Then the gate
+swung to. It had just such a click as mine.
+
+These two figures on the hill are more real to me than things that
+happened yesterday, but I do not know that I can make them live to
+others. A ghost-show used to come yearly to Thrums on the merry Muckle
+Friday, in which the illusion was contrived by hanging a glass between
+the onlookers and the stage. I cannot deny that the comings and goings
+of the ghost were highly diverting, yet the farmer of T'nowhead only
+laughed because he had paid his money at the hole in the door like the
+rest of us. T'nowhead sat at the end of a form where he saw round the
+glass and so saw no ghost. I fear my public may be in the same
+predicament. I see the little minister as he was at one-and-twenty,
+and the little girl to whom this story is to belong sees him, though
+the things I have to tell happened before she came into the world. But
+there are reasons why she should see; and I do not know that I can
+provide the glass for others. If they see round it, they will neither
+laugh nor cry with Gavin and Babbie.
+
+When Gavin came to Thrums he was as I am now, for the pages lay before
+him on which he was to write his life. Yet he was not quite as I am.
+The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story,
+and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the
+volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. But the biographer sees
+the last chapter while he is still at the first, and I have only to
+write over with ink what Gavin has written in pencil.
+
+How often is it a phantom woman who draws the man from the way he
+meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above
+himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a
+girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned
+her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of
+idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on
+their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when
+he wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he
+have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after
+little things will not go far. His love may now sink into passion,
+perhaps only to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.
+
+Babbie, what shall I say of you who make me write these things? I am
+not your judge. Shall we not laugh at the student who chafes when
+between him and his book comes the song of the thrushes, with whom, on
+the mad night you danced into Gavin's life, you had more in common
+than with Auld Licht ministers? The gladness of living was in your
+step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what love might be.
+
+[Illustration: "BABBIE."]
+
+You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds are
+free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to dazzle the
+eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken by you into
+his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a
+thing could be; to think of you is still to be young. Even those who
+called you a little devil, of whom I have been one, admitted that
+in the end you had a soul, though not that you had been born with one.
+They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I
+say I am not your judge, and when I picture you as Gavin saw you
+first, a bare-legged witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in
+your black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister could
+not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows on my pages lift,
+and I cannot wonder that Gavin loved you.
+
+Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin's story, not mine.
+Yet must it be mine too, in a manner, and of myself I shall
+sometimes have to speak; not willingly, for it is time my little
+tragedy had died of old age. I have kept it to myself so long that
+now I would stand at its grave alone. It is true that when I heard
+who was to be the new minister I hoped for a day that the life broken
+in Harvie might be mended in Thrums, but two minutes' talk with Gavin
+showed me that Margaret had kept from him the secret which was hers
+and mine, and so knocked the bottom out of my vain hopes. I did
+not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor shall any one who
+blames her ever be called friend by me; but it was bitter to look at
+the white manse among the trees and know that I must never enter it.
+For Margaret's sake I had to keep aloof, yet this new trial came
+upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought that in those eighteen
+years my passions had burned like a ship till they sank, but I
+suffered again as on that awful night when Adam Dishart came back,
+nearly killing Margaret and tearing up all my ambitions by the
+root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums until I had looked again
+on Margaret, who thought me dead, and Gavin, who had never heard
+of me, and then I trudged back to the school-house. Something I
+heard of them from time to time during the winter--for in the
+gossip of Thrums I was well posted--but much of what is to be told
+here I only learned afterwards from those who knew it best. Gavin
+heard of me at times as the dominie in the glen who had ceased to
+attend the Auld Licht kirk, and Margaret did not even hear of me. It
+was all I could do for them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Two.
+
+RUNS ALONGSIDE THE MAKING OF A MINISTER.
+
+
+On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a quarry, at the foot
+of cliffs that may one day fall forward, is a village called Harvie.
+So has it shrunk since the day when I skulked from it that I hear of a
+traveller's asking lately at one of its doors how far he was from a
+village; yet Harvie throve once and was celebrated even in distant
+Thrums for its fish. Most of our weavers would have thought it as
+unnatural not to buy harvies in the square on the Muckle Friday, as to
+let Saturday night pass without laying in a sufficient stock of
+halfpennies to go round the family twice.
+
+Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early age that he
+could only recall thatched houses with nets drying on the roofs, and a
+sandy shore in which coarse grass grew. In the picture he could not
+pick out the house of his birth, though he might have been able to go
+to it had he ever returned to the village. Soon he learned that his
+mother did not care to speak of Harvie, and perhaps he thought that
+she had forgotten it too, all save one scene to which his memory still
+guided him. When his mind wandered to Harvie, Gavin saw the door of
+his home open and a fisherman enter, who scratched his head and then
+said, "Your man's drowned, missis." Gavin seemed to see many women
+crying, and his mother staring at them with a face suddenly painted
+white, and next to hear a voice that was his own saying, "Never mind,
+mother; I'll be a man to you now, and I'll need breeks for the
+burial." But Adam required no funeral, for his body lay deep in the
+sea.
+
+Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his mother's life, and the
+most memorable event of his own childhood. But it was neither. When
+Margaret, even after she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie, it was not
+at Adam's death she shuddered, but at the recollection of me.
+
+It would ill become me to take a late revenge on Adam Dishart now by
+saying what is not true of him. Though he died a fisherman he was a
+sailor for a great part of his life, and doubtless his recklessness
+was washed into him on the high seas, where in his time men made a
+crony of death, and drank merrily over dodging it for another night.
+To me his roars of laughter without cause were as repellent as a boy's
+drum; yet many faces that were long in my company brightened at his
+coming, and women, with whom, despite my yearning, I was in no wise a
+favorite, ran to their doors to listen to him as readily as to the
+bell-man. Children scurried from him if his mood was savage, but to
+him at all other times, while me they merely disregarded. There was
+always a smell of the sea about him. He had a rolling gait, unless he
+was drunk, when he walked very straight, and before both sexes he
+boasted that any woman would take him for his beard alone. Of this
+beard he took prodigious care, though otherwise thinking little of his
+appearance, and I now see that he understood women better than I did,
+who had nevertheless reflected much about them. It cannot be said that
+he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women strangely, that,
+I maintain, is a weakness common to all men, and so no more to be
+marvelled at than a stake in a fence. Foreign oaths were the nails
+with which he held his talk together, yet I doubt not they were a
+curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains of shells, more for his own
+pleasure than for others' pain. His friends gave them no weight, and
+when he wanted to talk emphatically he kept them back, though they
+were then as troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who
+has to speak with his spoil in his mouth.
+
+Adam was drowned on Gavin's fourth birthday, a year after I had to
+leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack in a storm, and could not
+reach the rope his partner flung him. "It's no go, lad," he shouted;
+"so long, Jim," and sank.
+
+A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the smack, which was all
+Adam left her, and the furniture of the house was rouped. She took
+Gavin to Glasgow, where her only brother needed a housekeeper, and
+there mother and son remained until Gavin got his call to Thrums.
+During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of them as completely as
+Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On hearing of Adam's death I went
+back to Harvie to try to trace her, but she had feared this, and so
+told no one where she was going.
+
+According to Margaret, Gavin's genius showed itself while he was still
+a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed her from the
+first. It was a minister's brow, and though Margaret herself was no
+scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at turning bannocks on
+the girdle, she decided, when his age was still counted by months,
+that the ministry had need of him. In those days the first question
+asked of a child was not, "Tell me your name," but "What are you to
+be?" and one child in every family replied, "A minister." He was set
+apart for the Church as doggedly as the shilling a week for the rent,
+and the rule held good though the family consisted of only one boy.
+From his earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the
+ministry as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced
+and marvelled thereat, though she had made her own puzzle. An
+enthusiastic mother may bend her son's mind as she chooses if she
+begins at once; nay, she may do stranger things. I know a mother in
+Thrums who loves "features," and had a child born with no chin to
+speak of. The neighbors expected this to bring her to the dust, but it
+only showed what a mother can do. In a few months that child had a
+chin with the best of them.
+
+Margaret's brother died, but she remained in his single room, and,
+ever with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived to
+keep Gavin at school. Everything a woman's fingers can do Margaret's
+did better than most, and among the wealthy people who employed
+her--would that I could have the teaching of the sons of such as were
+good to her in those hard days!--her gentle manner was spoken of. For
+though Margaret had no schooling, she was a lady at heart, moving and
+almost speaking as one even in Harvie, where they did not perhaps like
+her the better for it.
+
+At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established
+Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter
+Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was
+eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
+studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever
+medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin
+watched the minister's every movement, noting that the first thing to
+do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as
+if the exalted position affected you like a strong light, and the
+second to move the big Bible slightly, to show that the kirk officer,
+not having had a university education, could not be expected to know
+the very spot on which it ought to lie. Gavin saw that the minister
+joined in the singing more like one countenancing a seemly thing than
+because he needed it himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and
+again after the congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It
+was noteworthy that the first prayer lasted longer than all the
+others, and that to read the intimations about the Bible-class and the
+collection elsewhere than immediately before the last Psalm would have
+been as sacrilegious as to insert the dedication to King James at the
+end of Revelation. Sitting under a minister justly honoured in his
+day, the boy was often some words in advance of him, not vainglorious
+of his memory, but fervent, eager, and regarding the preacher as
+hardly less sacred than the Book. Gavin was encouraged by his
+frightened yet admiring mother to saw the air from their pew as the
+minister sawed it in the pulpit, and two benedictions were pronounced
+twice a Sabbath in that church, in the same words, the same manner,
+and simultaneously.
+
+There was a black year when the things of this world, especially its
+pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret he would
+rather be good at the high jump than the author of "The Pilgrim's
+Progress." That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind. One
+afternoon Margaret was at home making a glengarry for him out of a
+piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded
+in from school, crying, "Come quick, mother, and you'll see him."
+Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from
+Gavin and his friends. "Did you take stock of him, mother?" the boy
+asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back.
+"He's a Papist!--a sore sight, mother, a sore sight. We stoned him for
+persecuting the noble Martyrs."
+
+When Gavin was twelve he went to the university, and also got a place
+in a shop as errand boy. He used to run through the streets between
+his work and his classes. Potatoes and salt fish, which could then be
+got at two pence the pound if bought by the half-hundred weight, were
+his food. There was not always a good meal for two, yet when Gavin
+reached home at night there was generally something ready for him,
+and Margaret had supped "hours ago." Gavin's hunger urged him to fall
+to, but his love for his mother made him watchful.
+
+"What did you have yourself, mother?" he would demand suspiciously.
+
+"Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you."
+
+"What had you?"
+
+"I had potatoes, for one thing."
+
+"And dripping?"
+
+"You may be sure."
+
+"Mother, you're cheating me. The dripping hasn't been touched since
+yesterday."
+
+"I dinna--don't--care for dripping--no much."
+
+Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer little figure.
+
+"Do you think I'll stand this, mother? Will I let myself be pampered
+with dripping and every delicacy while you starve?"
+
+"Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping."
+
+"Then I'll give up my classes, and we can have butter."
+
+"I assure you I'm no hungry. It's different wi' a growing laddie."
+
+"I'm not a growing laddie," Gavin would say, bitterly; "but, mother, I
+warn you that not another bite passes my throat till I see you eating
+too."
+
+So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and when she said "I
+can eat no more," Gavin retorted sternly, "Nor will I, for fine I see
+through you."
+
+These two were as one far more than most married people, and, just as
+Gavin in his childhood reflected his mother, she now reflected him.
+The people for whom she sewed thought it was contact with them that
+had rubbed the broad Scotch from her tongue, but she was only keeping
+pace with Gavin. When she was excited the Harvie words came back to
+her, as they come back to me. I have taught the English language all
+my life, and I try to write it, but everything I say in this book I
+first think to myself in the Doric. This, too, I notice, that in
+talking to myself I am broader than when gossiping with the farmers of
+the glen, who send their children to me to learn English, and then
+jeer at them if they say "old lights" instead of "auld lichts."
+
+To Margaret it was happiness to sit through the long evenings sewing,
+and look over her work at Gavin as he read or wrote or recited to
+himself the learning of the schools. But she coughed every time the
+weather changed, and then Gavin would start.
+
+"You must go to your bed, mother," he would say, tearing himself from
+his books; or he would sit beside her and talk of the dream that was
+common to both--a dream of a manse where Margaret was mistress and
+Gavin was called the minister. Every night Gavin was at his mother's
+bedside to wind her shawl round her feet, and while he did it Margaret
+smiled.
+
+"Mother, this is the chaff pillow you've taken out of my bed, and
+given me your feather one."
+
+"Gavin, you needna change them. I winna have the feather pillow."
+
+"Do you dare to think I'll let you sleep on chaff? Put up your head.
+Now, is that soft?"
+
+"It's fine. I dinna deny but what I sleep better on feathers. Do you
+mind, Gavin, you bought this pillow for me the moment you got your
+bursary money?"
+
+The reserve that is a wall between many of the Scottish poor had been
+broken down by these two. When he saw his mother sleeping happily,
+Gavin went back to his work. To save the expense of a lamp, he would
+put his book almost beneath the dying fire, and, taking the place of
+the fender, read till he was shivering with cold.
+
+"Gavin, it is near morning, and you not in your bed yet! What are you
+thinking about so hard?"
+
+"Oh, mother, I was wondering if the time would ever come when I would
+be a minister, and you would have an egg for your breakfast every
+morning."
+
+So the years passed, and soon Gavin would be a minister. He had now
+sermons to prepare, and every one of them was first preached to
+Margaret. How solemn was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how stern
+were his admonitions.
+
+"Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of God is on you. I'm
+ashamed you should have me for a mother."
+
+"God grant, mother," Gavin said, little thinking what was soon to
+happen, or he would have made this prayer on his knees, "that you may
+never be ashamed to have me for a son."
+
+"Ah, mother," he would say wistfully, "it is not a great sermon, but
+do you think I'm preaching Christ? That is what I try, but I'm carried
+away and forget to watch myself."
+
+"The Lord has you by the hand, Gavin; and mind, I dinna say that
+because you're my laddie."
+
+"Yes, you do, mother, and well I know it, and yet it does me good to
+hear you."
+
+That it did him good I, who would fain have shared those days with
+them, am very sure. The praise that comes of love does not make us
+vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in
+our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing
+a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not
+burn some of the sin out of him.
+
+Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got his call, a great
+event took place in the little room at Glasgow. The student appeared
+for the first time before his mother in his ministerial clothes. He
+wore the black silk hat, that was destined to become a terror to
+evil-doers in Thrums, and I dare say he was rather puffed up about
+himself that day. You would probably have smiled at him.
+
+"It's a pity I'm so little, mother," he said with a sigh.
+
+"You're no what I would call a particularly long man," Margaret said,
+"but you're just the height I like."
+
+Then Gavin went out in his grandeur, and Margaret cried for an hour.
+She was thinking of me as well as of Gavin, and as it happens, I know
+that I was thinking at the same time of her. Gavin kept a diary in
+those days, which I have seen, and by comparing it with mine, I
+discovered that while he was showing himself to his mother in his
+black clothes, I was on my way back from Tilliedrum, where I had gone
+to buy a sand-glass for the school. The one I bought was so like
+another Margaret had used at Harvie that it set me thinking of her
+again all the way home. This is a matter hardly worth mentioning, and
+yet it interests me.
+
+Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin had difficulty in
+forcing himself to his sermons when there was always something more to
+tell his mother about the weaving town they were going to, or about
+the manse or the furniture that had been transferred to him by the
+retiring minister. The little room which had become so familiar that
+it seemed one of a family party of three had to be stripped, and many
+of its contents were sold. Among what were brought to Thrums was a
+little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried, unknown to Gavin,
+to teach herself writing and grammar, that she might be less unfit for
+a manse. He found it accidentally one day. It was full of "I am, thou
+art, he is," and the like, written many times in a shaking hand. Gavin
+put his arms round his mother when he saw what she had been doing. The
+exercise book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid's when I
+die.
+
+"Gavin, Gavin," Margaret said many times in those last days at
+Glasgow, "to think it has all come true!"
+
+"Let the last word you say in the house be a prayer of thankfulness,"
+she whispered to him when they were taking a final glance at the old
+home.
+
+In the bare room they called the house, the little minister and his
+mother went on their knees, but, as it chanced, their last word there
+was not addressed to God.
+
+"Gavin," Margaret whispered as he took her arm, "do you think this
+bonnet sets me?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Three.
+
+THE NIGHT-WATCHERS.
+
+
+What first struck Margaret in Thrums was the smell of the caddis. The
+town smells of caddis no longer, but whiffs of it may be got even now
+as one passes the houses of the old, where the lay still swings at
+little windows like a great ghost pendulum. To me it is a homely
+smell, which I draw in with a great breath, but it was as strange to
+Margaret as the weavers themselves, who, in their colored nightcaps
+and corduroys streaked with threads, gazed at her and Gavin. The
+little minister was trying to look severe and old, but twenty-one was
+in his eye.
+
+"Look, mother, at that white house with the green roof. That is the
+manse."
+
+The manse stands high, with a sharp eye on all the town. Every back
+window in the Tenements has a glint of it, and so the back of the
+Tenements is always better behaved than the front. It was in the front
+that Jamie Don, a pitiful bachelor all his life because he thought the
+women proposed, kept his ferrets, and here, too, Beattie hanged
+himself, going straight to the clothes-posts for another rope when the
+first one broke, such was his determination. In the front Sanders
+Gilruth openly boasted (on Don's potato-pit) that by having a seat in
+two churches he could lie in bed on Sabbath and get the credit of
+being at one or other. (Gavin made short work of him.) To the
+right-minded the Auld Licht manse was as a family Bible, ever lying
+open before them, but Beattie spoke for more than himself when he
+said, "Dagone that manse! I never gie a swear but there it is
+glowering at me."
+
+The manse looks down on the town from the north-east, and is reached
+from the road that leaves Thrums behind it in another moment by a
+wide, straight path, so rough that to carry a fraught of water to the
+manse without spilling was to be superlatively good at one thing.
+Packages in a cart it set leaping like trout in a fishing-creel.
+Opposite the opening of the garden wall in the manse, where for many
+years there had been an intention of putting up a gate, were two big
+stones a yard apart, standing ready for the winter, when the path was
+often a rush of yellow water, and this the only bridge to the glebe
+dyke, down which the minister walked to church.
+
+When Margaret entered the manse on Gavin's arm, it was a whitewashed
+house of five rooms, with a garret in which the minister could sleep
+if he had guests, as during the Fast week. It stood with its garden
+within high walls, and the roof facing southward was carpeted with
+moss that shone in the sun in a dozen shades of green and yellow.
+Three firs guarded the house from west winds, but blasts from the
+north often tore down the steep fields and skirled through the manse,
+banging all its doors at once. A beech, growing on the east side,
+leant over the roof as if to gossip with the well in the courtyard.
+The garden was to the south, and was over full of gooseberry and
+currant bushes. It contained a summer seat, where strange things were
+soon to happen.
+
+Margaret would not even take off her bonnet until she had seen through
+the manse and opened all the presses. The parlour and kitchen were
+downstairs, and of the three rooms above, the study was so small that
+Gavin's predecessor could touch each of its walls without shifting his
+position. Every room save Margaret's had long-lidded beds, which close
+as if with shutters, but hers was coff-fronted, or comparatively
+open, with carving on the wood like the ornamentation of coffins.
+Where there were children in a house they liked to slope the boards of
+the closed-in bed against the dresser, and play at sliding down
+mountains on them.
+
+But for many years there had been no children in the manse. He in
+whose ways Gavin was to attempt the heavy task of walking had been a
+widower three months after his marriage, a man narrow when he came to
+Thrums, but so large-hearted when he left it that I, who know there is
+good in all the world because of the lovable souls I have met in this
+corner of it, yet cannot hope that many are as near to God as he. The
+most gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very low; the
+saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom rise high. Of those
+who stand perceptibly above their fellows I have known very few; only
+Mr. Carfrae and two or three women.
+
+Gavin only saw a very frail old minister who shook as he walked, as if
+his feet were striking against stones. He was to depart on the morrow
+to the place of his birth, but he came to the manse to wish his
+successor God-speed. Strangers were so formidable to Margaret that she
+only saw him from her window.
+
+"May you never lose sight of God, Mr. Dishart," the old man said in
+the parlour. Then he added, as if he had asked too much, "May you
+never turn from Him as I often did when I was a lad like you."
+
+As this aged minister, with the beautiful face that God gives to all
+who love Him and follow His commandments, spoke of his youth, he
+looked wistfully around the faded parlour.
+
+"It is like a dream," he said. "The first time I entered this room the
+thought passed through me that I would cut down that cherry-tree,
+because it kept out the light, but, you see, it outlives me. I grew
+old while looking for the axe. Only yesterday I was the young
+minister, Mr. Dishart, and to-morrow you will be the old one, bidding
+good-bye to your successor."
+
+His eyes came back to Gavin's eager face.
+
+"You are very young, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"Nearly twenty-one."
+
+"Twenty-one! Ah, my dear sir, you do not know how pathetic that sounds
+to me. Twenty-one! We are children for the second time at twenty-one,
+and again when we are grey and put all our burden on the Lord. The
+young talk generously of relieving the old of their burdens, but the
+anxious heart is to the old when they see a load on the back of the
+young. Let me tell you, Mr. Dishart, that I would condone many things
+in one-and-twenty now that I dealt hardly with at middle age. God
+Himself, I think, is very willing to give one-and-twenty a second
+chance."
+
+"I am afraid," Gavin said anxiously, "that I look even younger."
+
+"I think," Mr. Carfrae answered, smiling, "that your heart is as fresh
+as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never
+change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long
+afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums
+memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry.
+When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in
+humility."
+
+He paused.
+
+"I hope," he said nervously, "that you don't sing the Paraphrases?"
+
+Mr. Carfrae had not grown out of all his prejudices, you see; indeed,
+if Gavin had been less bigoted than he on this question they might
+have parted stiffly. The old minister would rather have remained to
+die in his pulpit than surrender it to one who read his sermons.
+Others may blame him for this, but I must say here plainly that I
+never hear a minister reading without wishing to send him back to
+college.
+
+"I cannot deny," Mr. Carfrae said, "that I broke down more than once
+to-day. This forenoon I was in Tillyloss, for the last time, and it
+so happens that there is scarcely a house in it in which I have not
+had a marriage or prayed over a coffin. Ah, sir, these are the scenes
+that make the minister more than all his sermons. You must join
+the family, Mr. Dishart, or you are only a minister once a week. And
+remember this, if your call is from above, it is a call to stay. Many
+such partings in a lifetime as I have had to-day would be too
+heartrending."
+
+"And yet," Gavin said, hesitatingly, "they told me in Glasgow that I
+had received a call from the mouth of hell."
+
+"Those were cruel words, but they only mean that people who are seldom
+more than a day's work in advance of want sometimes rise in arms for
+food. Our weavers are passionately religious, and so independent that
+they dare any one to help them, but if their wages were lessened they
+could not live. And so at talk of reduction they catch fire. Change of
+any kind alarms them, and though they call themselves Whigs, they rose
+a few years ago over the paving of the streets and stoned the workmen,
+who were strangers, out of the town."
+
+"And though you may have thought the place quiet to-day, Mr. Dishart,
+there was an ugly outbreak only two months ago, when the weavers
+turned on the manufacturers for reducing the price of the web, made a
+bonfire of some of their doors, and terrified one of them into leaving
+Thrums. Under the command of some Chartists, the people next paraded
+the streets to the music of fife and drum, and six policemen who drove
+up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were sent back tied to the seats."
+
+"No one has been punished?"
+
+"Not yet, but nearly two years ago there was a similar riot, and the
+sheriff took no action for months. Then one night the square suddenly
+filled with soldiers, and the ringleaders were seized in their beds.
+Mr. Dishart, the people are determined not to be caught in that way
+again, and ever since the rising a watch has been kept by night on
+every road that leads to Thrums. The signal that the soldiers are
+coming is to be the blowing of a horn. If you ever hear that horn, I
+implore you to hasten to the square."
+
+"The weavers would not fight?"
+
+"You do not know how the Chartists have fired this part of the
+country. One misty day, a week ago, I was on the hill; I thought I had
+it to myself, when suddenly I heard a voice cry sharply, 'Shoulder
+arms.' I could see no one, and after a moment I put it down to a freak
+of the wind. Then all at once the mist before me blackened, and a body
+of men seemed to grow out of it. They were not shadows; they were
+Thrums weavers drilling, with pikes in their hands.
+
+"They broke up," Mr. Carfrae continued, after a pause, "at my
+entreaty, but they have met again since then."
+
+"And there were Auld Lichts among them?" Gavin asked. "I should have
+thought they would be frightened at our precentor, Lang Tammas, who
+seems to watch for backsliding in the congregation as if he had
+pleasure in discovering it."
+
+Gavin spoke with feeling, for the precentor had already put him
+through his catechism, and it was a stiff ordeal.
+
+"The precentor!" said Mr. Carfrae. "Why, he was one of them."
+
+The old minister, once so brave a figure, tottered as he rose to go,
+and reeled in a dizziness until he had walked a few paces. Gavin went
+with him to the foot of the manse road; without his hat, as all Thrums
+knew before bedtime.
+
+"I begin," Gavin said, as they were parting, "where you leave off, and
+my prayer is that I may walk in your ways."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Dishart," the white-haired minister said, with a sigh, "the
+world does not progress so quickly as a man grows old. You only begin
+where I began."
+
+He left Gavin, and then, as if the little minister's last words had
+hurt him, turned and solemnly pointed his staff upward. Such men are
+the strong nails that keep the world together.
+
+The twenty-one-years-old minister returned to the manse somewhat
+sadly, but when he saw his mother at the window of her bedroom, his
+heart leapt at the thought that she was with him and he had eighty
+pounds a year. Gaily he waved both his hands to her, and she answered
+with a smile, and then, in his boyishness, he jumped over a gooseberry
+bush. Immediately afterwards he reddened and tried to look venerable,
+for while in the air he had caught sight of two women and a man
+watching him from the dyke. He walked severely to the door, and, again
+forgetting himself, was bounding upstairs to Margaret, when Jean, the
+servant, stood scandalised in his way.
+
+"I don't think she caught me," was Gavin's reflection, and "The Lord
+preserve's!" was Jean's.
+
+Gavin found his mother wondering how one should set about getting a
+cup of tea in a house that had a servant in it. He boldly rang the
+bell, and the willing Jean answered it so promptly (in a rush and
+jump) that Margaret was as much startled as Aladdin the first time he
+rubbed his lamp.
+
+Manse servants of the most admired kind move softly, as if constant
+contact with a minister were goloshes to them; but Jean was new and
+raw, only having got her place because her father might be an elder
+any day. She had already conceived a romantic affection for her
+master; but to say "sir" to him--as she thirsted to do--would have
+been as difficult to her as to swallow oysters. So anxious was she to
+please that when Gavin rang she fired herself at the bedroom, but
+bells were novelties to her as well as to Margaret, and she cried,
+excitedly, "What is 't?" thinking the house must be on fire.
+
+"There's a curran folk at the back door," Jean announced later, "and
+their respects to you, and would you gie them some water out o' the
+well? It has been a drouth this aucht days, and the pumps is locked.
+Na," she said, as Gavin made a too liberal offer, "that would toom the
+well, and there's jimply enough for oursels. I should tell you, too,
+that three o' them is no Auld Lichts."
+
+"Let that make no difference," Gavin said grandly, but Jean changed
+his message to: "A bowlful apiece to Auld Lichts; all other
+denominations one cupful."
+
+"Ay, ay," said Snecky Hobart, letting down the bucket, "and we'll
+include atheists among other denominations." The conversation came to
+Gavin and Margaret through the kitchen doorway.
+
+"Dinna class Jo Cruickshanks wi' me," said Sam'l Langlands the U. P.
+
+"Na, na," said Cruickshanks the atheist, "I'm ower independent to be
+religious. I dinna gang to the kirk to cry, 'Oh, Lord, gie, gie,
+gie.'"
+
+"Take tent o' yoursel', my man," said Lang Tammas sternly, "or you'll
+soon be whaur you would neifer the warld for a cup o' that cauld
+water."
+
+"Maybe you've ower keen an interest in the devil, Tammas," retorted
+the atheist; "but, ony way, if it's heaven for climate, it's hell for
+company."
+
+"Lads," said Snecky, sitting down on the bucket, "we'll send Mr.
+Dishart to Jo. He'll make another Rob Dow o' him."
+
+"Speak mair reverently o' your minister," said the precentor. "He has
+the gift."
+
+"I hinna naturally your solemn rasping word, Tammas, but in the heart
+I speak in all reverence. Lads, the minister has a word! I tell you he
+prays near like one giving orders."
+
+"At first," Snecky continued, "I thocht yon lang candidate was the
+earnestest o' them a', and I dinna deny but when I saw him wi' his
+head bowed-like in prayer during the singing I says to mysel', 'Thou
+art the man.' Ay, but Betsy wraxed up her head, and he wasna praying.
+He was combing his hair wi' his fingers on the sly."
+
+"You ken fine, Sneck," said Cruickshanks, "that you said, 'Thou art
+the man' to ilka ane o' them, and just voted for Mr. Dishart because
+he preached hinmost."
+
+"I didna say it to Mr. Urquhart, the ane that preached second," Sneck
+said. "That was the lad that gaed through ither."
+
+"Ay," said Susy Tibbits, nicknamed by Haggart "the Timidest Woman"
+because she once said she was too young to marry, "but I was fell
+sorry for him, just being over anxious. He began bonny, flinging
+himself, like ane inspired, at the pulpit door, but after Hendry Munn
+pointed at it and cried out, 'Be cautious, the sneck's loose,' he a'
+gaed to bits. What a coolness Hendry has, though I suppose it was his
+duty, him being kirk-officer."
+
+"We didna want a man," Lang Tammas said, "that could be put out by sic
+a sma' thing as that. Mr. Urquhart was in sic a ravel after it that
+when he gies out the first line o' the hunder and nineteenth psalm for
+singing, says he, 'And so on to the end.' Ay, that finished his
+chance."
+
+"The noblest o' them to look at," said Tibbie Birse, "was that ane
+frae Aberdeen, him that had sic a saft side to Jacob."
+
+"Ay," said Snecky, "and I speired at Dr. McQueen if I should vote for
+him. 'Looks like a genius, does he?' says the Doctor. 'Weel, then,'
+says he, 'dinna vote for him, for my experience is that there's no
+folk sic idiots as them that looks like geniuses.'"
+
+"Sal," Susy said, "it's a guid thing we've settled, for I enjoyed
+sitting like a judge upon them so muckle that I sair doubt it was a
+kind o' sport to me."
+
+"It was no sport to them, Susy, I'se uphaud, but it is a blessing
+we've settled, and ondoubtedly we've got the pick o' them. The only
+thing Mr. Dishart did that made me oneasy was his saying the word
+Cæsar as if it began wi' a _k_."
+
+"He'll startle you mair afore you're done wi' him," the atheist said
+maliciously. "I ken the ways o' thae ministers preaching for kirks.
+Oh, they're cunning. You was a' pleased that Mr. Dishart spoke about
+looms and webs, but, lathies, it was a trick. Ilka ane o' thae young
+ministers has a sermon about looms for weaving congregations, and a
+second about beating swords into ploughshares for country places, and
+another on the great catch of fishes for fishing villages. That's
+their stock-in-trade; and just you wait and see if you dinna get the
+ploughshares and the fishes afore the month's out. A minister
+preaching for a kirk is one thing, but a minister placed in't may be a
+very different berry."
+
+"Joseph Cruickshanks," cried the precentor, passionately, "none o'
+your d----d blasphemy!"
+
+They all looked at Whamond, and he dug his teeth into his lips in
+shame.
+
+"Wha's swearing now?" said the atheist.
+
+But Whamond was quick.
+
+"Matthew, twelve and thirty-one," he said.
+
+"Dagont, Tammas," exclaimed the baffled Cruickshanks, "you're aye
+quoting Scripture. How do you no quote Feargus O'Connor?"
+
+"Lads," said Snecky, "Jo hasna heard Mr. Dishart's sermons. Ay, we get
+it scalding when he comes to the sermon. I canna thole a minister
+that preaches as if heaven was round the corner."
+
+"If you're hitting at our minister, Snecky," said James Cochrane, "let
+me tell you he's a better man than yours."
+
+"A better curler, I dare say."
+
+"A better prayer."
+
+"Ay, he can pray for a black frost as if it was ane o' the Royal
+Family. I ken his prayers, 'O Lord, let it haud for anither day, and
+keep the snaw awa'.' Will you pretend, Jeames, that Mr. Duthie could
+make onything o' Rob Dow?"
+
+"I admit that Rob's awakening was an extraordinary thing, and
+sufficient to gie Mr. Dishart a name. But Mr. Carfrae was baffled wi'
+Rob too."
+
+"Jeames, if you had been in our kirk that day Mr. Dishart preached
+for't you would be wearying the now for Sabbath, to be back in't
+again. As you ken, that wicked man there, Jo Cruickshanks, got Rob
+Dow, drucken, cursing, poaching Rob Dow, to come to the kirk to annoy
+the minister. Ay, he hadna been at that work for ten minutes when Mr.
+Dishart stopped in his first prayer and ga'e Rob a look. I couldna see
+the look, being in the precentor's box, but as sure as death I felt it
+boring through me. Rob is hard wood, though, and soon he was at his
+tricks again. Weel, the minister stopped a second time in the sermon,
+and so awful was the silence that a heap o' the congregation couldna
+keep their seats. I heard Rob breathing quick and strong. Mr. Dishart
+had his arm pointed at him a' this time, and at last he says sternly,
+'Come forward.' Listen, Joseph Cruickshanks, and tremble. Rob gripped
+the board to keep himsel' frae obeying, and again Mr. Dishart says,
+'Come forward,' and syne Rob rose shaking, and tottered to the pulpit
+stair like a man suddenly shot into the Day of Judgment. 'You hulking
+man of sin,' cries Mr. Dishart, not a tick fleid, though Rob's as big
+as three o' him, 'sit down on the stair and attend to me, or I'll step
+doun frae the pulpit and run you out of the house of God.'"
+
+"And since that day," said Hobart, "Rob has worshipped Mr. Dishart as
+a man that has stepped out o' the Bible. When the carriage passed this
+day we was discussing the minister, and Sam'l Dickie wasna sure but
+what Mr. Dishart wore his hat rather far back on his head. You should
+have seen Rob. 'My certie,' he roars, 'there's the shine frae Heaven
+on that little minister's face, and them as says there's no has me to
+fecht.'"
+
+"Ay, weel," said the U. P., rising, "we'll see how Rob wears--and how
+your minister wears too. I wouldna like to sit in a kirk whaur they
+daurna sing a paraphrase."
+
+"The Psalms of David," retorted Whamond, "mount straight to heaven,
+but your paraphrases sticks to the ceiling o' the kirk."
+
+"You're a bigoted set, Tammas Whamond, but I tell you this, and it's
+my last words to you the nicht, the day'll come when you'll hae Mr.
+Duthie, ay, and even the U. P. minister, preaching in the Auld Licht
+kirk."
+
+"And let this be my last words to you," replied the precentor,
+furiously; "that rather than see a U. P. preaching in the Auld Licht
+kirk I would burn in hell fire for ever!"
+
+This gossip increased Gavin's knowledge of the grim men with whom he
+had now to deal. But as he sat beside Margaret after she had gone to
+bed, their talk was pleasant.
+
+"You remember, mother," Gavin said, "how I almost prayed for the manse
+that was to give you an egg every morning. I have been telling Jean
+never to forget the egg."
+
+"Ah, Gavin, things have come about so much as we wanted that I'm a
+kind o' troubled. It's hardly natural, and I hope nothing terrible is
+to happen now."
+
+Gavin arranged her pillows as she liked them, and when he next stole
+into the room in his stocking soles to look at her, he thought she was
+asleep. But she was not. I dare say she saw at that moment Gavin in
+his first frock, and Gavin in knickerbockers, and Gavin as he used to
+walk into the Glasgow room from college, all still as real to her as
+the Gavin who had a kirk.
+
+The little minister took away the lamp to his own room, shaking his
+fist at himself for allowing his mother's door to creak. He pulled up
+his blind. The town lay as still as salt. But a steady light showed in
+the south, and on pressing his face against the window he saw another
+in the west. Mr. Carfrae's words about the night-watch came back to
+him. Perhaps it had been on such a silent night as this that the
+soldiers marched into Thrums. Would they come again?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Four.
+
+FIRST COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
+
+
+A learned man says in a book, otherwise beautiful with truth, that
+villages are family groups. To him Thrums would only be a village,
+though town is the word we have ever used, and this is not true of it.
+Doubtless we have interests in common, from which a place so near (but
+the road is heavy) as Tilliedrum is shut out, and we have an
+individuality of our own too, as if, like our red houses, we came from
+a quarry that supplies no other place. But we are not one family. In
+the old days, those of us who were of the Tenements seldom wandered to
+the Croft head, and if we did go there we saw men to whom we could not
+always give a name. To flit from the Tanage brae to Haggart's road was
+to change one's friends. A kirk-wynd weaver might kill his swine and
+Tillyloss not know of it until boys ran westward hitting each other
+with the bladders. Only the voice of the dulsemen could be heard all
+over Thrums at once. Thus even in a small place but a few outstanding
+persons are known to everybody.
+
+In eight days Gavin's figure was more familiar in Thrums than many
+that had grown bent in it. He had already been twice to the cemetery,
+for a minister only reaches his new charge in time to attend a
+funeral. Though short of stature he cast a great shadow. He was so
+full of his duties, Jean said, that though he pulled to the door as he
+left the manse, he had passed the currant bushes before it snecked. He
+darted through courts, and invented ways into awkward houses. If you
+did not look up quickly he was round the corner. His visiting
+exhausted him only less than his zeal in the pulpit, from which,
+according to report, he staggered damp with perspiration to the
+vestry, where Hendry Munn wrung him like a wet cloth. A deaf lady,
+celebrated for giving out her washing, compelled him to hold her
+trumpet until she had peered into all his crannies, with the Shorter
+Catechism for a lantern. Janet Dundas told him, in answer to his
+knock, that she could not abide him, but she changed her mind when he
+said her garden was quite a show. The wives who expected a visit
+scrubbed their floors for him, cleaned out their presses for him, put
+diamond socks on their bairns for him, rubbed their hearthstones blue
+for him, and even tidied up the garret for him, and triumphed over the
+neighbours whose houses he passed by. For Gavin blundered occasionally
+by inadvertence, as when he gave dear old Betty Davie occasion to say
+bitterly--
+
+"Ou ay, you can sail by my door and gang to Easie's, but I'm thinking
+you would stop at mine too if I had a brass handle on't."
+
+So passed the first four weeks, and then came the fateful night of the
+seventeenth of October, and with it the strange woman. Family worship
+at the manse was over and Gavin was talking to his mother, who never
+crossed the threshold save to go to church (though her activity at
+home was among the marvels Jean sometimes slipped down to the
+Tenements to announce), when Wearyworld the policeman came to the door
+"with Rob Dow's compliments, and if you're no wi' me by ten o'clock
+I'm to break out again." Gavin knew what this meant, and at once set
+off for Rob's.
+
+"You'll let me gang a bit wi' you," the policeman entreated, "for till
+Rob sent me on this errand not a soul has spoken to me the day; ay,
+mony a ane hae I spoken to, but not a man, woman, nor bairn would
+fling me a word."
+
+"I often meant to ask you," Gavin said as they went along the
+Tenements, which smelled at that hour of roasted potatoes, "why you
+are so unpopular."
+
+"It's because I'm police. I'm the first ane that has ever been in
+Thrums, and the very folk that appointed me at a crown a week looks
+upon me as a disgraced man for accepting. It's Gospel that my ain wife
+is short wi' me when I've on my uniform, though weel she kens that I
+would rather hae stuck to the loom if I hadna ha'en sic a queer richt
+leg. Nobody feels the shame o' my position as I do mysel', but this is
+a town without pity."
+
+"It should be a consolation to you that you are discharging useful
+duties."
+
+"But I'm no. I'm doing harm. There's Charles Dickson says that the
+very sicht o' my uniform rouses his dander so muckle that it makes him
+break windows, though a peaceably-disposed man till I was appointed.
+And what's the use o' their haeing a policeman when they winna come to
+the lock-up after I lay hands on them?"
+
+"Do they say they won't come?"
+
+"Say? Catch them saying onything! They just gie me a wap into the
+gutters. If they would speak I wouldna complain, for I'm nat'rally the
+sociablest man in Thrums."
+
+"Rob, however, had spoken to you."
+
+"Because he had need o' me. That was ay Rob's way, converted or no
+converted. When he was blind drunk he would order me to see him safe
+hame, but would he crack wi' me? Na, na."
+
+Wearyworld, who was so called because of his forlorn way of muttering,
+"It's a weary warld, and nobody bides in't," as he went his melancholy
+rounds, sighed like one about to cry, and Gavin changed the subject.
+
+"Is the watch for the soldiers still kept up?" he asked.
+
+"It is, but the watchers winna let me in aside them. I'll let you see
+that for yoursel' at the head o' the Roods, for they watch there in
+the auld windmill."
+
+Most of the Thrums lights were already out, and that in the windmill
+disappeared as footsteps were heard.
+
+"You're desperate characters," the policeman cried, but got no answer.
+He changed his tactics.
+
+"A fine nicht for the time o' year," he cried. No answer.
+
+"But I wouldna wonder," he shouted, "though we had rain afore
+morning." No answer.
+
+"Surely you could gie me a word frae ahint the door. You're doing an
+onlawful thing, but I dinna ken wha you are."
+
+"You'll swear to that?" some one asked gruffly.
+
+"I swear to it, Peter."
+
+Wearyworld tried another six remarks in vain.
+
+"Ay," he said to the minister, "that's what it is to be an onpopular
+man. And now I'll hae to turn back, for the very anes that winna let
+me join them would be the first to complain if I gaed out o' bounds."
+
+Gavin found Dow at New Zealand, a hamlet of mud houses, whose tenants
+could be seen on any Sabbath morning washing themselves in the burn
+that trickled hard by. Rob's son, Micah, was asleep at the door, but
+he brightened when he saw who was shaking him.
+
+"My father put me out," he explained, "because he's daft for the
+drink, and was fleid he would curse me. He hasna cursed me," Micah
+added, proudly, "for an aught days come Sabbath. Hearken to him at his
+loom. He daurna take his feet off the treadles for fear o' running
+straucht to the drink."
+
+Gavin went in. The loom, and two stools, the one four-footed and the
+other a buffet, were Rob's most conspicuous furniture. A shaving-strap
+hung on the wall. The fire was out, but the trunk of a tree, charred
+at one end, showed how he heated his house. He made a fire of peat,
+and on it placed one end of a tree trunk that might be six feet long.
+As the tree burned away it was pushed further into the fireplace, and
+a roaring fire could always be got by kicking pieces of the
+smouldering wood and blowing them into flame with the bellows. When
+Rob saw the minister he groaned relief and left his loom. He had been
+weaving, his teeth clenched, his eyes on fire, for seven hours.
+
+"I wasna fleid," little Micah said to the neighbours afterwards, "to
+gang in wi' the minister. He's a fine man that. He didna ca' my father
+names. Na, he said, 'You're a brave fellow, Rob,' and he took my
+father's hand, he did. My father was shaking after his fecht wi' the
+drink, and, says he, 'Mr. Dishart,' he says, 'if you'll let me break
+out nows and nans, I could bide straucht atween times, but I canna
+keep sober if I hinna a drink to look forrit to.' Ay, my father
+prigged sair to get one fou day in the month, and he said, 'Syne if I
+die sudden, there's thirty chances to one that I gang to heaven, so
+it's worth risking.' But Mr. Dishart wouldna hear o't, and he cries,
+'No, by God,' he cries, 'we'll wrestle wi' the devil till we throttle
+him,' and down him and my father gaed on their knees.
+
+"The minister prayed a lang time till my father said his hunger for
+the drink was gone, 'but', he says, 'it swells up in me o' a sudden
+aye, and it may be back afore you're hame.' 'Then come to me at once,'
+says Mr. Dishart; but my father says, 'Na, for it would haul me into
+the public-house as if it had me at the end o' a rope, but I'll send
+the laddie.'
+
+"You saw my father crying the minister back? It was to gie him twa
+pound, and, says my father, 'God helping me,' he says, 'I'll droon
+mysel in the dam rather than let the drink master me, but in case it
+should get haud o' me and I should die drunk, it would be a michty
+gratification to me to ken that you had the siller to bury me
+respectable without ony help frae the poor's rates.' The minister
+wasna for taking it at first, but he took it when he saw how earnest
+my father was. Ay, he's a noble man. After he gaed awa my father made
+me learn the names o' the apostles frae Luke sixth, and he says to me,
+'Miss out Bartholomew,' he says, 'for he did little, and put Gavin
+Dishart in his place.'"
+
+Feeling as old as he sometimes tried to look, Gavin turned homeward.
+Margaret was already listening for him. You may be sure she knew his
+step. I think our steps vary as much as the human face. My bookshelves
+were made by a blind man who could identify by their steps nearly all
+who passed his window. Yet he has admitted to me that he could not
+tell wherein my steps differed from others; and this I believe, though
+rejecting his boast that he could distinguish a minister's step from a
+doctor's, and even tell to which denomination the minister belonged.
+
+I have sometimes asked myself what would have been Gavin's future had
+he gone straight home that night from Dow's. He would doubtless have
+seen the Egyptian before morning broke, but she would not have come
+upon him like a witch. There are, I dare say, many lovers who would
+never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time,
+as, say, they met the second time. But such dreaming is to no purpose.
+Gavin met Sanders Webster, the mole-catcher, and was persuaded by him
+to go home by Caddam Wood.
+
+Gavin took the path to Caddam, because Sanders told him the Wild
+Lindsays were there, a gypsy family that threatened the farmers by day
+and danced devilishly, it was said, at night. The little minister knew
+them by repute as a race of giants, and that not many persons would
+have cared to face them alone at midnight; but he was feeling as one
+wound up to heavy duties, and meant to admonish them severely.
+
+Sanders, an old man who lived with his sister Nanny on the edge of the
+wood, went with him, and for a time both were silent. But Sanders had
+something to say.
+
+"Was you ever at the Spittal, Mr. Dishart?" he asked.
+
+"Lord Rintoul's house at the top of Glen Quharity? No."
+
+"Hae you ever looked on a lord?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or on an auld lord's young leddyship? I have."
+
+"What is she?"
+
+"You surely ken that Rintoul's auld, and is to be married on a young
+leddyship. She's no' a leddyship yet, but they're to be married soon,
+so I may say I've seen a leddyship. Ay, an impressive sicht. It was
+yestreen."
+
+"Is there a great difference in their ages?"
+
+"As muckle as atween auld Peter Spens and his wife, wha was saxteen
+when he was saxty, and she was playing at dumps in the street when her
+man was waiting for her to make his porridge. Ay, sic a differ doesna
+suit wi' common folk, but of course earls can please themsels.
+Rintoul's so fond o' the leddyship 'at is to be, that when she was at
+the school in Edinbury he wrote to her ilka day. Kaytherine Crummie
+telled me that, and she says aince you're used to it, writing letters
+is as easy as skinning moles. I dinna ken what they can write sic a
+heap about, but I daur say he gies her his views on the Chartist
+agitation and the potato disease, and she'll write back about the
+romantic sichts o' Edinbury and the sermons o' the grand preachers she
+hears. Sal, though, thae grand folk has no religion to speak o', for
+they're a' English kirk. You're no' speiring what her leddyship said
+to me?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Weel, you see, there was a dancing ball on, and Kaytherine Crummie
+took me to a window whaur I could stand on a flower-pot and watch the
+critturs whirling round in the ball like teetotums. What's mair, she
+pointed out the leddyship that's to be to me, and I just glowered at
+her, for thinks I, 'Take your fill, Sanders, and whaur there's lords
+and leddyships, dinna waste a minute on colonels and honourable misses
+and sic like dirt.' Ay, but what wi' my een blinking at the blaze o'
+candles, I lost sicht o' her till all at aince somebody says at my
+lug, 'Well, my man, and who is the prettiest lady in the room?' Mr.
+Dishart, it was her leddyship. She looked like a star."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"The first thing I did was to fall aff the flower-pot; but syne I came
+to, and says I, wi' a polite smirk, 'I'm thinking your leddyship,'
+says I, 'as you're the bonniest yourself.'"
+
+"I see you are a cute man, Sanders."
+
+"Ay, but that's no' a'. She lauched in a pleased way and tapped me wi'
+her fan, and says she, 'Why do you think me the prettiest?' I dinna
+deny but what that staggered me, but I thocht a minute, and took a
+look at the other dancers again, and syne I says, michty sly like,
+'The other leddies,' I says, 'has sic sma' feet.'"
+
+Sanders stopped here and looked doubtingly at Gavin.
+
+"I canna make up my mind," he said, "whether she liked that, for she
+rapped my knuckles wi' her fan fell sair, and aff she gaed. Ay, I
+consulted Tammas Haggart about it, and he says, 'The flirty crittur,'
+he says. What would you say, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+Gavin managed to escape without giving an answer, for here their roads
+separated. He did not find the Wild Lindsays, however. Children of
+whim, of prodigious strength while in the open, but destined to wither
+quickly in the hot air of towns, they had gone from Caddam, leaving
+nothing of themselves behind but a black mark burned by their fires
+into the ground. Thus they branded the earth through many counties
+until some hour when the spirit of wandering again fell on them, and
+they forsook their hearths with as little compunction as the bird
+leaves its nest.
+
+Gavin had walked quickly, and he now stood silently in the wood, his
+hat in his hand. In the moonlight the grass seemed tipped with hoar
+frost. Most of the beeches were already bare, but the shoots,
+clustering round them, like children at their mother's skirts, still
+retained their leaves red and brown. Among the pines these leaves were
+as incongruous as a wedding-dress at a funeral. Gavin was standing on
+grass, but there were patches of heather within sight, and broom, and
+the leaf of the blaeberry. Where the beeches had drawn up the earth
+with them as they grew, their roots ran this way and that, slippery to
+the feet and looking like disinterred bones. A squirrel appeared
+suddenly on the charred ground, looked doubtfully at Gavin to see if
+he was growing there, and then glided up a tree, where it sat eyeing
+him, and forgetting to conceal its shadow. Caddam was very still. At
+long intervals came from far away the whack of an axe on wood. Gavin
+was in a world by himself, and this might be some one breaking into
+it.
+
+The mystery of woods by moonlight thrilled the little minister. His
+eyes rested on the shining roots, and he remembered what had been told
+him of the legend of Caddam, how once on a time it was a mighty wood,
+and a maiden most beautiful stood on its confines, panting and afraid,
+for a wicked man pursued her; how he drew near, and she ran a little
+way into the wood, and he followed her, and she still ran, and still
+he followed, until both were for ever lost, and the bones of her
+pursuer lie beneath a beech, but the lady may still be heard singing
+in the woods if the night be fine, for then she is a glad spirit, but
+weeping when there is wild wind, for then she is but a mortal seeking
+a way out of the wood.
+
+[Illustration: IN CADDAM WOOD.]
+
+The squirrel slid down the fir and was gone. The axe's blows
+ceased. Nothing that moved was in sight. The wind that has its nest in
+trees was circling around with many voices, that never rose above a
+whisper, and were often but the echo of a sigh.
+
+Gavin was in the Caddam of past days, where the beautiful maiden
+wanders ever, waiting for him who is so pure that he may find her. He
+will wander over the tree-tops looking for her, with the moon for his
+lamp, and some night he will hear her singing. The little minister
+drew a deep breath, and his foot snapped a brittle twig. Then he
+remembered who and where he was, and stooped to pick up his staff. But
+he did not pick it up, for as his fingers were closing on it the lady
+began to sing.
+
+For perhaps a minute Gavin stood stock still, like an intruder. Then
+he ran towards the singing, which seemed to come from Windyghoul, a
+straight road through Caddam that farmers use in summer, but leave in
+the back end of the year to leaves and pools. In Windyghoul there is
+either no wind or so much that it rushes down the sieve like an army,
+entering with a shriek of terror, and escaping with a derisive howl.
+The moon was crossing the avenue. But Gavin only saw the singer.
+
+She was still fifty yards away, sometimes singing gleefully, and again
+letting her body sway lightly as she came dancing up Windyghoul. Soon
+she was within a few feet of the little minister, to whom singing,
+except when out of tune, was a suspicious thing, and dancing a device
+of the devil. His arm went out wrathfully, and his intention was to
+pronounce sentence on this woman.
+
+But she passed, unconscious of his presence, and he had not moved nor
+spoken. Though really of the average height, she was a little thing to
+the eyes of Gavin, who always felt tall and stout except when he
+looked down. The grace of her swaying figure was a new thing in the
+world to him. Only while she passed did he see her as a gleam of
+colour, a gypsy elf poorly clad, her bare feet flashing beneath a
+short green skirt, a twig of rowan berries stuck carelessly into her
+black hair. Her face was pale. She had an angel's loveliness. Gavin
+shook.
+
+Still she danced onwards, but she was very human, for when she came to
+muddy water she let her feet linger in it, and flung up her arms,
+dancing more wantonly than before. A diamond on her finger shot a
+thread of fire over the pool. Undoubtedly she was the devil.
+
+Gavin leaped into the avenue, and she heard him and looked behind. He
+tried to cry "Woman!" sternly, but lost the word, for now she saw him,
+and laughed with her shoulders, and beckoned to him, so that he shook
+his fist at her. She tripped on, but often turning her head beckoned
+and mocked him, and he forgot his dignity and his pulpit and all other
+things, and ran after her. Up Windyghoul did he pursue her, and it was
+well that the precentor was not there to see. She reached the mouth of
+the avenue, and kissing her hand to Gavin, so that the ring gleamed
+again, was gone.
+
+The minister's one thought was to find her, but he searched in vain.
+She might be crossing the hill on her way to Thrums, or perhaps she
+was still laughing at him from behind a tree. After a longer time than
+he was aware of, Gavin realised that his boots were chirping and his
+trousers streaked with mud. Then he abandoned the search and hastened
+homewards in a rage.
+
+[Illustration: IN WINDYGHOUL.]
+
+From the hill to the manse the nearest way is down two fields, and the
+little minister descended them rapidly. Thrums, which is red in
+daylight, was grey and still as the cemetery. He had glimpses of
+several of its deserted streets. To the south the watch-light showed
+brightly, but no other was visible. So it seemed to Gavin, and
+then--suddenly--he lost the power to move. He had heard the horn.
+Thrice it sounded, and thrice it struck him to the heart. He looked
+again and saw a shadow stealing along the Tenements, then another,
+then half-a-dozen. He remembered Mr. Carfrae's words, "If you ever
+hear that horn, I implore you to hasten to the square," and in another
+minute he had reached the Tenements.
+
+Now again he saw the gypsy. She ran past him, half-a-score of men,
+armed with staves and pikes, at her heels. At first he thought they
+were chasing her, but they were following her as a leader. Her eyes
+sparkled as she waved them to the square with her arms.
+
+"The soldiers, the soldiers!" was the universal cry.
+
+"Who is that woman?" demanded Gavin, catching hold of a frightened old
+man.
+
+"Curse the Egyptian limmer," the man answered, "she's egging my laddie
+on to fecht."
+
+"Bless her rather," the son cried, "for warning us that the sojers is
+coming. Put your ear to the ground, Mr. Dishart, and you'll hear the
+dirl o' their feet."
+
+The young man rushed away to the square, flinging his father from him.
+Gavin followed. As he turned into the school wynd, the town drum began
+to beat, windows were thrown open, and sullen men ran out of closes
+where women were screaming and trying to hold them back. At the foot
+of the wynd Gavin passed Sanders Webster.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," the mole-catcher cried, "hae you seen that Egyptian?
+May I be struck dead if it's no' her little leddyship."
+
+But Gavin did not hear him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Five.
+
+A WARLIKE CHAPTER, CULMINATING IN THE FLOUTING OF THE MINISTER BY THE
+WOMAN.
+
+
+"Mr. Dishart!"
+
+Jean had clutched at Gavin in Bank Street. Her hair was streaming, and
+her wrapper but half buttoned.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Dishart, look at the mistress! I couldna keep her in the
+manse."
+
+Gavin saw his mother beside him, bare-headed, trembling.
+
+"How could I sit still, Gavin, and the town full o' the skirls of
+women and bairns? Oh, Gavin, what can I do for them? They will suffer
+most this night."
+
+As Gavin took her hand he knew that Margaret felt for the people more
+than he.
+
+"But you must go home, mother," he said, "and leave me to do my duty.
+I will take you myself if you will not go with Jean. Be careful of
+her, Jean."
+
+"Ay, will I," Jean answered, then burst into tears. "Mr. Dishart," she
+cried, "if they take my father they'd best take my mither too."
+
+The two women went back to the manse, where Jean relit the fire,
+having nothing else to do, and boiled the kettle, while Margaret
+wandered in anguish from room to room.
+
+[Illustration: THE WARNING.]
+
+Men nearly naked ran past Gavin, seeking to escape from Thrums by the
+fields he had descended. When he shouted to them they only ran faster.
+A Tillyloss weaver whom he tried to stop struck him savagely and sped
+past to the square. In Bank Street, which was full of people at one
+moment and empty the next, the minister stumbled over old Charles
+Yuill.
+
+"Take me and welcome," Yuill cried, mistaking Gavin for the enemy. He
+had only one arm through the sleeve of his jacket, and his feet were
+bare.
+
+"I am Mr. Dishart. Are the soldiers already in the square, Yuill?"
+
+"They'll be there in a minute."
+
+The man was so weak that Gavin had to hold him.
+
+"Be a man, Charles. You have nothing to fear. It is not such as you
+the soldiers have come for. If need be, I can swear that you had not
+the strength, even if you had the will, to join in the weavers'
+riot."
+
+"For Godsake, Mr. Dishart," Yuill cried, his hands chattering on
+Gavin's coat, "dinna swear that. My laddie was in the thick o' the
+riot; and if he's ta'en there's the poor's-house gaping for Kitty and
+me, for I couldna weave half a web a week. If there's a warrant agin
+onybody o' the name of Yuill, swear it's me; swear I'm a desperate
+character, swear I'm michty strong for all I look palsied; and if when
+they take me, my courage breaks down, swear the mair, swear I
+confessed my guilt to you on the Book."
+
+As Yuill spoke the quick rub-a-dub of a drum was heard.
+
+"The soldiers!" Gavin let go his hold of the old man, who hastened
+away to give himself up.
+
+"That's no the sojers," said a woman; "it's the folk gathering in the
+square. This'll be a watery Sabbath in Thrums."
+
+"Rob Dow," shouted Gavin, as Dow flung past with a scythe in his hand,
+"lay down that scythe."
+
+"To hell wi' religion!" Rob retorted, fiercely; "it spoils a' thing."
+
+"Lay down that scythe; I command you."
+
+Rob stopped undecidedly, then cast the scythe from him, but its
+rattle on the stones was more than he could bear.
+
+"I winna," he cried, and, picking it up, ran to the square.
+
+An upper window in Bank Street opened, and Dr. McQueen put out his
+head. He was smoking as usual.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," he said, "you will return home at once if you are a
+wise man; or, better still, come in here. You can do nothing with
+these people to-night."
+
+"I can stop their fighting."
+
+"You will only make black blood between them and you."
+
+"Dinna heed him, Mr. Dishart," cried some women.
+
+"You had better heed him," cried a man.
+
+"I will not desert my people," Gavin said.
+
+"Listen, then, to my prescription," the doctor replied. "Drive that
+gypsy lassie out of the town before the soldiers reach it. She is
+firing the men to a red-heat through sheer devilry."
+
+"She brocht the news, or we would have been nipped in our beds," some
+people cried.
+
+"Does any one know who she is?" Gavin demanded, but all shook their
+heads. The Egyptian, as they called her, had never been seen in these
+parts before.
+
+"Has any other person seen the soldiers?" he asked. "Perhaps this is a
+false alarm."
+
+"Several have seen them within the last few minutes," the doctor
+answered. "They came from Tilliedrum, and were advancing on us from
+the south, but when they heard that we had got the alarm they stopped
+at the top of the brae, near T'nowhead's farm. Man, you would take
+these things more coolly if you smoked."
+
+"Show me this woman," Gavin said sternly to those who had been
+listening. Then a stream of people carried him into the square.
+
+The square has altered little, even in these days of enterprise,
+when Tillyloss has become Newton Bank, and the Craft Head Croft
+Terrace, with enamelled labels on them for the guidance of slow
+people, who forget their address and have to run to the end of the
+street and look up every time they write a letter. The stones on
+which the butter-wives sat have disappeared, and with them the clay
+walls and the outside stairs. Gone, too, is the stair of the
+town-house, from the top of which the drummer roared the gossip of
+the week on Sabbaths to country folk, to the scandal of all who
+knew that the proper thing on that day is to keep your blinds down;
+but the town-house itself, round and red, still makes exit to the
+south troublesome. Wherever streets meet the square there is a
+house in the centre of them, and thus the heart of Thrums is a
+box, in which the stranger finds himself suddenly, wondering at
+first how he is to get out, and presently how he got in.
+
+To Gavin, who never before had seen a score of people in the square at
+once, here was a sight strange and terrible. Andrew Struthers, an old
+soldier, stood on the outside stair of the town-house, shouting words
+of command to some fifty weavers, many of them scantily clad, but all
+armed with pikes and poles. Most were known to the little minister,
+but they wore faces that were new to him. Newcomers joined the body
+every moment. If the drill was clumsy the men were fierce. Hundreds of
+people gathered around, some screaming, some shaking their fists at
+the old soldier, many trying to pluck their relatives out of danger.
+Gavin could not see the Egyptian. Women and old men, fighting for the
+possession of his ear, implored him to disperse the armed band. He ran
+up the town-house stair, and in a moment it had become a pulpit.
+
+"Dinna dare to interfere, Mr. Dishart," Struthers said savagely.
+
+"Andrew Struthers," said Gavin solemnly, "in the name of God I order
+you to leave me alone. If you don't," he added ferociously, "I'll
+fling you over the stair."
+
+"Dinna heed him, Andrew," some one shouted, and another cried, "He
+canna understand our sufferings; he has dinner ilka day."
+
+Struthers faltered, however, and Gavin cast his eye over the armed
+men.
+
+"Rob Dow," he said, "William Carmichael, Thomas Whamond, William Munn,
+Alexander Hobart, Henders Haggart, step forward."
+
+These were Auld Lichts, and when they found that the minister would
+not take his eyes off them, they obeyed, all save Rob Dow.
+
+"Never mind him, Rob," said the atheist, Cruickshanks, "it's better
+playing cards in hell than singing psalms in heaven."
+
+"Joseph Cruickshanks," responded Gavin grimly, "you will find no cards
+down there."
+
+Then Rob also came to the foot of the stair. There was some angry
+muttering from the crowd, and young Charles Yuill exclaimed, "Curse
+you, would you lord it ower us on week-days as weel as on Sabbaths?"
+
+"Lay down your weapons," Gavin said to the six men.
+
+They looked at each other. Hobart slipped his pike behind his back.
+
+"I hae no weapon," he said slily.
+
+"Let me hae my fling this nicht," Dow entreated, "and I'll promise to
+bide sober for a twelvemonth."
+
+"Oh, Rob, Rob!" the minister said bitterly, "are you the man I prayed
+with a few hours ago?"
+
+The scythe fell from Rob's hands.
+
+"Down wi' your pikes," he roared to his companions, "or I'll brain you
+wi' them."
+
+"Ay, lay them down," the precentor whispered, "but keep your feet on
+them."
+
+Then the minister, who was shaking with excitement, though he did not
+know it, stretched forth his arms for silence, and it came so suddenly
+as to frighten the people in the neighboring streets.
+
+"If he prays we're done for," cried young Charles Yuill, but even in
+that hour many of the people were unbonneted.
+
+"Oh, Thou who art the Lord of hosts," Gavin prayed, "we are in Thy
+hands this night. These are Thy people, and they have sinned; but Thou
+art a merciful God, and they were sore tried, and knew not what they
+did. To Thee, our God, we turn for deliverance, for without Thee we
+are lost."
+
+The little minister's prayer was heard all round the square, and many
+weapons were dropped as an Amen to it.
+
+"If you fight," cried Gavin, brightening as he heard the clatter of
+the iron on the stones, "your wives and children may be shot in the
+streets. These soldiers have come for a dozen of you; will you be
+benefited if they take away a hundred?"
+
+"Oh, hearken to him," cried many women.
+
+"I winna," answered a man, "for I'm ane o' the dozen. Whaur's the
+Egyptian?"
+
+"Here."
+
+Gavin saw the crowd open, and the woman of Windyghoul come out of it,
+and, while he should have denounced her, he only blinked, for once
+more her loveliness struck him full in the eyes. She was beside him on
+the stair before he became a minister again.
+
+"How dare you, woman?" he cried; but she flung a rowan berry at him.
+
+"If I were a man," she exclaimed, addressing the people, "I wouldna
+let myself be catched like a mouse in a trap."
+
+"We winna," some answered.
+
+"What kind o' women are you," cried the Egyptian, her face gleaming as
+she turned to her own sex, "that bid your men folk gang to gaol when a
+bold front would lead them to safety? Do you want to be husbandless
+and hameless?"
+
+"Disperse, I command you!" cried Gavin. "This abandoned woman is
+inciting you to riot."
+
+"Dinna heed this little man," the Egyptian retorted.
+
+It is curious to know that even at that anxious moment Gavin winced
+because she called him little.
+
+"She has the face of a mischief-maker," he shouted, "and her words are
+evil."
+
+"You men and women o' Thrums," she responded, "ken that I wish you
+weel by the service I hae done you this nicht. Wha telled you the
+sojers was coming?"
+
+"It was you; it was you!"
+
+"Ay, and mony a mile I ran to bring the news. Listen, and I'll tell
+you mair."
+
+"She has a false tongue," Gavin cried; "listen not to the brazen
+woman."
+
+"What I have to tell," she said, "is as true as what I've telled
+already, and how true that is you a' ken. You're wondering how the
+sojers has come to a stop at the tap o' the brae instead o' marching
+on the town. Here's the reason. They agreed to march straucht to the
+square if the alarm wasna given, but if it was they were to break into
+small bodies and surround the town so that you couldna get out. That's
+what they're doing now."
+
+At this the screams were redoubled, and many men lifted the weapons
+they had dropped.
+
+"Believe her not," cried Gavin. "How could a wandering gypsy know all
+this?"
+
+"Ay, how can you ken?" some demanded.
+
+"It's enough that I do ken," the Egyptian answered. "And this mair I
+ken, that the captain of the soldiers is confident he'll nab every one
+o' you that's wanted unless you do one thing."
+
+"What is 't?"
+
+[Illustration: THE SOLDIERS.]
+
+"If you a' run different ways you're lost, but if you keep thegither
+you'll be able to force a road into the country, whaur you can
+scatter. That's what he's fleid you'll do."
+
+"Then it's what we will do."
+
+"It is what you will not do," Gavin said passionately. "The truth is
+not in this wicked woman."
+
+But scarcely had he spoken when he knew that startling news had
+reached the square. A murmur arose on the skirts of the mob, and swept
+with the roar of the sea towards the town-house. A detachment of the
+soldiers were marching down the Roods from the north.
+
+"There's some coming frae the east-town end," was the next intelligence;
+"and they've gripped Sanders Webster, and auld Charles Yuill has
+given himsel' up."
+
+"You see, you see," the gypsy said, flashing triumph at Gavin.
+
+"Lay down your weapons," Gavin cried, but his power over the people
+had gone.
+
+"The Egyptian spoke true," they shouted; "dinna heed the minister."
+
+Gavin tried to seize the gypsy by the shoulders, but she slipped past
+him down the stair, and crying "Follow me!" ran round the town-house
+and down the brae.
+
+"Woman!" he shouted after her, but she only waved her arms scornfully.
+The people followed her, many of the men still grasping their weapons,
+but all in disorder. Within a minute after Gavin saw the gleam of the
+ring on her finger, as she waved her hands, he and Dow were alone in
+the square.
+
+"She's an awfu' woman that," Rob said. "I saw her lauching."
+
+Gavin ground his teeth.
+
+"Rob Dow," he said, slowly, "if I had not found Christ I would have
+throttled that woman. You saw how she flouted me?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Six.
+
+IN WHICH THE SOLDIERS MEET THE AMAZONS OF THRUMS.
+
+
+Dow looked shamefacedly at the minister, and then set off up the
+square.
+
+"Where are you going, Rob?"
+
+"To gie myself up. I maun do something to let you see there's one man
+in Thrums that has mair faith in you than in a fliskmahoy."
+
+"And only one, Rob. But I don't know that they want to arrest you."
+
+"Ay, I had a hand in tying the polissman to the----"
+
+"I want to hear nothing about that," Gavin said, quickly.
+
+"Will I hide, then?"
+
+"I dare not advise you to do that. It would be wrong."
+
+Half a score of fugitives tore past the town-house, and were out of
+sight without a cry. There was a tread of heavier feet, and a dozen
+soldiers, with several policemen and two prisoners, appeared suddenly
+on the north side of the square.
+
+"Rob," cried the minister in desperation, "run!"
+
+When the soldiers reached the town-house, where they locked up their
+prisoners, Dow was skulking eastward, and Gavin running down the
+brae.
+
+"They're fechting," he was told, "they're fechting on the brae, the
+sojers is firing, a man's killed!"
+
+But this was an exaggeration.
+
+The brae, though short, is very steep. There is a hedge on one side of
+it, from which the land falls away, and on the other side a hillock.
+Gavin reached the scene to see the soldiers marching down the brae,
+guarding a small body of policemen. The armed weavers were retreating
+before them. A hundred women or more were on the hillock, shrieking
+and gesticulating. Gavin joined them, calling on them not to fling the
+stones they had begun to gather.
+
+The armed men broke into a rabble, flung down their weapons, and fled
+back towards the town-house. Here they almost ran against the soldiers
+in the square, who again forced them into the brae. Finding themselves
+about to be wedged between the two forces, some crawled through the
+hedge, where they were instantly seized by policemen. Others sought to
+climb up the hillock and then escape into the country. The policemen
+clambered after them. The men were too frightened to fight, but a
+woman seized a policeman by the waist and flung him head foremost
+among the soldiers. One of these shouted "Fire!" but the captain cried
+"No." Then came showers of missiles from the women. They stood their
+ground and defended the retreat of the scared men.
+
+Who flung the first stone is not known, but it is believed to have
+been the Egyptian. The policemen were recalled, and the whole body
+ordered to advance down the brae. Thus the weavers who had not escaped
+at once were driven before them, and soon hemmed in between the two
+bodies of soldiers, when they were easily captured. But for two
+minutes there was a thick shower of stones and clods of earth.
+
+It was ever afterwards painful to Gavin to recall this scene, but less
+on account of the shower of stones than because of the flight of one
+divit in it. He had been watching the handsome young captain,
+Halliwell, riding with his men; admiring him, too, for his coolness.
+This coolness exasperated the gypsy, who twice flung at Halliwell and
+missed him. He rode on smiling contemptuously.
+
+"Oh, if I could only fling straight!" the Egyptian moaned.
+
+Then she saw the minister by her side, and in the tick of a clock
+something happened that can never be explained. For the moment Gavin
+was so lost in misery over the probable effect of the night's rioting
+that he had forgotten where he was. Suddenly the Egyptian's beautiful
+face was close to his, and she pressed a divit into his hand, at the
+same time pointing at the officer, and whispering "Hit him."
+
+Gavin flung the clod of earth, and hit Halliwell on the head.
+
+I say I cannot explain this. I tell what happened, and add with
+thankfulness that only the Egyptian witnessed the deed. Gavin, I
+suppose, had flung the divit before he could stay his hand. Then he
+shrank in horror.
+
+"Woman!" he cried again.
+
+"You are a dear," she said, and vanished.
+
+By the time Gavin was breathing freely again the lock-up was crammed
+with prisoners, and the Riot Act had been read from the town-house
+stair. It is still remembered that the baron-bailie, to whom this duty
+fell, had got no further than, "Victoria, by the Grace of God," when
+the paper was struck out of his hands.
+
+When a stirring event occurs up here we smack our lips over it for
+months, and so I could still write a history of that memorable night
+in Thrums. I could tell how the doctor, a man whose shoulders often
+looked as if they had been caught in a shower of tobacco ash, brought
+me the news to the school-house, and now, when I crossed the fields to
+dumfounder Waster Lunny with it, I found Birse, the post, reeling off
+the story to him as fast as a fisher could let out line. I know who
+was the first woman on the Marywell brae to hear the horn, and how she
+woke her husband, and who heard it first at the Denhead and the
+Tenements, with what they immediately said and did. I had from Dite
+Deuchar's own lips the curious story of his sleeping placidly
+throughout the whole disturbance, and on wakening in the morning
+yoking to his loom as usual; and also his statement that such ill-luck
+was enough to shake a man's faith in religion. The police had
+knowledge that enabled them to go straight to the houses of the
+weavers wanted, but they sometimes brought away the wrong man, for
+such of the people as did not escape from the town had swopped houses
+for the night--a trick that served them better than all their drilling
+on the hill. Old Yuill's son escaped by burying himself in a
+peat-rick, and Snecky Hobart by pretending that he was a sack of
+potatoes. Less fortunate was Sanders Webster, the mole-catcher already
+mentioned. Sanders was really an innocent man. He had not even been in
+Thrums on the night of the rising against the manufacturers, but
+thinking that the outbreak was to be left unpunished, he wanted his
+share in the glory of it. So he had boasted of being a ringleader
+until many believed him, including the authorities. His braggadocio
+undid him. He was run to earth in a pig-sty, and got nine months. With
+the other arrests I need not concern myself, for they have no part in
+the story of the little minister.
+
+While Gavin was with the families whose breadwinners were now in the
+lock-up, a cell that was usually crammed on fair nights and empty for
+the rest of the year, the sheriff and Halliwell were in the round-room
+of the town-house, not in a good temper. They spoke loudly, and some
+of their words sank into the cell below.
+
+"The whole thing has been a fiasco," the sheriff was heard saying,
+"owing to our failing to take them by surprise. Why, three-fourths of
+those taken will have to be liberated, and we have let the worst
+offenders slip through our hands."
+
+"Well," answered Halliwell, who was wearing a heavy cloak, "I have
+brought your policemen into the place, and that is all I undertook to
+do."
+
+"You brought them, but at the expense of alarming the countryside. I
+wish we had come without you."
+
+"Nonsense! My men advanced like ghosts. Could your police have come
+down that brae alone to-night?"
+
+"Yes, because it would have been deserted. Your soldiers, I tell you,
+have done the mischief. This woman, who, so many of our prisoners
+admit, brought the news of our coming, must either have got it from
+one of your men or have seen them on the march."
+
+"The men did not know their destination. True, she might have seen us
+despite our precautions, but you forget that she told them how we were
+to act in the event of our being seen. That is what perplexes me."
+
+"Yes, and me too, for it was a close secret between you and me and
+Lord Rintoul and not half-a-dozen others."
+
+"Well, find the woman, and we shall get the explanation. If she is
+still in the town she cannot escape, for my men are everywhere."
+
+"She was seen ten minutes ago."
+
+"Then she is ours. I say, Riach, if I were you I would set all my
+prisoners free and take away a cart-load of their wives instead. I
+have only seen the backs of the men of Thrums, but, on my word, I very
+nearly ran away from the women. Hallo! I believe one of your police
+has caught our virago single-handed."
+
+So Halliwell exclaimed, hearing some one shout, "This is the rascal!"
+But it was not the Egyptian who was then thrust into the round-room.
+It was John Dunwoodie, looking very sly. Probably there was not, even
+in Thrums, a cannier man than Dunwoodie. His religious views were
+those of Cruickshanks, but he went regularly to church "on the
+off-chance of there being a God after all; so I'm safe, whatever side
+may be wrong."
+
+"This is the man," explained a policeman, "who brought the alarm. He
+admits himself having been in Tilliedrum just before we started."
+
+"Your name, my man?" the sheriff demanded.
+
+"It micht be John Dunwoodie," the tinsmith answered cautiously.
+
+"But is it?"
+
+"I dinna say it's no."
+
+"You were in Tilliedrum this evening?"
+
+"I micht hae been."
+
+"Were you?"
+
+"I'll swear to nothing."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I'm a canny man."
+
+"Into the cell with him," Halliwell cried, losing patience.
+
+"Leave him to me," said the sheriff. "I understand the sort of man.
+Now, Dunwoodie, what were you doing in Tilliedrum?"
+
+"I was taking my laddie down to be prenticed to a writer there,"
+answered Dunwoodie, falling into the sheriff's net.
+
+"What are you yourself?"
+
+"I micht be a tinsmith to trade."
+
+"And you, a mere tinsmith, dare to tell me that a lawyer was willing
+to take your son into his office? Be cautious, Dunwoodie."
+
+"Weel, then, the laddie's highly edicated and I hae siller, and that's
+how the writer was to take him and make a gentleman o' him."
+
+"I learn from the neighbours," the policeman explained, "that this is
+partly true, but what makes us suspect him is this. He left the laddie
+at Tilliedrum, and yet when he came home the first person he sees at
+the fireside is the laddie himself. The laddie had run home, and the
+reason plainly was that he had heard of our preparations and wanted to
+alarm the town."
+
+"There seems something in this, Dunwoodie," the sheriff said, "and if
+you cannot explain it I must keep you in custody."
+
+"I'll make a clean breast o't," Dunwoodie replied, seeing that in this
+matter truth was best. "The laddie was terrible against being made a
+gentleman, and when he saw the kind o' life he would hae to lead,
+clean hands, clean dickies, and no gutters on his breeks, his heart
+took mair scunner at genteelity than ever, and he ran hame. Ay, I was
+mad when I saw him at the fireside, but he says to me, 'How would you
+like to be a gentleman yoursel', father?' he says, and that so
+affected me 'at I'm to gie him his ain way."
+
+Another prisoner, Dave Langlands, was confronted with Dunwoodie.
+
+"John Dunwoodie's as innocent as I am mysel," Dave said, "and I'm most
+michty innocent. It wasna John but the Egyptian that gave the alarm. I
+tell you what, sheriff, if it'll make me innocenter-like I'll picture
+the Egyptian to you just as I saw her, and syne you'll be able to
+catch her easier."
+
+"You are an honest fellow," said the sheriff.
+
+"I only wish I had the whipping of him," growled Halliwell, who was of
+a generous nature.
+
+"For what business had she," continued Dave righteously, "to meddle in
+other folks' business? She's no a Thrums lassie, and so I say, 'Let
+the law take its course on her.'"
+
+"Will you listen to such a cur, Riach?" asked Halliwell.
+
+"Certainly. Speak out, Langlands."
+
+"Weel, then, I was in the windmill the nicht."
+
+"You were a watcher?"
+
+"I happened to be in the windmill wi' another man," Dave went on,
+avoiding the officer's question.
+
+"What was his name?" demanded Halliwell.
+
+"It was the Egyptian I was to tell you about," Dave said, looking to
+the sheriff.
+
+"Ah, yes, you only tell tales about women," said Halliwell.
+
+"Strange women," corrected Dave. "Weel, we was there, and it would
+maybe be twal o'clock, and we was speaking (but about lawful things)
+when we heard some ane running yont the road. I keeked through a hole
+in the door, and I saw it was an Egyptian lassie 'at I had never
+clapped een on afore. She saw the licht in the window, and she cried,
+'Hie, you billies in the windmill, the sojers is coming!' I fell in a
+fricht, but the other man opened the door, and again she cries, 'The
+sojers is coming; quick, or you'll be ta'en.' At that the other man up
+wi' his bonnet and ran, but I didna make off so smart."
+
+"You had to pick yourself up first," suggested the officer.
+
+"Sal, it was the lassie picked me up; ay, and she picked up a horn at
+the same time."
+
+"'Blaw on that,' she cried, 'and alarm the town.' But, sheriff, I
+didna do't. Na, I had ower muckle respect for the law."
+
+"In other words," said Halliwell, "you also bolted, and left the gypsy
+to blow the horn herself."
+
+"I dinna deny but what I made my feet my friend, but it wasna her that
+blew the horn. I ken that, for I looked back and saw her trying to
+do't, but she couldna, she didna ken the way."
+
+"Then who did blow it?"
+
+"The first man she met, I suppose. We a' kent that the horn was to be
+the signal except Wearywarld. He's police, so we kept it frae him."
+
+"That is all you saw of the woman?"
+
+"Ay, for I ran straucht to my garret, and there your men took me. Can
+I gae hame now, sheriff?"
+
+"No, you cannot. Describe the woman's appearance."
+
+"She had a heap o' rowan berries stuck in her hair, and, I think, she
+had on a green wrapper and a red shawl. She had a most extraordinary
+face. I canna exact describe it, for she would be lauchin' one second
+and syne solemn the next. I tell you her face changed as quick as you
+could turn the pages o' a book. Ay, here comes Wearywarld to speak up
+for me."
+
+Wearyworld entered cheerfully.
+
+"This is the local policeman," a Tilliedrum officer said; "we have
+been searching for him everywhere, and only found him now."
+
+"Where have you been?" asked the sheriff, wrathfully.
+
+"Whaur maist honest men is at this hour," replied Wearyworld; "in my
+bed."
+
+"How dared you ignore your duty at such a time?"
+
+"It's a long story," the policeman answered, pleasantly, in
+anticipation of a talk at last.
+
+"Answer me in a word."
+
+"In a word!" cried the policeman, quite crestfallen. "It canna be
+done. You'll need to cross-examine me, too. It's my lawful richt."
+
+"I'll take you to the Tilliedrum gaol for your share in this night's
+work if you do not speak to the purpose. Why did you not hasten to our
+assistance?"
+
+"As sure as death I never kent you was here. I was up the Roods on my
+rounds when I heard an awfu' din down in the square, and thinks I,
+there's rough characters about, and the place for honest folk is their
+bed. So to my bed I gaed, and I was in't when your men gripped me."
+
+"We must see into this before we leave. In the meantime you will act
+as a guide to my searchers. Stop! Do you know anything of this
+Egyptian?"
+
+"What Egyptian? Is't a lassie wi' rowans in her hair?"
+
+[Illustration: THE EGYPTIAN.]
+
+"The same. Have you seen her?"
+
+"That I have. There's nothing agin her, is there? Whatever it is, I'll
+uphaud she didna do't, for a simpler, franker-spoken crittur couldna
+be."
+
+"Never mind what I want her for. When did you see her?"
+
+"It would be about twal o'clock," began Wearyworld unctuously, "when I
+was in the Roods, ay, no lang afore I heard the disturbance in the
+square. I was standing in the middle o' the road, wondering how the
+door o' the windmill was swinging open, when she came up to me.
+
+"'A fine nicht for the time o' year,' I says to her, for nobody but
+the minister had spoken to me a' day.
+
+"'A very fine nicht,' says she, very frank, though she was breathing
+quick like as if she had been running. 'You'll be police?' says she.
+
+"'I am,' says I, 'and wha be you?'
+
+"'I'm just a puir gypsy lassie,' she says.
+
+"'And what's that in your hand?' says I.
+
+"'It's a horn I found in the wood,' says she, 'but it's rusty and
+winna blaw.'
+
+"I laughed at her ignorance, and says I, 'I warrant I could blaw it.'
+
+"'I dinna believe you,' says she.
+
+"'Gie me haud o't,' says I, and she gae it to me, and I blew some
+bonny blasts on't. Ay, you see she didna ken the way o't. 'Thank you
+kindly,' says she, and she ran awa without even minding to take the
+horn back again."
+
+"You incredible idiot!" cried the sheriff. "Then it was you who gave
+the alarm?"
+
+"What hae I done to madden you?" honest Wearyworld asked in
+perplexity.
+
+"Get out of my sight, sir!" roared the sheriff.
+
+But the captain laughed.
+
+"I like your doughty policeman, Riach," he said. "Hie, obliging
+friend, let us hear how this gypsy struck you. How was she dressed?"
+
+"She was snod, but no unca snod," replied Wearyworld, stiffly.
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I mean she was couthie, but no sair in order."
+
+"What on earth is that?"
+
+"Weel, a tasty stocky, but gey orra put on."
+
+"What language are you speaking, you enigma?"
+
+"I'm saying she was naturally a bonny bit kimmer rather than happit up
+to the nines."
+
+"Oh, go away," cried Halliwell; whereupon Wearyworld descended the
+stair haughtily, declaring that the sheriff was an unreasonable man,
+and that he was a queer captain who did not understand the English
+language.
+
+"Can I gae hame now, sheriff?" asked Langlands, hopefully.
+
+"Take this fellow back to his cell," Riach directed shortly, "and
+whatever else you do, see that you capture this woman. Halliwell, I am
+going out to look for her myself. Confound it, what are you laughing
+at?"
+
+"At the way this vixen has slipped through your fingers."
+
+"Not quite that, sir, not quite that. She is in Thrums still, and I
+swear I'll have her before day breaks. See to it, Halliwell, that if
+she is brought here in my absence she does not slip through your
+fingers."
+
+"If she is brought here," said Halliwell, mocking him, "you must
+return and protect me. It would be cruelty to leave a poor soldier in
+the hands of a woman of Thrums."
+
+"She is not a Thrums woman. You have been told so a dozen times."
+
+"Then I am not afraid."
+
+In the round-room (which is oblong) there is a throne on which the
+bailie sits when he dispenses justice. It is swathed in red cloths
+that give it the appearance of a pulpit. Left to himself, Halliwell
+flung off his cloak and taking a chair near this dais rested his legs
+on the bare wooden table, one on each side of the lamp. He was still
+in this position when the door opened, and two policemen thrust the
+Egyptian into the room.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven.
+
+HAS THE FOLLY OF LOOKING INTO A WOMAN'S EYES BY WAY OF TEXT.
+
+
+"This is the woman, captain," one of the policemen said in triumph;
+"and, begging your pardon, will you keep a grip of her till the
+sheriff comes back?"
+
+Halliwell did not turn his head.
+
+"You can leave her here," he said carelessly. "Three of us are not
+needed to guard a woman."
+
+"But she's a slippery customer."
+
+"You can go," said Halliwell; and the policemen withdrew slowly,
+eyeing their prisoner doubtfully until the door closed. Then the
+officer wheeled round languidly, expecting to find the Egyptian gaunt
+and muscular.
+
+"Now then," he drawled, "why----By Jove!"
+
+The gallant soldier was as much taken aback as if he had turned to
+find a pistol at his ear. He took his feet off the table. Yet he only
+saw the gypsy's girlish figure in its red and green, for she had
+covered her face with her hands. She was looking at him intently
+between her fingers, but he did not know this. All he did want to know
+just then was what was behind the hands.
+
+Before he spoke again she had perhaps made up her mind about him, for
+she began to sob bitterly. At the same time she slipped a finger over
+her ring.
+
+"Why don't you look at me?" asked Halliwell, selfishly.
+
+"I daurna."
+
+"Am I so fearsome?"
+
+"You're a sojer, and you would shoot me like a craw."
+
+Halliwell laughed, and taking her wrists in his hands, uncovered her
+face.
+
+"Oh, by Jove!" he said again, but this time to himself.
+
+As for the Egyptian, she slid the ring into her pocket, and fell back
+before the officer's magnificence.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "is all sojers like you?"
+
+There was such admiration in her eyes that it would have been
+self-contempt to doubt her. Yet having smiled complacently, Halliwell
+became uneasy.
+
+"Who on earth are you?" he asked, finding it wise not to look her in
+the face. "Why do you not answer me more quickly?"
+
+"Dinna be angry at that, captain," the Egyptian implored. "I promised
+my mither aye to count twenty afore I spoke, because she thocht I was
+ower glib. Captain, how is't that you're so fleid to look at me?"
+
+Thus put on his mettle, Halliwell again faced her, with the result
+that his question changed to "Where did you get those eyes?" Then was
+he indignant with himself.
+
+"What I want to know," he explained severely, "is how you were able to
+acquaint the Thrums people with our movements? That you must tell me
+at once, for the sheriff blames my soldiers. Come now, no counting
+twenty!"
+
+He was pacing the room now, and she had her face to herself. It said
+several things, among them that the officer evidently did not like
+this charge against his men.
+
+"Does the shirra blame the sojers?" exclaimed this quick-witted
+Egyptian. "Weel, that cows, for he has nane to blame but himsel'."
+
+"What!" cried Halliwell, delighted. "It was the sheriff who told
+tales? Answer me. You are counting a hundred this time."
+
+Perhaps the gypsy had two reasons for withholding her answer. If so,
+one of them was that as the sheriff had told nothing, she had a story
+to make up. The other was that she wanted to strike a bargain with the
+officer.
+
+"If I tell you," she said eagerly, "will you set me free?"
+
+"I may ask the sheriff to do so."
+
+"But he mauna see me," the Egyptian said in distress. "There's
+reasons, captain."
+
+"Why, surely you have not been before him on other occasions," said
+Halliwell, surprised.
+
+"No in the way you mean," muttered the gypsy, and for the moment her
+eyes twinkled. But the light in them went out when she remembered that
+the sheriff was near, and she looked desperately at the window as if
+ready to fling herself from it. She had very good reasons for not
+wishing to be seen by Riach, though fear that he would put her in gaol
+was not one of them.
+
+Halliwell thought it was the one cause of her woe, and great was his
+desire to turn the tables on the sheriff.
+
+"Tell me the truth," he said, "and I promise to befriend you."
+
+"Weel, then," the gypsy said, hoping still to soften his heart, and
+making up her story as she told it, "yestreen I met the shirra, and he
+telled me a' I hae telled the Thrums folk this nicht."
+
+"You can scarcely expect me to believe that. Where did you meet him?"
+
+"In Glen Quharity. He was riding on a horse."
+
+"Well, I allow he was there yesterday, and on horseback. He was on his
+way back to Tilliedrum from Lord Rintoul's place. But don't tell me
+that he took a gypsy girl into his confidence."
+
+"Ay, he did, without kenning. He was gieing his horse a drink when I
+met him, and he let me tell him his fortune. He said he would gaol me
+for an impostor if I didna tell him true, so I gaed about it
+cautiously, and after a minute or twa I telled him he was coming to
+Thrums the nicht to nab the rioters."
+
+"You are trifling with me," interposed the indignant soldier. "You
+promised to tell me not what you said to the sheriff, but how he
+disclosed our movements to you."
+
+"And that's just what I am telling you, only you hinna the rumelgumption
+to see it. How do you think fortunes is telled? First we get out o' the
+man, without his seeing what we're after, a' about himsel', and syne
+we repeat it to him. That's what I did wi' the shirra."
+
+"You drew the whole thing out of him without his knowing?"
+
+"'Deed I did, and he rode awa' saying I was a witch."
+
+The soldier heard with the delight of a schoolboy.
+
+"Now if the sheriff does not liberate you at my request," he said, "I
+will never let him hear the end of this story. He was right; you are a
+witch. You deceived the sheriff; yes, undoubtedly you are a witch."
+
+He looked at her with fun in his face, but the fun disappeared, and a
+wondering admiration took its place.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "I don't wonder you bewitched the sheriff. I must
+take care or you will bewitch the captain, too."
+
+At this notion he smiled, but he also ceased looking at her. Suddenly
+the Egyptian again began to cry.
+
+"You're angry wi' me," she sobbed. "I wish I had never set een on
+you."
+
+"Why do you wish that?" Halliwell asked.
+
+"Fine you ken," she answered, and again covered her face with her
+hands.
+
+He looked at her undecidedly.
+
+"I am not angry with you," he said, gently. "You are an extraordinary
+girl."
+
+Had he really made a conquest of this beautiful creature? Her words
+said so, but had he? The captain could not make up his mind. He gnawed
+his moustache in doubt.
+
+There was silence, save for the Egyptian's sobs. Halliwell's heart was
+touched, and he drew nearer her.
+
+"My poor girl----"
+
+He stopped. Was she crying? Was she not laughing at him rather? He
+became red.
+
+The gypsy peeped at him between her fingers, and saw that he was of
+two minds. She let her hands fall from her face, and undoubtedly there
+were tears on her cheeks.
+
+"If you're no angry wi' me," she said, sadly, "how will you no look at
+me?"
+
+"I am looking at you now."
+
+He was very close to her, and staring into her wonderful eyes. I am
+older than the Captain, and those eyes have dazzled me.
+
+"Captain dear."
+
+She put her hand in his. His chest rose. He knew she was seeking to
+beguile him, but he could not take his eyes off hers. He was in a
+worse plight than a woman listening to the first whisper of love.
+
+Now she was further from him, but the spell held. She reached the
+door, without taking her eyes from his face. For several seconds he
+had been as a man mesmerised.
+
+Just in time he came to. It was when she turned from him to find the
+handle of the door. She was turning it when his hand fell on hers so
+suddenly that she screamed. He twisted her round.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN HALLIWELL.]
+
+"Sit down there," he said hoarsely, pointing to the chair upon which
+he had flung his cloak. She dared not disobey. Then he leant against
+the door, his back to her, for just then he wanted no one to see his
+face. The gypsy sat very still and a little frightened.
+
+Halliwell opened the door presently, and called to the soldier on duty
+below.
+
+"Davidson, see if you can find the sheriff. I want him. And
+Davidson----"
+
+The captain paused.
+
+"Yes," he muttered, and the old soldier marvelled at his words, "it is
+better. Davidson, lock this door on the outside."
+
+Davidson did as he was ordered, and again the Egyptian was left alone
+with Halliwell.
+
+"Afraid of a woman!" she said, contemptuously, though her heart sank
+when she heard the key turn in the lock.
+
+"I admit it," he answered, calmly.
+
+He walked up and down the room, and she sat silently watching him.
+
+"That story of yours about the sheriff was not true," he said at
+last.
+
+"I suspect it wasna," answered the Egyptian coolly. "Hae you been
+thinking about it a' this time? Captain, I could tell you what you're
+thinking now. You're wishing it had been true, so that the ane o' you
+couldna lauch at the other."
+
+"Silence!" said the captain, and not another word would he speak until
+he heard the sheriff coming up the stair. The Egyptian trembled at his
+step, and rose in desperation.
+
+"Why is the door locked?" cried the sheriff, shaking it.
+
+"All right," answered Halliwell; "the key is on your side."
+
+At that moment the Egyptian knocked the lamp off the table, and the
+room was at once in darkness. The officer sprang at her, and, catching
+her by the skirt, held on.
+
+"Why are you in darkness?" asked the sheriff, as he entered.
+
+"Shut the door," cried Halliwell. "Put your back to it."
+
+"Don't tell me the woman has escaped?"
+
+"I have her, I have her! She capsized the lamp, the little jade. Shut
+the door."
+
+Still keeping firm hold of her, as he thought, the captain relit the
+lamp with his other hand. It showed an extraordinary scene. The door
+was shut, and the sheriff was guarding it. Halliwell was clutching the
+cloth of the bailie's seat. There was no Egyptian.
+
+A moment passed before either man found his tongue.
+
+"Open the door. After her!" cried Halliwell.
+
+But the door would not open. The Egyptian had fled and locked it
+behind her.
+
+What the two men said to each other, it would not be fitting to tell.
+When Davidson, who had been gossiping at the corner of the town-house,
+released his captain and the sheriff, the gypsy had been gone for some
+minutes.
+
+"But she shan't escape us," Riach cried, and hastened out to assist in
+the pursuit.
+
+Halliwell was in such a furious temper that he called up Davidson and
+admonished him for neglect of duty.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight.
+
+3 A.M.--MONSTROUS AUDACITY OF THE WOMAN.
+
+
+Not till the stroke of three did Gavin turn homeward, with the legs of
+a ploughman, and eyes rebelling against over-work. Seeking to comfort
+his dejected people, whose courage lay spilt on the brae, he had been
+in as many houses as the policemen. The soldiers marching through the
+wynds came frequently upon him, and found it hard to believe that he
+was always the same one. They told afterwards that Thrums was
+remarkable for the ferocity of its women, and the number of its little
+ministers. The morning was nipping cold, and the streets were
+deserted, for the people had been ordered within doors. As he crossed
+the Roods, Gavin saw a gleam of red-coats. In the back wynd he heard a
+bugle blown. A stir in the Banker's close spoke of another seizure. At
+the top of the school wynd two policeman, of whom one was Wearyworld,
+stopped the minister with the flash of a lantern.
+
+"We dauredna let you pass, sir," the Tilliedrum man said, "without a
+good look at you. That's the orders."
+
+"I hereby swear," said Wearyworld, authoritatively, "that this is no
+the Egyptian. Signed, Peter Spens, policeman, called by the vulgar,
+Wearyworld. Mr. Dishart, you can pass, unless you'll bide a wee and
+gie us your crack."
+
+"You have not found the gypsy, then?" Gavin asked.
+
+"No," the other policeman said, "but we ken she's within cry o' this
+very spot, and escape she canna."
+
+"What mortal man can do," Wearyworld said, "we're doing: ay, and
+mair, but she's auld wecht, and may find bilbie in queer places. Mr.
+Dishart, my official opinion is that this Egyptian is fearsomely like
+my snuff-spoon. I've kent me drap that spoon on the fender, and be
+beat to find it in an hour. And yet, a' the time I was sure it was
+there. This is a gey mysterious world, and women's the uncanniest
+things in't. It's hardly mous to think how uncanny they are."
+
+"This one deserves to be punished," Gavin said, firmly; "she incited
+the people to riot."
+
+"She did," agreed Wearyworld, who was supping ravenously on
+sociability; "ay, she even tried her tricks on me, so that them that
+kens no better thinks she fooled me. But she's cracky. To gie her her
+due, she's cracky, and as for her being a cuttie, you've said yoursel,
+Mr. Dishart, that we're all desperately wicked. But we're sair tried.
+Has it ever struck you that the trouts bites best on the Sabbath?
+God's critturs tempting decent men."
+
+"Come alang," cried the Tilliedrum man, impatiently.
+
+"I'm coming, but I maun give Mr. Dishart permission to pass first. Hae
+you heard, Mr. Dishart," Wearyworld whispered, "that the Egyptian
+diddled baith the captain and the shirra? It's my official opinion
+that she's no better than a roasted onion, the which, if you grip it
+firm, jumps out o' sicht, leaving its coat in your fingers. Mr.
+Dishart, you can pass."
+
+The policeman turned down the school wynd, and Gavin, who had already
+heard exaggerated accounts of the strange woman's escape from the
+town-house, proceeded along the Tenements. He walked in the black
+shadows of the houses, though across the way there was the morning
+light.
+
+In talking of the gypsy, the little minister had, as it were, put on
+the black cap; but now, even though he shook his head angrily with
+every thought of her, the scene in Windyghoul glimmered before his
+eyes. Sometimes when he meant to frown he only sighed, and then
+having sighed he shook himself. He was unpleasantly conscious of his
+right hand, which had flung the divit. Ah, she was shameless, and it
+would be a bright day for Thrums that saw the last of her. He hoped
+the policemen would succeed in----. It was the gladsomeness of
+innocence that he had seen dancing in the moonlight. A mere woman
+could not be like that. How soft----. And she had derided him; he, the
+Auld Licht minister of Thrums, had been flouted before his people by a
+hussy. She was without reverence, she knew no difference between an
+Auld Licht minister, whose duty it was to speak and hers to listen,
+and herself. This woman deserved to be----. And the look she cast
+behind her as she danced and sang! It was sweet, so wistful; the
+presence of purity had silenced him. Purity! Who had made him fling
+that divit? He would think no more of her. Let it suffice that he knew
+what she was. He would put her from his thoughts. Was it a ring on her
+finger?
+
+Fifty yards in front of him Gavin saw the road end in a wall of
+soldiers. They were between him and the manse, and he was still in
+darkness. No sound reached him, save the echo of his own feet. But was
+it an echo? He stopped, and turned round sharply. Now he heard
+nothing, he saw nothing. Yet was not that a human figure standing
+motionless in the shadow behind?
+
+He walked on, and again heard the sound. Again he looked behind, but
+this time without stopping. The figure was following him. He stopped.
+So did it. He turned back, but it did not move. It was the Egyptian!
+
+Gavin knew her, despite the lane of darkness, despite the long cloak
+that now concealed even her feet, despite the hood over her head. She
+was looking quite respectable, but he knew her.
+
+He neither advanced to her nor retreated. Could the unhappy girl not
+see that she was walking into the arms of the soldiers? But doubtless
+she had been driven from all her hiding-places. For a moment Gavin had
+it in his heart to warn her. But it was only for a moment. The next a
+sudden horror shot through him. She was stealing toward him, so softly
+that he had not seen her start. The woman had designs on him! Gavin
+turned from her. He walked so quickly that judges would have said he
+ran.
+
+The soldiers, I have said, stood in the dim light. Gavin had almost
+reached them, when a little hand touched his arm.
+
+"Stop," cried the sergeant, hearing some one approaching, and then
+Gavin stepped out of the darkness with the gypsy on his arm.
+
+"It is you, Mr. Dishart," said the sergeant, "and your lady?"
+
+"I----," said Gavin.
+
+His lady pinched his arm.
+
+"Yes," she answered, in an elegant English voice that made Gavin stare
+at her, "but, indeed, I am sorry I ventured into the streets to-night.
+I thought I might be able to comfort some of these unhappy people,
+captain, but I could do little, sadly little."
+
+"It is no scene for a lady, ma'am, but your husband has----. Did you
+speak, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"Yes, I must inf----"
+
+"My dear," said the Egyptian, "I quite agree with you, so we need not
+detain the captain."
+
+"I'm only a sergeant, ma'am."
+
+"Indeed!" said the Egyptian, raising her pretty eyebrows, "and how
+long are you to remain in Thrums, sergeant?"
+
+"Only for a few hours, Mrs. Dishart. If this gypsy lassie had not
+given us so much trouble, we might have been gone by now."
+
+[Illustration: "I HOPE YOU WILL CATCH HER, SERGEANT."]
+
+"Ah, yes, I hope you will catch her, sergeant."
+
+"Sergeant," said Gavin, firmly, "I must----"
+
+"You must, indeed, dear," said the Egyptian, "for you are sadly tired.
+Good-night, sergeant."
+
+"Your servant, Mrs. Dishart. Your servant, sir."
+
+"But----," cried Gavin.
+
+"Come, love," said the Egyptian, and she walked the distracted
+minister through the soldiers and up the manse road.
+
+The soldiers left behind, Gavin flung her arm from him, and, standing
+still, shook his fist in her face.
+
+"You--you--woman!" he said.
+
+This, I think, was the last time he called her a woman.
+
+But she was clapping her hands merrily.
+
+"It was beautiful!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It was iniquitous!" he answered. "And I a minister!"
+
+"You can't help that," said the Egyptian, who pitied all ministers
+heartily.
+
+"No," Gavin said, misunderstanding her, "I could not help it. No blame
+attaches to me."
+
+"I meant that you could not help being a minister. You could have
+helped saving me, and I thank you so much."
+
+"Do not dare to thank me. I forbid you to say that I saved you. I did
+my best to hand you over to the authorities."
+
+"Then why did you not hand me over?"
+
+Gavin groaned.
+
+"All you had to say," continued the merciless Egyptian, "was, 'This is
+the person you are in search of.' I did not have my hand over your
+mouth. Why did you not say it?"
+
+"Forbear!" said Gavin, woefully.
+
+"It must have been," the gypsy said, "because you really wanted to
+help me."
+
+"Then it was against my better judgment," said Gavin.
+
+"I am glad of that," said the gypsy. "Mr. Dishart, I do believe you
+like me all the time."
+
+"Can a man like a woman against his will?" Gavin blurted out.
+
+"Of course he can," said the Egyptian, speaking as one who knew. "That
+is the very nicest way to be liked."
+
+Seeing how agitated Gavin was, remorse filled her, and she said in a
+wheedling voice--
+
+"It is all over, and no one will know."
+
+Passion sat on the minister's brow, but he said nothing, for the
+gypsy's face had changed with her voice, and the audacious woman was
+become a child.
+
+"I am very sorry," she said, as if he had caught her stealing jam. The
+hood had fallen back, and she looked pleadingly at him. She had the
+appearance of one who was entirely in his hands.
+
+There was a torrent of words in Gavin, but only these trickled
+forth--
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"You are not angry any more?" pleaded the Egyptian.
+
+"Angry!" he cried, with the righteous rage of one who when his leg is
+being sawn off is asked gently if it hurts him.
+
+"I know you are," she sighed, and the sigh meant that men are
+strange.
+
+"Have you no respect for law and order?" demanded Gavin.
+
+"Not much," she answered, honestly.
+
+He looked down the road to where the red-coats were still visible, and
+his face became hard. She read his thoughts.
+
+"No," she said, becoming a woman again, "It is not yet too late. Why
+don't you shout to them?"
+
+She was holding herself like a queen, but there was no stiffness in
+her. They might have been a pair of lovers, and she the wronged one.
+Again she looked timidly at him, and became beautiful in a new way.
+Her eyes said that he was very cruel, and she was only keeping back
+her tears till he had gone. More dangerous than her face was her
+manner, which gave Gavin the privilege of making her unhappy; it
+permitted him to argue with her; it never implied that though he raged
+at her he must stand afar off; it called him a bully, but did not end
+the conversation.
+
+Now (but perhaps I should not tell this) unless she is his wife a man
+is shot with a thrill of exultation every time a pretty woman allows
+him to upbraid her.
+
+"I do not understand you," Gavin repeated weakly, and the gypsy bent
+her head under this terrible charge.
+
+"Only a few hours ago," he continued, "you were a gypsy girl in a
+fantastic dress, barefooted----"
+
+The Egyptian's bare foot at once peeped out mischievously from beneath
+the cloak, then again retired into hiding.
+
+"You spoke as broadly," complained the minister, somewhat taken aback
+by this apparition, "as any woman in Thrums, and now you fling a cloak
+over your shoulders, and immediately become a fine lady. Who are
+you?"
+
+"Perhaps," answered the Egyptian, "it is the cloak that has bewitched
+me." She slipped out of it. "Ay, ay, ou losh!" she said, as if
+surprised, "it was just the cloak that did it, for now I'm a puir
+ignorant bit lassie again. My, certie, but claithes does make a differ
+to a woman!"
+
+This was sheer levity, and Gavin walked scornfully away from it.
+
+"Yet, if you will not tell me who you are," he said, looking over his
+shoulder, "tell me where you got the cloak."
+
+"Na faags," replied the gypsy out of the cloak. "Really, Mr. Dishart,
+you had better not ask," she added, replacing it over her.
+
+She followed him, meaning to gain the open by the fields to the north
+of the manse.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand, "if you are not to give me
+up."
+
+"I am not a policeman," replied Gavin, but he would not take her
+hand.
+
+"Surely, we part friends, then?" said the Egyptian, sweetly.
+
+"No," Gavin answered. "I hope never to see your face again."
+
+"I cannot help," the Egyptian said, with dignity, "your not liking my
+face." Then, with less dignity, she added, "There is a splotch of mud
+on your own, little minister; it came off the divit you flung at the
+captain."
+
+With this parting shot she tripped past him, and Gavin would not let
+his eyes follow her. It was not the mud on his face that distressed
+him, nor even the hand that had flung the divit. It was the word
+"little." Though even Margaret was not aware of it, Gavin's shortness
+had grieved him all his life. There had been times when he tried to
+keep the secret from himself. In his boyhood he had sought a remedy by
+getting his larger comrades to stretch him. In the company of tall men
+he was always self-conscious. In the pulpit he looked darkly at his
+congregation when he asked them who, by taking thought, could add a
+cubit to his stature. When standing on a hearthrug his heels were
+frequently on the fender. In his bedroom he has stood on a footstool
+and surveyed himself in the mirror. Once he fastened high heels to his
+boots, being ashamed to ask Hendry Munn to do it for him; but this
+dishonesty shamed him, and he tore them off. So the Egyptian had put a
+needle into his pride, and he walked to the manse gloomily.
+
+[Illustration: "SURELY, WE PART FRIENDS, THEN?"]
+
+Margaret was at her window, looking for him, and he saw her though she
+did not see him. He was stepping into the middle of the road to
+wave his hand to her, when some sudden weakness made him look towards
+the fields instead. The Egyptian saw him and nodded thanks for his
+interest in her, but he scowled and pretended to be studying the sky.
+Next moment he saw her running back to him.
+
+"There are soldiers at the top of the field," she cried. "I cannot
+escape that way."
+
+"There is no other way," Gavin answered.
+
+"Will you not help me again?" she entreated.
+
+She should not have said "again." Gavin shook his head, but pulled her
+closer to the manse dyke, for his mother was still in sight.
+
+"Why do you do that?" the girl asked, quickly, looking round to see if
+she were pursued. "Oh, I see," she said, as her eyes fell on the
+figure at the window.
+
+"It is my mother," Gavin said, though he need not have explained,
+unless he wanted the gypsy to know that he was a bachelor.
+
+"Only your mother?"
+
+"Only! Let me tell you she may suffer more than you for your behaviour
+to-night!"
+
+"How can she?"
+
+"If you are caught, will it not be discovered that I helped you to
+escape?"
+
+"But you said you did not."
+
+"Yes, I helped you," Gavin admitted. "My God! what would my
+congregation say if they knew I had let you pass yourself off as--as
+my wife?"
+
+He struck his brow, and the Egyptian had the propriety to blush.
+
+"It is not the punishment from men I am afraid of," Gavin said,
+bitterly, "but from my conscience. No, that is not true. I do fear
+exposure, but for my mother's sake. Look at her; she is happy, because
+she thinks me good and true; she has had such trials as you cannot
+know of, and now, when at last I seemed able to do something for her,
+you destroy her happiness. You have her life in your hands."
+
+The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of her feet tapped
+angrily on the dry ground. Then, child of impulse as she always was,
+she flashed an indignant glance at him, and walked quickly down the
+road.
+
+"Where are you going?" he cried.
+
+"To give myself up. You need not be alarmed; I will clear you."
+
+There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke without looking
+back.
+
+"Stop!" Gavin called, but she would not, until his hand touched her
+shoulder.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked.
+
+"Why--" whispered Gavin, giddily, "why--why do you not hide in the
+manse garden?--No one will look for you there."
+
+There were genuine tears in the gypsy's eyes now.
+
+"You are a good man," she said; "I like you."
+
+"Don't say that," Gavin cried in horror. "There is a summer-seat in
+the garden."
+
+[Illustration: "'WHAT DO YOU WANT?' SHE ASKED."]
+
+Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see if she took his
+advice, hastened to the manse. Once inside, he snibbed the door.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine.
+
+THE WOMAN CONSIDERED IN ABSENCE--ADVENTURES OF A MILITARY CLOAK.
+
+
+About six o'clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the conviction
+that she had slept in. To her this was to ravel the day: a dire thing.
+The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had
+condensed morning worship into a sentence that she might make up on
+the clock.
+
+Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean, for
+Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and remain
+there till her fire was lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to
+early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered
+her vow, and then it was but a step to the window to survey the
+morning. To Margaret, who seldom went out, the weather was not of
+great moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought
+of it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide
+whether his companion should be an umbrella or a staff.
+
+On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain since
+Gavin came in. Forgetting that the water obscuring the outlook was on
+the other side of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her fist.
+It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They might have been awaiting
+her appearance at the window as their signal to depart, for hardly had
+she raised the blind when they began their march out of Thrums. From
+the manse she could not see them, but she heard them, and she saw some
+people at the Tenements run to their houses at sound of the drum.
+Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway
+to Tilliedrum. Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake
+in the manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat of the
+garden, however, there was another listener protected from her sight
+by thin spars.
+
+Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to
+rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her
+father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him
+as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in
+to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean
+collar, or of pouring the water into the basin with his own hand.
+Sometimes he caught her in the act of putting thick socks in the place
+of thin ones, and it must be admitted that her passion for keeping his
+belongings in boxes, and the boxes in secret places, and the secret
+places at the back of drawers, occasionally led to their being lost
+when wanted. "They are safe, at any rate, for I put them away some
+gait," was then Margaret's comfort, but less soothing to Gavin. Yet if
+he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper
+the next instant, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being
+a weapon that we hold by the blade. When he awoke and saw her in his
+room he would pretend, unless he felt called upon to rage at her for
+self-neglect, to be still asleep, and then be filled with tenderness
+for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a
+mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows
+him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be slower to
+think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the
+better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in
+our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he
+is signifying contempt for ours.
+
+On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin's door to stand and look,
+for she was fearful of awakening him after his heavy night. Even
+before she saw that he still slept she noticed with surprise that, for
+the first time since he came to Thrums, he had put on his shutters.
+She concluded that he had done this lest the light should rouse him.
+He was not sleeping pleasantly, for now he put his open hand before
+his face, as if to guard himself, and again he frowned and seemed to
+draw back from something. He pointed his finger sternly to the north,
+ordering the weavers, his mother thought, to return to their homes,
+and then he muttered to himself so that she heard the words, "And if
+thy right hand offend thee cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it
+is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
+that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Then suddenly he bent
+forward, his eyes open and fixed on the window. Thus he sat, for the
+space of half a minute, like one listening with painful intentness.
+When he lay back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was living the
+night over again, but not of the divit his right hand had cast, nor of
+the woman in the garden.
+
+Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices from Margaret's
+room, where Jean, who had now gathered much news, was giving it to her
+mistress. Jean's cheerfulness would have told him that her father was
+safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian. I suppose he was
+at the window in an instant, unsnibbing the shutters and looking out
+as cautiously as a burglar might have looked in. The Egyptian was gone
+from the summer-seat. He drew a great breath.
+
+But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted his ewer of water
+when these words from the kitchen capsized it:--
+
+"Ay, an Egyptian. That's what the auld folk call a gypsy. Weel, Mrs.
+Dishart, she led police and sojers sic a dance through Thrums as would
+baffle description, though I kent the fits and fors o't as I dinna.
+Ay, but they gripped her in the end, and the queer thing is----"
+
+Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down. The queer thing, of
+course, was that she had been caught in his garden. Yes, and doubtless
+queerer things about this hussy and her "husband" were being bawled
+from door to door. To the girl's probable sufferings he gave no heed.
+What kind of man had he been a few hours ago to yield to the
+machinations of a woman who was so obviously the devil? Now he saw his
+folly in the face.
+
+The tray in Jean's hands clattered against the dresser, and Gavin
+sprang from his chair. He thought it was his elders at the front
+door.
+
+In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those whose mates had
+been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On ordinary
+occasions the majesty of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she
+could only gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then
+because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a glance at
+sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable woman may
+once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a
+means of helping her with her work. But with such a to-do in Thrums,
+and she the possessor of exclusive information, Jean's reverence for
+Gavin only took her to-day as far as the door, where she lingered half
+in the parlour and half in the lobby, her eyes turned politely from
+the minister, but her ears his entirely.
+
+"I thought I heard Jean telling you about the capture of the--of an
+Egyptian woman," Gavin said to his mother, nervously.
+
+"Did you cry to me?" Jean asked, turning round longingly. "But maybe
+the mistress will tell you about the Egyptian hersel."
+
+"Has she been taken to Tilliedrum?" Gavin asked in a hollow voice.
+
+"Sup up your porridge, Gavin," Margaret said. "I'll have no speaking
+about this terrible night till you've eaten something."
+
+"I have no appetite," the minister replied, pushing his plate from
+him. "Jean, answer me."
+
+"'Deed, then," said Jean willingly, "they hinna ta'en her to
+Tilliedrum."
+
+"For what reason?" asked Gavin, his dread increasing.
+
+"For the reason that they couldna catch her," Jean answered. "She
+spirited hersel awa', the magerful crittur."
+
+"What! But I heard you say----"
+
+"Ay, they had her aince, but they couldna keep her. It's like a witch
+story. They had her safe in the town-house, and baith shirra and
+captain guarding her, and syne in a clink she wasna there. A' nicht
+they looked for her, but she hadna left so muckle as a foot-print
+ahint her, and in the tail of the day they had to up wi' their tap in
+their lap and march awa without her."
+
+Gavin's appetite returned.
+
+"Has she been seen since the soldiers went away?" he asked, laying
+down his spoon with a new fear. "Where is she now?"
+
+"No human eye has seen her," Jean answered impressively. "Whaur is she
+now? Whaur does the flies vanish to in winter? We ken they're some
+gait, but whaur?"
+
+"But what are the people saying about her?"
+
+"Daft things," said Jean. "Old Charles Yuill gangs the length o'
+hinting that she's dead and buried."
+
+"She could not have buried herself, Jean," Margaret said, mildly.
+
+"I dinna ken. Charles says she's even capable o' that."
+
+Then Jean retired reluctantly (but leaving the door ajar) and Gavin
+fell to on his porridge. He was now so cheerful that Margaret
+wondered.
+
+"If half the stories about this gypsy be true," she said, "she must be
+more than a mere woman."
+
+"Less, you mean, mother," Gavin said, with conviction. "She is a
+woman, and a sinful one."
+
+"Did you see her, Gavin?"
+
+"I saw her. Mother, she flouted me!"
+
+"The daring tawpie!" exclaimed Margaret.
+
+"She is all that," said the minister.
+
+"Was she dressed just like an ordinary gypsy body? But you don't
+notice clothes much, Gavin."
+
+"I noticed hers," Gavin said, slowly, "she was in a green and red, I
+think, and barefooted."
+
+"Ay," shouted Jean from the kitchen, startling both of them; "but she
+had a lang grey-like cloak too. She was seen jouking up closes in't."
+
+Gavin rose, considerably annoyed, and shut the parlour door.
+
+"Was she as bonny as folks say?" asked Margaret. "Jean says they speak
+of her beauty as unearthly."
+
+"Beauty of her kind," Gavin explained learnedly, "is neither earthly
+nor heavenly." He was seeing things as they are very clearly now.
+"What," he said, "is mere physical beauty? Pooh!"
+
+"And yet," said Margaret, "the soul surely does speak through the face
+to some extent."
+
+"Do you really think so, mother?" Gavin asked, a little uneasily.
+
+"I have always noticed it," Margaret said, and then her son sighed.
+
+"But I would let no face influence me a jot," he said, recovering.
+
+"Ah, Gavin, I'm thinking I'm the reason you pay so little regard to
+women's faces. It's no natural."
+
+"You've spoilt me, you see, mother, for ever caring for another woman.
+I would compare her to you, and then where would she be?"
+
+"Sometime," Margaret said, "you'll think differently."
+
+"Never," answered Gavin, with a violence that ended the conversation.
+
+Soon afterwards he set off for the town, and in passing down the
+garden walk cast a guilty glance at the summer-seat. Something black
+was lying in one corner of it. He stopped irresolutely, for his mother
+was nodding to him from her window. Then he disappeared into the
+little arbour. What had caught his eye was a Bible. On the previous
+day, as he now remembered, he had been called away while studying in
+the garden, and had left his Bible on the summer-seat, a pencil
+between its pages. Not often probably had the Egyptian passed a night
+in such company.
+
+But what was this? Gavin had not to ask himself the question. The
+gypsy's cloak was lying neatly folded at the other end of the seat.
+Why had the woman not taken it with her? Hardly had he put this
+question when another stood in front of it. What was to be done with
+the cloak? He dared not leave it there for Jean to discover. He could
+not take it into the manse in daylight. Beneath the seat was a
+tool-chest without a lid, and into this he crammed the cloak. Then,
+having turned the box face downwards, he went about his duties. But
+many a time during the day he shivered to the marrow, reflecting
+suddenly that at this very moment Jean might be carrying the accursed
+thing (at arms' length, like a dog in disgrace) to his mother.
+
+Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid toll for taking
+the road with the Egyptian, follow the adventures of the cloak.
+Shortly after gloaming fell that night Jean encountered her master in
+the lobby of the manse. He was carrying something, and when he saw her
+he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed her openly she would have
+suspected nothing, but this made her look at him.
+
+"Why do you stare so, Jean?" Gavin asked, conscience-stricken, and
+he stood with his back to the wall until she had retired in
+bewilderment.
+
+"I have noticed her watching me sharply all day," he said to himself,
+though it was only he who had been watching her.
+
+Gavin carried the cloak to his bedroom, thinking to lock it away in
+his chest, but it looked so wicked lying there that he seemed to see
+it after the lid was shut.
+
+The garret was the best place for it. He took it out of the chest and
+was opening his door gently, when there was Jean again. She had been
+employed very innocently in his mother's room, but he said tartly--
+
+"Jean, I really cannot have this," which sent Jean to the kitchen with
+her apron at her eyes.
+
+Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and an hour afterwards
+was engaged on his sermon, when he distinctly heard some one in the
+garret. He ran up the ladder with a terrible brow for Jean, but it was
+not Jean; it was Margaret.
+
+"Mother," he said in alarm, "what are you doing here?"
+
+"I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin."
+
+"Yes, but--it is too cold for you. Did Jean--did Jean ask you to come
+up here?"
+
+"Jean? She knows her place better."
+
+Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his confidence in the
+garret had gone. He stole up the ladder again, dragged the cloak
+from its lurking place, and took it into the garden. He very nearly
+met Jean in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she fled
+precipitately, which he thought very suspicious.
+
+In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the cloak, but even now
+he was not done with it. He was wakened early by a noise of scraping
+in the garden, and his first thought was "Jean!" But peering from the
+window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog, which already had
+its teeth in the cloak.
+
+That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously carrying a
+brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the hill, and having dropped the
+parcel there, retired hurriedly. On his way home, nevertheless, he was
+over-taken by D. Fittis, who had been cutting down whins. Fittis had
+seen the parcel fall, and running after Gavin, returned it to him.
+Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then sat down gloomily on the cemetery
+dyke. Half an hour afterwards he flung the parcel into a Tillyloss
+garden.
+
+In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from Jean.
+
+"Do you remember, Gavin, that the Egyptian every one is still speaking
+of, wore a long cloak? Well, would you believe it, the cloak was
+Captain Halliwell's, and she took it from the town-house when she
+escaped. She is supposed to have worn it inside out. He did not
+discover that it was gone until he was leaving Thrums."
+
+"Mother, is this possible?" Gavin said.
+
+"The policeman, Wearyworld, has told it. He was ordered, it seems, to
+look for the cloak quietly, and to take any one into custody in whose
+possession it was found."
+
+"Has it been found?"
+
+"No."
+
+The minister walked out of the parlour, for he could not trust his
+face. What was to be done now? The cloak was lying in mason Baxter's
+garden, and Baxter was therefore, in all probability, within
+four-and-twenty hours of the Tilliedrum gaol.
+
+"Does Mr. Dishart ever wear a cap at nichts?" Femie Wilkie asked Sam'l
+Fairweather three hours later.
+
+"Na, na, he has ower muckle respect for his lum hat," answered Sam'l;
+"and richtly, for it's the crowning stone o' the edifice."
+
+"Then it couldna hae been him I met at the back o' Tillyloss the now,"
+said Femie, "though like him it was. He joukit back when he saw me."
+
+While Femie was telling her story in the Tenements, mason Baxter,
+standing at the window which looked into his garden, was shouting,
+"Wha's that in my yard?" There was no answer, and Baxter closed his
+window, under the impression that he had been speaking to a cat. The
+man in the cap then emerged from the corner where he had been
+crouching, and stealthily felt for something among the cabbages and
+pea sticks. It was no longer there, however, and by-and-by he retired
+empty-handed.
+
+"The Egyptian's cloak has been found," Margaret was able to tell Gavin
+next day. "Mason Baxter found it yesterday afternoon."
+
+"In his garden?" Gavin asked hurriedly.
+
+"No; in the quarry, he says, but according to Jean he is known not to
+have been at the quarry to-day. Some seem to think that the gypsy gave
+him the cloak for helping her to escape, and that he has delivered it
+up lest he should get into difficulties."
+
+"Whom has he given it to, mother?" Gavin asked.
+
+"To the policeman."
+
+"And has Wearyworld sent it back to Halliwell?"
+
+"Yes. He told Jean he sent it off at once, with the information that
+the masons had found it in the quarry."
+
+The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to be told, awaited
+Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing to do with the cloak, of which
+I may here record the end. Wearyworld had not forwarded it to its
+owner; Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It made its reappearance in
+Thrums, several months after the riot, as two pairs of Sabbath breeks
+for her sons, James and Andrew.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Ten.
+
+FIRST SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.
+
+
+On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have said, something
+strange happened in the Auld Licht pulpit. The congregation, despite
+their troubles, turned it over and peered at it for days, but had they
+seen into the inside of it they would have weaved few webs until the
+session had sat on the minister. The affair baffled me at the time,
+and for the Egyptian's sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it
+not one of Gavin's milestones. It includes the first of his memorable
+sermons against Woman.
+
+I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I heard of the sermon
+before night, and this, I think, is as good an opportunity as another
+for showing how the gossip about Gavin reached me up here in the Glen
+school-house. Since Margaret and her son came to the manse I had kept
+the vow made to myself and avoided Thrums. Only once had I ventured to
+the kirk, and then, instead of taking my old seat, the fourth from the
+pulpit, I sat down near the plate, where I could look at Margaret
+without her seeing me. To spare her that agony I even stole away as
+the last word of the benediction was pronounced, and my haste
+scandalised many, for with Auld Lichts it is not customary to retire
+quickly from the church after the manner of the godless U. P.'s (and
+the Free Kirk is little better), who have their hats in their hand
+when they rise for the benediction, so that they may at once pour out
+like a burst dam. We resume our seats, look straight before us, clear
+our throats and stretch out our hands for our womenfolk to put our
+hats into them. In time we do get out, but I am never sure how.
+
+One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in a town, without
+losing his character, and I used to await the return of my neighbour,
+the farmer of Waster Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the Glen Quharity
+post, at the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny was a man
+whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from his wife his great
+pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on the other hand, he told outright
+what he thought of it, praising it to its face and blackguarding it as
+it deserved, and I have seen him when completely baffled by the brute,
+sit down before it on a stone and thus harangue: "You think you're
+clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you're mista'en. You're a thrawn limmer,
+that's what you are. You think you have blood in you. You hae blood!
+Gae away, and dinna blether. I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man
+yestreen that kent your mither, and he says she was a feikie
+fushionless besom. What do you say to that?"
+
+As for the post, I will say no more of him than that his bitter topic
+was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him graciously
+when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he had none, "aye
+implying that I hae a letter, but keep it back."
+
+On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the usual place
+awaiting my friends, and saw before they reached me that they had
+something untoward to tell. The farmer, his wife and three children,
+holding each other's hands, stretched across the road. Birse was a
+little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by shouting. All
+were walking the Sabbath pace, and the family having started half a
+minute in advance, the post had not yet made up on them.
+
+"It's sitting to snaw," Waster Lunny said, drawing near, and just as I
+was to reply, "It is so," Silva slipped in the words before me.
+
+"You wasna at the kirk," was Elspeth's salutation. I had been at the
+Glen church, but did not contradict her, for it is Established, and so
+neither here nor there. I was anxious, too, to know what their long
+faces meant, and so asked at once--
+
+"Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?"
+
+"Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no," replied Waster Lunny, walking round his
+wife to get nearer me. "Dominie, a queery thing happened in the kirk
+this day, sic as----"
+
+"Waster Lunny," interrupted Elspeth sharply; "have you on your Sabbath
+shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?"
+
+"Guid care you took I should hae the dagont oncanny things on,"
+retorted the farmer.
+
+"Keep out o' the gutter, then," said Elspeth, "on the Lord's day."
+
+"Him," said her man, "that is forced by a foolish woman to wear
+genteel 'lastic-sided boots canna forget them till he takes them aff.
+Whaur's the extra reverence in wearing shoon twa sizes ower sma?"
+
+"It mayna be mair reverent," suggested Birse, to whom Elspeth's
+kitchen was a pleasant place, "but it's grand, and you canna expect to
+be baith grand and comfortable."
+
+I reminded them that they were speaking of Mr. Dishart.
+
+"We was saying," began the post briskly, "that----"
+
+"It was me that was saying it," said Waster Lunny. "So, dominie----"
+
+"Haud your gabs, baith o' you," interrupted Elspeth. "You've been
+roaring the story to ane another till you're hoarse."
+
+"In the forenoon," Waster Lunny went on determinedly, "Mr. Dishart
+preached on the riot, and fine he was. Oh, dominie, you should hae
+heard him ladling it on to Lang Tammas, no by name but in sic a way
+that there was no mistaking wha he was preaching at, Sal! oh losh!
+Tammas got it strong."
+
+"But he's dull in the uptake," broke in the post, "by what I expected.
+I spoke to him after the sermon, and I says, just to see if he was
+properly humbled, 'Ay, Tammas,' I says, 'them that discourse was
+preached against, winna think themselves seven feet men for a while
+again.' 'Ay, Birse,' he answers, 'and glad I am to hear you admit it,
+for he had you in his eye.' I was fair scunnered at Tammas the day."
+
+"Mr. Dishart was preaching at the whole clanjamfray o' you," said
+Elspeth.
+
+"Maybe he was," said her husband, leering; "but you needna cast it at
+us, for, my certie, if the men got it frae him in the forenoon, the
+women got it in the afternoon."
+
+"He redd them up most michty," said the post. "Thae was his very words
+or something like them. 'Adam,' says he, 'was an erring man, but aside
+Eve he was respectable.'"
+
+"Ay, but it wasna a' women he meant," Elspeth explained, "for when he
+said that, he pointed his finger direct at T'nowhead's lassie, and I
+hope it'll do her good."
+
+"But I wonder," I said, "that Mr. Dishart chose such a subject to-day.
+I thought he would be on the riot at both services."
+
+"You'll wonder mair," said Elspeth, "when you hear what happened afore
+he began the afternoon sermon. But I canna get in a word wi' that man
+o' mine."
+
+"We've been speaking about it," said Birse, "ever since we left the
+kirk door. Tod, we've been sawing it like seed a' alang the glen."
+
+"And we meant to tell you about it at once," said Waster Lunny; "but
+there's aye so muckle to say about a minister. Dagont, to hae ane
+keeps a body out o' langour. Ay, but this breaks the drum. Dominie,
+either Mr. Dishart wasna weel, or he was in the devil's grip."
+
+This startled me, for the farmer was looking serious.
+
+"He was weel eneuch," said Birse, "for a heap o' fowk speired at Jean
+if he had ta'en his porridge as usual, and she admitted he had. But
+the lassie was skeered hersel', and said it was a mercy Mrs. Dishart
+wasna in the kirk."
+
+"Why was she not there?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Oh, he winna let her out in sic weather."
+
+"I wish you would tell me what happened," I said to Elspeth.
+
+"So I will," she answered, "if Waster Lunny would haud his wheesht for
+a minute. You see the afternoon diet began in the ordinary way, and a'
+was richt until we came to the sermon. 'You will find my text,' he
+says, in his piercing voice, 'in the eighth chapter of Ezra.'"
+
+"And at thae words," said Waster Lunny, "my heart gae a loup, for Ezra
+is an unca ill book to find; ay, and so is Ruth."
+
+"I kent the books o' the Bible by heart," said Elspeth, scornfully,
+"when I was a sax year auld."
+
+"So did I," said Waster Lunny, "and I ken them yet, except when I'm
+hurried. When Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra he a sort o' keeked round the
+kirk to find out if he had puzzled onybody, and so there was a kind o'
+a competition among the congregation wha would lay hand on it first.
+That was what doited me. Ay, there was Ruth when she wasna wanted, but
+Ezra, dagont, it looked as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the
+Bible."
+
+"You wasna the only distressed crittur," said his wife. "I was ashamed
+to see Eppie McLaren looking up the order o' the books at the
+beginning o' the Bible."
+
+"Tibbie Birse was even mair brazen," said the post, "for the sly
+cuttie opened at Kings and pretended it was Ezra."
+
+"None o' thae things would I do," said Waster Lunny, "and sal, I
+dauredna, for Davit Lunan was glowering over my shuther. Ay, you may
+scrowl at me, Elspeth Proctor, but as far back as I can mind, Ezra has
+done me. Mony a time afore I start for the kirk I take my Bible to a
+quiet place and look Ezra up. In the very pew I says canny to mysel',
+'Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job,' the which should be a help, but the
+moment the minister gi'es out that awfu' book, away goes Ezra like the
+Egyptian."
+
+"And you after her," said Elspeth, "like the weavers that wouldna
+fecht. You make a windmill of your Bible."
+
+"Oh, I winna admit I'm beat. Never mind, there's queer things in the
+world forby Ezra. How is cripples aye so puffed up mair than other
+folk? How does flour-bread aye fall on the buttered side?"
+
+"I will mind," Elspeth said, "for I was terrified the minister would
+admonish you frae the pulpit."
+
+"He couldna hae done that, for was he no baffled to find Ezra
+himsel'?"
+
+"Him no find Ezra!" cried Elspeth. "I hae telled you a dozen times he
+found it as easy as you could yoke a horse."
+
+"The thing can be explained in no other way," said her husband,
+doggedly, "if he was weel and in sound mind."
+
+"Maybe the dominie can clear it up," suggested the post, "him being a
+scholar."
+
+"Then tell me what happened," I asked.
+
+"Godsake, hae we no telled you?" Birse said. "I thocht we had."
+
+"It was a terrible scene," said Elspeth, giving her husband a shove.
+"As I said, Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra eighth. Weel, I turned it up in
+a jiffy, and syne looked cautiously to see how Eppie McLaren was
+getting on. Just at that minute I heard a groan frae the pulpit. It
+didna stop short o' a groan. Ay, you may be sure I looked quick at the
+minister, and there I saw a sicht that would hae made the grandest
+gape. His face was as white as a baker's, and he had a sort of fallen
+against the back o' the pulpit, staring demented-like at his open
+Bible."
+
+"And I saw him," said Birse, "put up his hand atween him and the Book,
+as if he thocht it was to jump at him."
+
+"Twice," said Elspeth, "he tried to speak, and twice he let the words
+fall."
+
+"That," says Waster Lunny, "the whole congregation admits, but I didna
+see it mysel', for a' this time you may picture me hunting savage-like
+for Ezra. I thocht the minister was waiting till I found it."
+
+"Hendry Munn," said Birse, "stood upon one leg, wondering whether he
+should run to the session-house for a glass of water."
+
+"But by that time," said Elspeth, "the fit had left Mr. Dishart, or
+rather it had ta'en a new turn. He grew red, and it's gospel that he
+stamped his foot."
+
+"He had the face of one using bad words," said the post. "He didna
+swear, of course, but that was the face he had on."
+
+"I missed it," said Waster Lunny, "for I was in full cry after Ezra,
+with the sweat running down my face."
+
+"But the most astounding thing has yet to be telled," went on Elspeth.
+"The minister shook himsel' like one wakening frae a nasty dream, and
+he cries in a voice of thunder, just as if he was shaking his fist at
+somebody----"
+
+"He cries," Birse interposed, cleverly, "he cries, 'You will find the
+text in Genesis, chapter three, verse six.'"
+
+"Yes," said Elspeth, "first he gave out one text, and then he gave out
+another, being the most amazing thing to my mind that ever happened in
+the town of Thrums. What will our children's children think o't? I
+wouldna hae missed it for a pound note."
+
+"Nor me," said Waster Lunny, "though I only got the tail o't. Dominie,
+no sooner had he said Genesis third and sixth, than I laid my finger
+on Ezra. Was it no provoking? Onybody can turn up Genesis, but it
+needs an able-bodied man to find Ezra."
+
+"He preached on the Fall," Elspeth said, "for an hour and twenty-five
+minutes, but powerful though he was I would rather he had telled us
+what made him gie the go-by to Ezra."
+
+"All I can say," said Waster Lunny, "is that I never heard him mair
+awe-inspiring. Whaur has he got sic a knowledge of women? He riddled
+them, he fair riddled them, till I was ashamed o' being married."
+
+"It's easy kent whaur he got his knowledge of women," Birse explained,
+"it's a' in the original Hebrew. You can howk ony mortal thing out o'
+the original Hebrew, the which all ministers hae at their finger ends.
+What else makes them ken to jump a verse now and then when giving out
+a psalm?"
+
+"It wasna women like me he denounced," Elspeth insisted, "but young
+lassies that leads men astray wi' their abominable wheedling ways."
+
+"Tod," said her husband, "if they try their hands on Mr. Dishart
+they'll meet their match."
+
+"They will," chuckled the post. "The Hebrew's a grand thing, though
+teuch, I'm telled, michty teuch."
+
+"His sublimest burst," Waster Lunny came back to tell me, "was about
+the beauty o' the soul being everything and the beauty o' the face no
+worth a snuff. What a scorn he has for bonny faces and toom souls! I
+dinna deny but what a bonny face fell takes me, but Mr. Dishart
+wouldna gie a blade o' grass for't. Ay, and I used to think that in
+their foolishness about women there was dagont little differ atween
+the unlearned and the highly edicated."
+
+The gossip about Gavin brought hitherto to the school-house had been
+as bread to me, but this I did not like. For a minister to behave thus
+was as unsettling to us as a change of Government to Londoners, and I
+decided to give my scholars a holiday on the morrow and tramp into the
+town for fuller news. But all through the night it snowed, and next
+day, and then intermittently for many days, and every fall took the
+school miles farther away from Thrums. Birse and the crows had now the
+glen road to themselves, and even Birse had twice or thrice to bed
+with me. At these times had he not been so interested in describing
+his progress through the snow, maintaining that the crying want of our
+glen road was palings for postmen to kick their feet against, he must
+have wondered why I always turned the talk to the Auld Licht
+minister.
+
+"Ony explanation o' his sudden change o' texts?" Birse said, repeating
+my question. "Tod, and there is and to spare, for I hear tell there's
+saxteen explanations in the Tenements alone. As Tammas Haggart says,
+that's a blessing, for if there had just been twa explanations the
+kirk micht hae split on them."
+
+"Ay," he said at another time, "twa or three even dared to question
+the minister, but I'm thinking they made nothing o't. The majority
+agrees that he was just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas
+is dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He says that after
+the diet o' worship on that eventful afternoon Mr. Dishart carried the
+Bible out o' the pulpit instead o' leaving that duty as usual to the
+kirk-officer. Weel, Tammas, being precentor, has a richt, as you ken,
+to leave the kirk by the session-house door, just like the minister
+himsel'. He did so that afternoon, and what, think you, did he see? He
+saw Mr. Dishart tearing a page out o' the Bible, and flinging it
+savagely into the session-house fire. You dinna credit it? Weel, it's
+staggering, but there's Hendry Munn's evidence too. Hendry took his
+first chance o' looking up Ezra in the minister's Bible, and, behold,
+the page wi' the eighth chapter was gone. Them that thinks Tammas
+wasna blind wi' excitement hauds it had been Ezra eighth that gaed
+into the fire. Onyway, there's no doubt about the page's being
+missing, for whatever excitement Tammas was in, Hendry was as cool as
+ever."
+
+A week later Birse told me that the congregation had decided to regard
+the incident as adding lustre to their kirk. This was largely, I fear,
+because it could then be used to belittle the Established minister.
+That fervent Auld Licht, Snecky Hobart, feeling that Gavin's action
+was unsound, had gone on the following Sabbath to the parish kirk and
+sat under Mr. Duthie. But Mr. Duthie was a close reader, so that
+Snecky flung himself about in his pew in misery. The minister
+concluded his sermon with these words: "But on this subject I will say
+no more at present." "Because you canna," Snecky roared, and strutted
+out of the church. Comparing the two scenes, it is obvious that the
+Auld Lichts had won a victory. After preaching impromptu for an hour
+and twenty-five minutes, it could never be said of Gavin that he
+needed to read. He became more popular than ever. Yet the change of
+texts was not forgotten. If in the future any other indictments were
+brought against him, it would certainly be pinned to them.
+
+I marvelled long over Gavin's jump from Ezra to Genesis, and at this
+his first philippic against Woman, but I have known the cause for many
+a year. The Bible was the one that had lain on the summer-seat while
+the Egyptian hid there. It was the great pulpit Bible which remains in
+the church as a rule, but Gavin had taken it home the previous day to
+make some of its loose pages secure with paste. He had studied from it
+on the day preceding the riot, but had used a small Bible during the
+rest of the week. When he turned in the pulpit to Ezra, where he had
+left the large Bible open in the summer-seat, he found this scrawled
+across chapter eight:--
+
+"I will never tell who flung the clod at Captain Halliwell. But why
+did you fling it? I will never tell that you allowed me to be called
+Mrs. Dishart before witnesses. But is not this a Scotch marriage?
+Signed, Babbie the Egyptian."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eleven.
+
+TELLS IN A WHISPER OF MAN'S FALL DURING THE CURLING SEASON.
+
+
+No snow could be seen in Thrums by the beginning of the year, though
+clods of it lay in Waster Lunny's fields, where his hens wandered all
+day as if looking for something they had dropped. A black frost had
+set in, and one walking on the glen road could imagine that through
+the cracks in it he saw a loch glistening. From my door I could hear
+the roar of curling stones at Rashie-bog, which is almost four miles
+nearer Thrums. On the day I am recalling, I see that I only made one
+entry in my diary, "At last bought Waster Lunny's bantams." Well do I
+remember the transaction, and no wonder, for I had all but bought the
+bantams every day for a six months.
+
+About noon the doctor's dogcart was observed by all the Tenements
+standing at the Auld Licht manse. The various surmises were wrong.
+Margaret had not been suddenly taken ill; Jean had not swallowed a
+darning-needle; the minister had not walked out at his study window in
+a moment of sublime thought. Gavin stepped into the dogcart, which at
+once drove off in the direction of Rashie-bog, but equally in error
+were those who said that the doctor was making a curler of him.
+
+There was, however, ground for gossip; for Thrums folk seldom called
+in a doctor until it was too late to cure them, and McQueen was not
+the man to pay social visits. Of his skill we knew fearsome stories,
+as that, by looking at Archie Allardyce, who had come to broken bones
+on a ladder, he discovered which rung Archie fell from. When he
+entered a stuffy room he would poke his staff through the window to
+let in fresh air, and then fling down a shilling to pay for the
+breakage. He was deaf in the right ear, and therefore usually took the
+left side of prosy people, thus, as he explained, making a blessing of
+an affliction. "A pity I don't hear better?" I have heard him say.
+"Not at all. If my misfortune, as you call it, were to be removed, you
+can't conceive how I should miss my deaf ear." He was a fine fellow,
+though brusque, and I never saw him without his pipe until two days
+before we buried him, which was five-and-twenty years ago come
+Martinmas.
+
+"We're all quite weel," Jean said apprehensively as she answered his
+knock on the manse door, and she tried to be pleasant, too, for well
+she knew that, if a doctor willed it, she could have fever in five
+minutes.
+
+"Ay, Jean, I'll soon alter that," he replied ferociously. "Is the
+master in?"
+
+"He's at his sermon," Jean said with importance.
+
+To interrupt the minister at such a moment seemed sacrilege to her,
+for her up-bringing had been good. Her mother had once fainted in the
+church, but though the family's distress was great, they neither bore
+her out, nor signed to the kirk-officer to bring water. They propped
+her up in the pew in a respectful attitude, joining in the singing
+meanwhile, and she recovered in time to look up 2nd Chronicles, 21st
+and 7th.
+
+"Tell him I want to speak to him at the door," said the doctor
+fiercely, "or I'll bleed you this minute."
+
+McQueen would not enter, because his horse might have seized the
+opportunity to return stablewards. At the houses where it was
+accustomed to stop, it drew up of its own accord, knowing where the
+Doctor's "cases" were as well as himself, but it resented new
+patients.
+
+"You like misery, I think, Mr. Dishart," McQueen said when Gavin came
+to him, "at least I am always finding you in the thick of it, and
+that is why I am here now. I have a rare job for you if you will jump
+into the machine. You know Nanny Webster, who lives on the edge of
+Windyghoul? No, you don't, for she belongs to the other kirk. Well, at
+all events, you knew her brother, Sanders, the mole-catcher?"
+
+"I remember him. You mean the man who boasted so much about seeing a
+ball at Lord Rintoul's place?"
+
+"The same, and, as you may know, his boasting about maltreating
+policemen whom he never saw led to his being sentenced to nine months
+in gaol lately."
+
+"That is the man," said Gavin. "I never liked him."
+
+"No, but his sister did," McQueen answered, drily, "and with reason,
+for he was her breadwinner, and now she is starving."
+
+"Anything I can give her----"
+
+"Would be too little, sir."
+
+"But the neighbours----"
+
+"She has few near her, and though the Thrums poor help each other
+bravely, they are at present nigh as needy as herself. Nanny is coming
+to the poorhouse, Mr. Dishart."
+
+"God help her!" exclaimed Gavin.
+
+"Nonsense," said the doctor, trying to make himself a hard man. "She
+will be properly looked after there, and--and in time she will like
+it."
+
+"Don't let my mother hear you speaking of taking an old woman to that
+place," Gavin said, looking anxiously up the stair. I cannot pretend
+that Margaret never listened.
+
+"You all speak as if the poorhouse was a gaol," the doctor said
+testily. "But so far as Nanny is concerned, everything is arranged. I
+promised to drive her to the poorhouse to-day, and she is waiting for
+me now. Don't look at me as if I was a brute. She is to take some of
+her things with her to the poorhouse and the rest is to be left until
+Sanders's return, when she may rejoin him. At least we said that to
+her to comfort her."
+
+"You want me to go with you?"
+
+"Yes, though I warn you it may be a distressing scene; indeed, the
+truth is that I am loth to face Nanny alone to-day. Mr. Duthie should
+have accompanied me, for the Websters are Established Kirk; ay, and so
+he would if Rashie-bog had not been bearing. A terrible snare this
+curling, Mr. Dishart"--here the doctor sighed--"I have known Mr.
+Duthie wait until midnight struck on Sabbath and then be off to
+Rashie-bog with a torch."
+
+"I will go with you," Gavin said, putting on his coat.
+
+"Jump in then. You won't smoke? I never see a respectable man not
+smoking, sir, but I feel indignant with him for such sheer waste of
+time."
+
+Gavin smiled at this, and Snecky Hobart, who happened to be keeking
+over the manse dyke, bore the news to the Tenements.
+
+"I'll no sleep the nicht," Snecky said, "for wondering what made the
+minister lauch. Ay, it would be no trifle."
+
+A minister, it is certain, who wore a smile on his face would never
+have been called to the Auld Licht kirk, for life is a wrestle with
+the devil, and only the frivolous think to throw him without taking
+off their coats. Yet, though Gavin's zeal was what the congregation
+reverenced, many loved him privately for his boyishness. He could
+unbend at marriages, of which he had six on the last day of the year,
+and at every one of them he joked (the same joke) like a layman. Some
+did not approve of his playing at the teetotum for ten minutes with
+Kitty Dundas's invalid son, but the way Kitty boasted about it would
+have disgusted anybody. At the present day there are probably a score
+of Gavins in Thrums, all called after the little minister, and there
+is one Gavinia, whom he hesitated to christen. He made humorous
+remarks (the same remark) about all these children, and his smile as
+he patted their heads was for thinking over when one's work was done
+for the day.
+
+The doctor's horse clattered up the Backwynd noisily, as if a minister
+behind made no difference to it. Instead of climbing the Roods,
+however, the nearest way to Nanny's, it went westward, which Gavin, in
+a reverie, did not notice. The truth must be told. The Egyptian was
+again in his head.
+
+"Have I fallen deaf in the left ear, too?" said the doctor. "I see
+your lips moving, but I don't catch a syllable."
+
+Gavin started, coloured, and flung the gypsy out of the trap.
+
+"Why are we not going up the Roods?" he asked.
+
+"Well," said the doctor slowly, "at the top of the Roods there is a
+stance for circuses, and this old beast of mine won't pass it. You
+know, unless you are behind in the clashes and clavers of Thrums, that
+I bought her from the manager of a travelling show. She was the horse
+('Lightning' they called her) that galloped round the ring at a mile
+an hour, and so at the top of the Roods she is still unmanageable. She
+once dragged me to the scene of her former triumphs, and went
+revolving round it, dragging the machine after her."
+
+"If you had not explained that," said Gavin, "I might have thought
+that you wanted to pass by Rashie-bog."
+
+The doctor, indeed, was already standing up to catch a first glimpse
+of the curlers.
+
+"Well," he admitted, "I might have managed to pass the circus ring,
+though what I have told you is true. However, I have not come this way
+merely to see how the match is going. I want to shame Mr. Duthie for
+neglecting his duty. It will help me to do mine, for the Lord knows I
+am finding it hard, with the music of these stones in my ears."
+
+"I never saw it played before," Gavin said, standing up in his turn.
+"What a din they make! McQueen, I believe they are fighting!"
+
+"No, no," said the excited doctor, "they are just a bit daft. That's
+the proper spirit for the game. Look, that's the baron-bailie near
+standing on his head, and there's Mr. Duthie off his head a'
+thegither. Yon's twa weavers and a mason cursing the laird, and the
+man wi' the besom is the Master of Crumnathie."
+
+"A democracy, at all events," said Gavin.
+
+"By no means," said the doctor, "it's an aristocracy of intellect. Gee
+up, Lightning, or the frost will be gone before we are there."
+
+"It is my opinion, doctor," said Gavin, "that you will have bones to
+set before that game is finished. I can see nothing but legs now."
+
+"Don't say a word against curling, sir, to me," said McQueen, whom the
+sight of a game in which he must not play had turned crusty.
+"Dangerous! It's the best medicine I know of. Look at that man coming
+across the field. It is Jo Strachan. Well, sir, curling saved Jo's
+life after I had given him up. You don't believe me? Hie, Jo, Jo
+Strachan, come here and tell the minister how curling put you on your
+legs again."
+
+Strachan came forward, a tough, little, wizened man, with red flannel
+round his ears to keep out the cold.
+
+"It's gospel what the doctor says, Mr. Dishart," he declared. "Me and
+my brither Sandy was baith ill, and in the same bed, and the doctor
+had hopes o' Sandy, but nane o' me. Ay, weel, when I heard that, I
+thocht I micht as weel die on the ice as in my bed, so I up and on wi'
+my claethes. Sandy was mad at me, for he was no curler, and he says,
+'Jo Strachan, if you gang to Rashie-bog you'll assuredly be brocht
+hame a corp.' I didna heed him, though, and off I gaed."
+
+"And I see you did not die," said Gavin.
+
+"Not me," answered the fish cadger, with a grin. "Na, but the joke o't
+is, it was Sandy that died."
+
+"Not the joke, Jo," corrected the doctor, "the moral."
+
+"Ay, the moral; I'm aye forgetting the word."
+
+McQueen, enjoying Gavin's discomfiture, turned Lightning down the
+Rashie-bog road, which would be impassable as soon as the thaw came.
+In summer Rashie-bog is several fields in which a cart does not sink
+unless it stands still, but in winter it is a loch with here and there
+a spring where dead men are said to lie. There are no rushes at its
+east end, and here the dogcart drew up near the curlers, a crowd of
+men dancing, screaming, shaking their fists and sweeping, while half a
+hundred onlookers got in their way, gesticulating and advising.
+
+"Hold me tight," the doctor whispered to Gavin, "or I'll be leaving
+you to drive Nanny to the poorhouse by yourself."
+
+He had no sooner said this than he tried to jump out of the trap.
+
+"You donnert fule, John Robbie," he shouted to a player, "soop her up,
+man, soop her up; no, no, dinna, dinna; leave her alane. Bailie, leave
+her alane, you blazing idiot. Mr. Dishart, let me go; what do you
+mean, sir, by hanging on to my coat tails? Dang it all, Duthie's
+winning. He has it, he has it!"
+
+"You're to play, doctor?" some cried, running to the dogcart. "We hae
+missed you sair."
+
+"Jeames, I--I--. No, I daurna."
+
+"Then we get our licks. I never saw the minister in sic form. We can
+do nothing against him."
+
+"Then," cried McQueen, "I'll play. Come what will, I'll play. Let go
+my tails, Mr. Dishart, or I'll cut them off. Duty? Fiddlesticks!"
+
+"Shame on you, sir," said Gavin; "yes, and on you others who would
+entice him from his duty."
+
+"Shame!" the doctor cried. "Look at Mr. Duthie. Is he ashamed? And
+yet that man has been reproving me for a twelvemonths because I've
+refused to become one of his elders. Duthie," he shouted, "think shame
+of yourself for curling this day."
+
+Mr. Duthie had carefully turned his back to the trap, for Gavin's
+presence in it annoyed him. We seldom care to be reminded of our duty
+by seeing another do it. Now, however, he advanced to the dogcart,
+taking the far side of Gavin.
+
+"Put on your coat, Mr. Duthie," said the doctor, "and come with me to
+Nanny Webster's. You promised."
+
+Mr. Duthie looked quizzically at Gavin, and then at the sky.
+
+"The thaw may come at any moment," he said.
+
+"I think the frost is to hold," said Gavin.
+
+"It may hold over to-morrow," Mr. Duthie admitted; "but to-morrow's
+the Sabbath, and so a lost day."
+
+"A what?" exclaimed Gavin, horrified.
+
+"I only mean," Mr. Duthie answered, colouring, "that we can't curl on
+the Lord's day. As for what it may be like on Monday, no one can say.
+No, doctor, I won't risk it. We're in the middle of a game, man."
+
+Gavin looked very grave.
+
+"I see what you are thinking, Mr. Dishart," the old minister said
+doggedly; "but then, you don't curl. You are very wise. I have
+forbidden my sons to curl."
+
+"Then you openly snap your fingers at your duty, Mr. Duthie?" said the
+doctor, loftily. ("You can let go my tails now, Mr. Dishart, for the
+madness has passed.")
+
+"None of your virtuous airs, McQueen," said Mr. Duthie, hotly. "What
+was the name of the doctor that warned women never to have bairns
+while it was hauding?"
+
+"And what," retorted McQueen, "was the name of the minister that told
+his session he would neither preach nor pray while the black frost
+lasted?"
+
+"Hoots, doctor," said Duthie, "don't lose your temper because I'm in
+such form."
+
+"Don't lose yours, Duthie, because I aye beat you."
+
+"You beat me, McQueen! Go home, sir, and don't talk havers. Who beat
+you at----"
+
+"Who made you sing small at----"
+
+"Who won----"
+
+"Who----"
+
+"Who----"
+
+"I'll play you on Monday for whatever you like!" shrieked the doctor.
+
+"If it holds," cried the minister, "I'll be here the whole day. Name
+the stakes yourself. A stone?"
+
+"No," the doctor said, "but I'll tell you what we'll play for. You've
+been dinging me doited about that eldership, and we'll play for't. If
+you win I accept office."
+
+"Done," said the minister, recklessly.
+
+The dogcart was now turned toward Windyghoul, its driver once more
+good-humoured, but Gavin silent.
+
+"You would have been the better of my deaf ear just now, Mr. Dishart,"
+McQueen said after the loch had been left behind. "Aye, and I'm
+thinking my pipe would soothe you. But don't take it so much to heart,
+man. I'll lick him easily. He's a decent man, the minister, but vain
+of his play, ridiculously vain. However, I think the sight of you, in
+the place that should have been his, has broken his nerve for this
+day, and our side may win yet."
+
+"I believe," Gavin said, with sudden enlightenment, "that you brought
+me here for that purpose."
+
+"Maybe," chuckled the doctor; "maybe." Then he changed the subject
+suddenly. "Mr. Dishart," he asked, "were you ever in love?"
+
+"Never!" answered Gavin violently.
+
+"Well, well," said the doctor, "don't terrify the horse. I have been
+in love myself. It's bad, but it's nothing to curling."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twelve.
+
+TRAGEDY OF A MUD HOUSE.
+
+
+The dogcart bumped between the trees of Caddam, flinging Gavin and the
+doctor at each other as a wheel rose on some beech-root or sank for a
+moment in a pool. I suppose the wood was a pretty sight that day, the
+pines only white where they had met the snow, as if the numbed painter
+had left his work unfinished, the brittle twigs snapping overhead, the
+water as black as tar. But it matters little what the wood was like.
+Within a squirrel's leap of it an old woman was standing at the door
+of a mud house listening for the approach of the trap that was to take
+her to the poorhouse. Can you think of the beauty of the day now?
+
+Nanny was not crying. She had redd up her house for the last time and
+put on her black merino. Her mouth was wide open while she listened.
+If you had addressed her you would have thought her polite and stupid.
+Look at her. A flabby-faced woman she is now, with a swollen body, and
+no one has heeded her much these thirty years. I can tell you
+something; it is almost droll. Nanny Webster was once a gay flirt, and
+in Airlie Square there is a weaver with an unsteady head who thought
+all the earth of her. His loom has taken a foot from his stature, and
+gone are Nanny's raven locks on which he used to place his adoring
+hand. Down in Airlie Square he is weaving for his life, and here is
+Nanny, ripe for the poorhouse, and between them is the hill where they
+were lovers. That is all the story save that when Nanny heard the
+dogcart she screamed.
+
+No neighbour was with her. If you think this hard, it is because you
+do not understand. Perhaps Nanny had never been very lovable except to
+one man, and him, it is said, she lost through her own vanity; but
+there was much in her to like. The neighbours, of whom there were two
+not a hundred yards away, would have been with her now but they feared
+to hurt her feelings. No heart opens to sympathy without letting in
+delicacy, and these poor people knew that Nanny would not like them to
+see her being taken away. For a week they had been aware of what was
+coming, and they had been most kind to her, but that hideous word, the
+poorhouse, they had not uttered. Poorhouse is not to be spoken in
+Thrums, though it is nothing to tell a man that you see death in his
+face. Did Nanny think they knew where she was going? was a question
+they whispered to each other, and her suffering eyes cut scars on
+their hearts. So now that the hour had come they called their children
+into their houses and pulled down their blinds.
+
+"If you would like to see her by yourself," the doctor said eagerly to
+Gavin, as the horse drew up at Nanny's gate, "I'll wait with the
+horse. Not," he added, hastily, "that I feel sorry for her. We are
+doing her a kindness."
+
+They dismounted together, however, and Nanny, who had run from the
+trap into the house, watched them from her window.
+
+McQueen saw her and said glumly, "I should have come alone, for if you
+pray she is sure to break down. Mr. Dishart, could you not pray
+cheerfully?"
+
+"You don't look very cheerful yourself," Gavin said sadly.
+
+"Nonsense," answered the doctor. "I have no patience with this false
+sentiment. Stand still, Lightning, and be thankful you are not your
+master to-day."
+
+The door stood open, and Nanny was crouching against the opposite wall
+of the room, such a poor, dull kitchen, that you would have thought
+the furniture had still to be brought into it. The blanket and the
+piece of old carpet that was Nanny's coverlet were already packed in
+her box. The plate rack was empty. Only the round table and the two
+chairs, and the stools and some pans were being left behind.
+
+"Well, Nanny," the doctor said, trying to bluster, "I have come, and
+you see Mr. Dishart is with me."
+
+Nanny rose bravely. She knew the doctor was good to her, and she
+wanted to thank him. I have not seen a great deal of the world myself,
+but often the sweet politeness of the aged poor has struck me as
+beautiful. Nanny dropped a curtesy, an ungainly one maybe, but it was
+an old woman giving the best she had.
+
+"Thank you kindly, sirs," she said; and then two pairs of eyes dropped
+before hers.
+
+"Please to take a chair," she added timidly. It is strange to know
+that at that awful moment, for let none tell me it was less than
+awful, the old woman was the one who could speak.
+
+Both men sat down, for they would have hurt Nanny by remaining
+standing. Some ministers would have known the right thing to say to
+her, but Gavin dared not let himself speak. I have again to remind you
+that he was only one-and-twenty.
+
+"I'm drouthy, Nanny," the doctor said, to give her something to do,
+"and I would be obliged for a drink of water."
+
+Nanny hastened to the pan that stood behind her door, but stopped
+before she reached it.
+
+"It's toom," she said. "I--I didna think I needed to fill it this
+morning." She caught the doctor's eye, and could only half restrain a
+sob. "I couldna help that," she said, apologetically. "I'm richt angry
+at myself for being so ungrateful like."
+
+The doctor thought it best that they should depart at once. He rose.
+
+"Oh, no, doctor," cried Nanny in alarm.
+
+"But you are ready?"
+
+"Ay," she said, "I have been ready this twa hours, but you micht wait
+a minute. Hendry Munn and Andrew Allardyce is coming yont the road,
+and they would see me."
+
+"Wait, doctor," Gavin said.
+
+"Thank you kindly, sir," answered Nanny.
+
+"But Nanny," the doctor said, "you must remember what I told you about
+the poo--, about the place you are going to. It is a fine house, and
+you will be very happy in it."
+
+"Ay, I'll be happy in't," Nanny faltered, "but, doctor, if I could
+just hae bidden on here though I wasna happy!"
+
+"Think of the food you will get; broth nearly every day."
+
+"It--it'll be terrible enjoyable," Nanny said.
+
+"And there will be pleasant company for you always," continued the
+doctor, "and a nice room to sit in. Why, after you have been there a
+week, you won't be the same woman."
+
+"That's it!" cried Nanny with sudden passion. "Na, na; I'll be a woman
+on the poor's rates. Oh, mither, mither, you little thocht when you
+bore me that I would come to this!"
+
+"Nanny," the doctor said, rising again, "I am ashamed of you."
+
+"I humbly speir your forgiveness, sir," she said, "and you micht bide
+just a wee yet. I've been ready to gang these twa hours, but now that
+the machine is at the gate, I dinna ken how it is, but I'm terrible
+sweer to come awa'. Oh, Mr. Dishart, it's richt true what the doctor
+says about the--the place, but I canna just take it in. I'm--I'm gey
+auld."
+
+"You will often get out to see your friends," was all Gavin could
+say.
+
+"Na, na, na," she cried, "dinna say that; I'll gang, but you mauna bid
+me ever come out, except in a hearse. Dinna let onybody in Thrums look
+on my face again."
+
+"We must go," said the doctor firmly. "Put on your mutch, Nanny."
+
+"I dinna need to put on a mutch," she answered, with a faint flush of
+pride. "I have a bonnet."
+
+She took the bonnet from her bed, and put it on slowly.
+
+"Are you sure there's naebody looking?" she asked.
+
+The doctor glanced at the minister, and Gavin rose.
+
+"Let us pray," he said, and the three went down on their knees.
+
+It was not the custom of Auld Licht ministers to leave any house
+without offering up a prayer in it, and to us it always seemed that
+when Gavin prayed, he was at the knees of God. The little minister
+pouring himself out in prayer in a humble room, with awed people
+around him who knew much more of the world than he, his voice at times
+thick and again a squeal, and his hands clasped not gracefully, may
+have been only a comic figure, but we were old-fashioned, and he
+seemed to make us better men. If I only knew the way, I would draw him
+as he was, and not fear to make him too mean a man for you to read
+about. He had not been long in Thrums before he knew that we talked
+much of his prayers, and that doubtless puffed him up a little.
+Sometimes, I daresay, he rose from his knees feeling that he had
+prayed well to-day, which is a dreadful charge to bring against any
+one. But it was not always so, nor was it so now.
+
+I am not speaking harshly of this man, whom I have loved beyond all
+others, when I say that Nanny came between him and his prayer. Had he
+been of God's own image, unstained, he would have forgotten all else
+in his Maker's presence, but Nanny was speaking too, and her words
+choked his. At first she only whispered, but soon what was eating her
+heart burst out painfully, and she did not know that the minister had
+stopped.
+
+They were such moans as these that brought him back to earth:--
+
+"I'll hae to gang.... I'm a base woman no' to be mair thankfu' to them
+that is so good to me.... I dinna like to prig wi' them to take a
+roundabout road, and I'm sair fleid a' the Roods will see me.... If it
+could just be said to poor Sanders when he comes back that I died
+hurriedly, syne he would be able to haud up his head.... Oh,
+mither!... I wish terrible they had come and ta'en me at nicht....
+It's a dogcart, and I was praying it micht be a cart, so that they
+could cover me wi' straw."
+
+"This is more than I can stand," the doctor cried.
+
+Nanny rose frightened.
+
+"I've tried you, sair," she said, "but, oh, I'm grateful, and I'm
+ready now."
+
+They all advanced toward the door without another word, and Nanny even
+tried to smile. But in the middle of the floor something came over
+her, and she stood there. Gavin took her hand, and it was cold. She
+looked from one to the other, her mouth opening and shutting.
+
+"I canna help it," she said.
+
+"It's cruel hard," muttered the doctor. "I knew this woman when she
+was a lassie."
+
+The little minister stretched out his hands.
+
+"Have pity on her, O God!" he prayed, with the presumptuousness of
+youth.
+
+Nanny heard the words.
+
+"Oh, God," she cried, "you micht!"
+
+God needs no minister to tell Him what to do, but it was His will that
+the poorhouse should not have this woman. He made use of a strange
+instrument, no other than the Egyptian, who now opened the mudhouse
+door.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirteen.
+
+SECOND COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
+
+
+The gypsy had been passing the house, perhaps on her way to Thrums for
+gossip, and it was only curiosity, born suddenly of Gavin's cry, that
+made her enter. On finding herself in unexpected company she retained
+hold of the door, and to the amazed minister she seemed for a moment
+to have stepped into the mud house from his garden. Her eyes danced,
+however, as they recognised him, and then he hardened. "This is no
+place for you," he was saying fiercely, when Nanny, too distraught to
+think, fell crying at the Egyptian's feet.
+
+"They are taking me to the poorhouse," she sobbed; "dinna let them,
+dinna let them."
+
+The Egyptian's arms clasped her, and the Egyptian kissed a sallow
+cheek that had once been as fair as yours, madam, who may read this
+story. No one had caressed Nanny for many years, but do you think she
+was too poor and old to care for these young arms around her neck?
+There are those who say that women cannot love each other, but it is
+not true. Woman is not undeveloped man, but something better, and
+Gavin and the doctor knew it as they saw Nanny clinging to her
+protector. When the gypsy turned with flashing eyes to the two men she
+might have been a mother guarding her child.
+
+"How dare you!" she cried, stamping her foot; and they quaked like
+malefactors.
+
+"You don't see----" Gavin began, but her indignation stopped him.
+
+"You coward!" she said.
+
+Even the doctor had been impressed, so that he now addressed the gypsy
+respectfully.
+
+"This is all very well," he said, "but a woman's sympathy----"
+
+"A woman!--ah, if I could be a man for only five minutes!"
+
+She clenched her little fists, and again turned to Nanny.
+
+"You poor dear," she said tenderly, "I won't let them take you away."
+
+She looked triumphantly at both minister and doctor, as one who had
+foiled them in their cruel designs.
+
+"Go!" she said, pointing grandly to the door.
+
+"Is this the Egyptian of the riots," the doctor said in a low voice to
+Gavin, "or is she a queen? Hoots, man, don't look so shamefaced. We
+are not criminals. Say something."
+
+Then to the Egyptian Gavin said firmly--
+
+"You mean well, but you are doing this poor woman a cruelty in holding
+out hopes to her that cannot be realised. Sympathy is not meal and
+bedclothes, and these are what she needs."
+
+"And you who live in luxury," retorted the girl, "would send her to
+the poorhouse for them. I thought better of you!"
+
+"Tuts!" said the doctor, losing patience, "Mr. Dishart gives more than
+any other man in Thrums to the poor, and he is not to be preached to
+by a gypsy. We are waiting for you, Nanny."
+
+"Ay, I'm coming," said Nanny, leaving the Egyptian. "I'll hae to gang,
+lassie. Dinna greet for me."
+
+But the Egyptian said, "No, you are not going. It is these men who are
+going. Go, sirs, and leave us."
+
+"And you will provide for Nanny?" asked the doctor contemptuously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And where is the siller to come from?"
+
+"That is my affair, and Nanny's. Begone, both of you. She shall never
+want again. See how the very mention of your going brings back life to
+her face."
+
+"I won't begone," the doctor said roughly, "till I see the colour of
+your siller."
+
+"Oh, the money," said the Egyptian scornfully. She put her hand into
+her pocket confidently, as if used to well-filled purses, but could
+only draw out two silver pieces.
+
+"I had forgotten," she said aloud, though speaking to herself.
+
+"I thought so," said the cynical doctor. "Come, Nanny."
+
+"You presume to doubt me!" the Egyptian said, blocking his way to the
+door.
+
+"How could I presume to believe you?" he answered. "You are a beggar
+by profession, and yet talk as if----pooh, nonsense."
+
+"I would live on terrible little," Nanny whispered, "and Sanders will
+be out again in August month."
+
+"Seven shillings a week," rapped out the doctor.
+
+"Is that all?" the Egyptian asked. "She shall have it."
+
+"When?"
+
+"At once. No, it is not possible to-night, but to-morrow I will bring
+five pounds; no, I will send it; no, you must come for it."
+
+"And where, O daughter of Dives, do you reside?" the doctor asked.
+
+No doubt the Egyptian could have found a ready answer had her pity for
+Nanny been less sincere; as it was, she hesitated, wanting to
+propitiate the doctor, while holding her secret fast.
+
+"I only asked," McQueen said, eyeing her curiously, "because when I
+make an appointment I like to know where it is to be held. But I
+suppose you are suddenly to rise out of the ground as you have done
+to-day, and did six weeks ago."
+
+"Whether I rise out of the ground or not," the gypsy said, keeping her
+temper with an effort, "there will be a five-pound note in my hand.
+You will meet me to-morrow about this hour at--say the Kaims of
+Cushie?"
+
+"No," said the doctor after a moment's pause; "I won't. Even if I went
+to the Kaims I should not find you there. Why can you not come to
+me?"
+
+"Why do you carry a woman's hair," replied the Egyptian, "in that
+locket on your chain?"
+
+Whether she was speaking of what she knew, or this was only a chance
+shot, I cannot tell, but the doctor stepped back from her hastily, and
+could not help looking down at the locket.
+
+"Yes," said the Egyptian calmly, "it is still shut; but why do you
+sometimes open it at nights?"
+
+"Lassie," the old doctor cried, "are you a witch?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said; "but I ask for no answer to my questions. If you
+have your secrets, why may I not have mine? Now will you meet me at
+the Kaims?"
+
+"No; I distrust you more than ever. Even if you came, it would be to
+play with me as you have done already. How can a vagrant have five
+pounds in her pocket when she does not have five shillings on her
+back?"
+
+"You are a cruel, hard man," the Egyptian said, beginning to lose
+hope. "But, see," she cried, brightening, "look at this ring. Do you
+know its value?"
+
+She held up her finger, but the stone would not live in the dull
+light.
+
+"I see it is gold," the doctor said cautiously, and she smiled at the
+ignorance that made him look only at the frame.
+
+"Certainly, it is gold," said Gavin, equally stupid.
+
+"Mercy on us!" Nanny cried; "I believe it's what they call a
+diamond."
+
+"How did you come by it?" the doctor asked suspiciously.
+
+"I thought we had agreed not to ask each other questions," the
+Egyptian answered drily. "But, see, I will give it to you to hold in
+hostage. If I am not at the Kaims to get it back you can keep it."
+
+The doctor took the ring in his hand and examined it curiously.
+
+"There is a quirk in this," he said at last, "that I don't like. Take
+back your ring, lassie. Mr. Dishart, give Nanny your arm, and I'll
+carry her box to the machine."
+
+Now all this time Gavin had been in the dire distress of a man
+possessed of two minds, of which one said, "This is a true woman," and
+the other, "Remember the seventeenth of October." They were at war
+within him, and he knew that he must take a side, yet no sooner had he
+cast one out than he invited it back. He did not answer the doctor.
+
+"Unless," McQueen said, nettled by his hesitation, "you trust this
+woman's word."
+
+Gavin tried honestly to weigh those two minds against each other, but
+could not prevent impulse jumping into one of the scales.
+
+"You do trust me," the Egyptian said, with wet eyes; and now that he
+looked on her again--
+
+"Yes," he said firmly, "I trust you," and the words that had been so
+difficult to say were the right words. He had no more doubt of it.
+
+"Just think a moment first," the doctor warned him. "I decline to have
+anything to do with this matter. You will go to the Kaims for the
+siller?"
+
+"If it is necessary," said Gavin.
+
+"It is necessary," the Egyptian said.
+
+"Then I will go."
+
+Nanny took his hand timidly, and would have kissed it had he been less
+than a minister.
+
+"You dare not, man," the doctor said gruffly, "make an appointment
+with this gypsy. Think of what will be said in Thrums."
+
+I honour Gavin for the way in which he took this warning. For him, who
+was watched from the rising of his congregation to their lying down,
+whose every movement was expected to be a text to Thrums, it was no
+small thing that he had promised. This he knew, but he only reddened
+because the doctor had implied an offensive thing in a woman's
+presence.
+
+"You forget yourself, doctor," he said sharply.
+
+"Send some one in your place," advised the doctor, who liked the
+little minister.
+
+"He must come himself and alone," said the Egyptian. "You must both
+give me your promise not to mention who is Nanny's friend, and she
+must promise too."
+
+"Well," said the doctor, buttoning up his coat, "I cannot keep my
+horse freezing any longer. Remember, Mr. Dishart, you take the sole
+responsibility of this."
+
+"I do," said Gavin, "and with the utmost confidence."
+
+"Give him the ring then, lassie," said McQueen.
+
+She handed the minister the ring, but he would not take it.
+
+"I have your word," he said; "that is sufficient."
+
+Then the Egyptian gave him the first look that he could think of
+afterwards without misgivings.
+
+"So be it," said the doctor. "Get the money, and I will say nothing
+about it, unless I have reason to think that it has been dishonestly
+come by. Don't look so frightened at me, Nanny. I hope for your sake
+that her stocking-foot is full of gold."
+
+"Surely it's worth risking," Nanny said, not very brightly, "when the
+minister's on her side."
+
+"Ay, but on whose side, Nanny?" asked the doctor. "Lassie, I bear you
+no grudge; will you not tell me who you are?"
+
+"Only a puir gypsy, your honour," said the girl, becoming mischievous
+now that she had gained her point; "only a wandering hallen-shaker,
+and will I tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman?"
+
+"No, you shan't," replied the doctor, plunging his hands so hastily
+into his pockets that Gavin laughed.
+
+"I don't need to look at your hand," said the gypsy, "I can read your
+fortune in your face."
+
+She looked at him fixedly, so that he fidgeted.
+
+"I see you," said the Egyptian in a sepulchral voice, and speaking
+slowly, "become very frail. Your eyesight has almost gone. You are
+sitting alone in a cauld room, cooking your ain dinner ower a feeble
+fire. The soot is falling down the lum. Your bearish manners towards
+women have driven the servant lassie frae your house, and your wife
+beats you."
+
+"Ay, you spoil your prophecy there," the doctor said, considerably
+relieved, "for I'm not married; my pipe's the only wife I ever had."
+
+"You will be married by that time," continued the Egyptian, frowning
+at this interruption, "for I see your wife. She is a shrew. She
+marries you in your dotage. She lauchs at you in company. She doesna
+allow you to smoke."
+
+"Away with you, you jade," cried the doctor in a fury, and feeling
+nervously for his pipe. "Mr. Dishart, you had better stay and arrange
+this matter as you choose, but I want a word with you outside."
+
+"And you're no angry wi' me, doctor, are you?" asked Nanny wistfully.
+"You've been richt good to me, but I canna thole the thocht o' that
+place. And, oh, doctor, you winna tell naebody that I was so near taen
+to it?"
+
+In the garden McQueen said to Gavin:--
+
+"You may be right, Mr. Dishart, in this matter, for there is this in
+our favour, that the woman can gain nothing by tricking us. She did
+seem to feel for Nanny. But who can she be? You saw she could put on
+and off the Scotch tongue as easily as if it were a cap."
+
+"She is as much a mystery to me as to you," Gavin answered, "but she
+will give me the money, and that is all I ask of her."
+
+"Ay, that remains to be seen. But take care of yourself; a man's
+second childhood begins when a woman gets hold of him."
+
+"Don't alarm yourself about me, doctor. I daresay she is only one of
+those gypsies from the South. They are said to be wealthy, many of
+them, and even, when they like, to have a grand manner. The Thrums
+people had no doubt but that she was what she seemed to be."
+
+"Ay, but what does she seem to be? Even that puzzles me. And then
+there is this mystery about her which she admits herself, though
+perhaps only to play with us."
+
+"Perhaps," said Gavin, "she is only taking precautions against her
+discovery by the police. You must remember her part in the riots."
+
+"Yes, but we never learned how she was able to play that part.
+Besides, there is no fear in her, or she would not have ventured back
+to Thrums. However, good luck attend you. But be wary. You saw how she
+kept her feet among her shalls and wills? Never trust a Scotch man or
+woman who does not come to grief among them."
+
+The doctor took his seat in the dogcart.
+
+"And, Mr. Dishart," he called out, "that was all nonsense about the
+locket."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fourteen.
+
+THE MINISTER DANCES TO THE WOMAN'S PIPING.
+
+
+Gavin let the doctor's warnings fall in the grass. In his joy over
+Nanny's deliverance he jumped the garden gate, whose hinges were of
+yarn, and cleverly caught his hat as it was leaving his head in
+protest. He then re-entered the mud house staidly. Pleasant was the
+change. Nanny's home was as a clock that had been run out, and is set
+going again. Already the old woman was unpacking her box, to increase
+the distance between herself and the poorhouse. But Gavin only saw her
+in the background, for the Egyptian, singing at her work, had become
+the heart of the house. She had flung her shawl over Nanny's
+shoulders, and was at the fireplace breaking peats with the leg of a
+stool. She turned merrily to the minister to ask him to chop up his
+staff for firewood, and he would have answered wittily but could not.
+Then, as often, the beauty of the Egyptian surprised him into silence.
+I could never get used to her face myself in the after-days. It has
+always held me wondering, like my own Glen Quharity on a summer day,
+when the sun is lingering and the clouds are on the march, and the
+glen is never the same for two minutes, but always so beautiful as to
+make me sad. Never will I attempt to picture the Egyptian as she
+seemed to Gavin while she bent over Nanny's fire, never will I
+describe my glen. Yet a hundred times have I hankered after trying to
+picture both.
+
+An older minister, believing that Nanny's anguish was ended, might
+have gone on his knees and finished the interrupted prayer, but now
+Gavin was only doing this girl's bidding.
+
+"Nanny and I are to have a dish of tea, as soon as we have set things
+to rights," she told him. "Do you think we should invite the minister,
+Nanny?"
+
+"We couldna dare," Nanny answered quickly. "You'll excuse her, Mr.
+Dishart, for the presumption?"
+
+"Presumption!" said the Egyptian, making a face.
+
+"Lassie," Nanny said, fearful to offend her new friend, yet horrified
+at this affront to the minister, "I ken you mean weel, but Mr.
+Dishart'll think you're putting yoursel' on an equality wi' him." She
+added in a whisper, "Dinna be so free; he's the Auld Licht minister."
+
+The gypsy bowed with mock awe, but Gavin let it pass. He had, indeed,
+forgotten that he was anybody in particular, and was anxious to stay
+to tea.
+
+"But there is no water," he remembered, "and is there any tea?"
+
+"I am going out for them and for some other things," the Egyptian
+explained. "But no," she continued, reflectively, "if I go for the
+tea, you must go for the water."
+
+"Lassie," cried Nanny, "mind wha you're speaking to. To send a
+minister to the well!"
+
+"I will go," said Gavin, recklessly lifting the pitcher. "The well is
+in the wood, I think?"
+
+"Gie me the pitcher, Mr. Dishart," said Nanny, in distress. "What a
+town there would be if you was seen wi't!"
+
+"Then he must remain here and keep the house till we come back," said
+the Egyptian, and thereupon departed, with a friendly wave of her hand
+to the minister.
+
+"She's an awfu' lassie," Nanny said, apologetically, "but it'll just
+be the way she has been brought up."
+
+[Illustration: "DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD INVITE THE MINISTER, NANNY?"]
+
+"She has been very good to you, Nanny."
+
+"She has; leastwise, she promises to be. Mr. Dishart, she's awa'; what
+if she doesna come back?"
+
+Nanny spoke nervously, and Gavin drew a long face.
+
+"I think she will," he said faintly. "I am confident of it," he added
+in the same voice.
+
+"And has she the siller?"
+
+"I believe in her," said Gavin, so doggedly that his own words
+reassured him. "She has an excellent heart."
+
+"Ay," said Nanny, to whom the minister's faith was more than the
+Egyptian's promise, "and that's hardly natural in a gaen-aboot body.
+Yet a gypsy she maun be, for naebody would pretend to be ane that
+wasna. Tod, she proved she was an Egyptian by dauring to send you to
+the well."
+
+This conclusive argument brought her prospective dower so close to
+Nanny's eyes that it hid the poorhouse.
+
+"I suppose she'll gie you the money," she said, "and syne you'll gie
+me the seven shillings a week?"
+
+"That seems the best plan," Gavin answered.
+
+"And what will you gie it me in?" Nanny asked, with something on her
+mind. "I would be terrible obliged if you gae it to me in saxpences."
+
+"Do the smaller coins go farther?" Gavin asked, curiously.
+
+"Na, it's no that. But I've heard tell o' folk giving away half-crowns
+by mistake for twa-shilling bits; ay, and there's something dizzying
+in ha'en fower-and-twenty pennies in one piece; it has sic terrible
+little bulk. Sanders had aince a gold sovereign, and he looked at it
+so often that it seemed to grow smaller and smaller in his hand till
+he was feared it micht just be a half after all."
+
+Her mind relieved on this matter, the old woman set off for the well.
+A minute afterwards Gavin went to the door to look for the gypsy, and,
+behold, Nanny was no further than the gate. Have you who read ever
+been sick near to death, and then so far recovered that you could once
+again stand at your window? If so, you have not forgotten how the
+beauty of the world struck you afresh, so that you looked long and
+said many times, "How fair a world it is!" like one who had made a
+discovery. It was such a look that Nanny gave to the hill and Caddam
+while she stood at her garden gate.
+
+Gavin returned to the fire and watched a girl in it in an officer's
+cloak playing at hide and seek with soldiers. After a time he
+sighed, then looked round sharply to see who had sighed, then,
+absent-mindedly, lifted the empty kettle and placed it on the
+glowing peats. He was standing glaring at the kettle, his arms folded,
+when Nanny returned from the well.
+
+"I've been thinking," she said, "o' something that proves the lassie
+to be just an Egyptian. Ay, I noticed she wasna nane awed when I said
+you was the Auld Licht minister. Weel, I'se uphaud that came frae her
+living ower muckle in the open air. Is there no' a smell o' burning in
+the house?"
+
+"I have noticed it," Gavin answered, sniffing, "since you came in. I
+was busy until then, putting on the kettle. The smell is becoming
+worse."
+
+Nanny had seen the empty kettle on the fire as he began to speak, and
+so solved the mystery. Her first thought was to snatch the kettle out
+of the blaze, but remembering who had put it there, she dared not. She
+sidled toward the hearth instead, and saying craftily, "Ay, here it
+is; it's a clout among the peats," softly laid the kettle on the
+earthen floor. It was still red with sparks, however, when the gypsy
+reappeared.
+
+"Who burned the kettle?" she asked, ignoring Nanny's signs.
+
+"Lassie," Nanny said, "it was me;" but Gavin, flushing, confessed his
+guilt.
+
+"Oh, you stupid!" exclaimed the Egyptian, shaking her two ounces of
+tea (which then cost six shillings the pound) in his face.
+
+At this Nanny wrung her hands, crying, "That's waur than swearing."
+
+"If men," said the gypsy, severely, "would keep their hands in their
+pockets all day, the world's affairs would be more easily managed."
+
+"Wheesht!" cried Nanny, "if Mr. Dishart cared to set his mind to it,
+he could make the kettle boil quicker than you or me. But his thochts
+is on higher things."
+
+"No higher than this," retorted the gypsy, holding her hand level with
+her brow. "Confess, Mr. Dishart, that this is the exact height of what
+you were thinking about. See, Nanny, he is blushing as if I meant that
+he had been thinking about me. He cannot answer, Nanny: we have found
+him out."
+
+"And kindly of him it is no to answer," said Nanny, who had been
+examining the gypsy's various purchases; "for what could he answer,
+except that he would need to be sure o' living a thousand years afore
+he could spare five minutes on you or me? Of course it would be
+different if we sat under him."
+
+"And yet," said the Egyptian, with great solemnity, "he is to drink
+tea at that very table. I hope you are sensible of the honour,
+Nanny."
+
+"Am I no?" said Nanny, whose education had not included sarcasm. "I'm
+trying to keep frae thinking o't till he's gone, in case I should let
+the teapot fall."
+
+"You have nothing to thank me for, Nanny," said Gavin, "but much for
+which to thank this--this----"
+
+"This haggarty-taggarty Egyptian," suggested the girl. Then, looking
+at Gavin curiously, she said, "But my name is Babbie."
+
+"That's short for Barbara," said Nanny; "but Babbie what?"
+
+"Yes, Babbie Watt," replied the gypsy, as if one name were as good as
+another.
+
+"Weel, then, lift the lid off the kettle, Babbie," said Nanny, "for
+it's boiling ower."
+
+Gavin looked at Nanny with admiration and envy, for she had said
+Babbie as coolly as if it was the name of a pepper-box.
+
+Babbie tucked up her sleeves to wash Nanny's cups and saucers, which
+even in the most prosperous days of the mud house had only been in use
+once a week, and Gavin was so eager to help that he bumped his head on
+the plate-rack.
+
+"Sit there," said Babbie, authoritatively, pointing, with a cup in her
+hand, to a stool, "and don't rise till I give you permission."
+
+To Nanny's amazement, he did as he was bid.
+
+"I got the things in the little shop you told me of," the Egyptian
+continued, addressing the mistress of the house, "but the horrid man
+would not give them to me until he had seen my money."
+
+"Enoch would be suspicious o' you," Nanny explained, "you being an
+Egyptian."
+
+"Ah," said Babbie, with a side-glance at the minister, "I am only an
+Egyptian. Is that why you dislike me, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+Gavin hesitated foolishly over his answer, and the Egyptian, with a
+towel round her waist, made a pretty gesture of despair.
+
+"He neither likes you nor dislikes you," Nanny explained; "you forget
+he's a minister."
+
+"That is what I cannot endure," said Babbie, putting the towel to her
+eyes, "to be neither liked nor disliked. Please hate me, Mr. Dishart,
+if you cannot lo--ove me."
+
+Her face was behind the towel, and Gavin could not decide whether it
+was the face or the towel that shook with agitation. He gave Nanny a
+look that asked, "Is she really crying?" and Nanny telegraphed back,
+"I question it."
+
+"Come, come," said the minister, gallantly, "I did not say that I
+disliked you."
+
+Even this desperate compliment had not the desired effect, for the
+gypsy continued to sob behind her screen.
+
+"I can honestly say," went on Gavin, as solemnly as if he were making
+a statement in a court of justice, "that I like you."
+
+Then the Egyptian let drop her towel, and replied with equal
+solemnity:
+
+"Oh, tank oo! Nanny, the minister says me is a dood 'ittle dirl."
+
+"He didna gang that length," said Nanny, sharply, to cover Gavin's
+confusion. "Set the things, Babbie, and I'll make the tea."
+
+The Egyptian obeyed demurely, pretending to wipe her eyes every time
+Gavin looked at her. He frowned at this, and then she affected to be
+too overcome to go on with her work.
+
+"Tell me, Nanny," she asked presently, "what sort of man this Enoch
+is, from whom I bought the things?"
+
+"He is not very regular, I fear," answered Gavin, who felt that he had
+sat silent and self-conscious on his stool too long.
+
+"Do you mean that he drinks?" asked Babbie.
+
+"No, I mean regular in his attendance."
+
+The Egyptian's face showed no enlightenment.
+
+"His attendance at church," Gavin explained.
+
+"He's far frae it," said Nanny, "and as a body kens, Joe Cruickshanks,
+the atheist, has the wite o' that. The scoundrel telled Enoch that the
+great ministers in Edinbury and London believed in no hell except sic
+as your ain conscience made for you, and ever since syne Enoch has
+been careless about the future state."
+
+"Ah," said Babbie, waving the Church aside, "what I want to know is
+whether he is a single man."
+
+"He is not," Gavin replied; "but why do you want to know that?"
+
+"Because single men are such gossips. I am sorry he is not single, as
+I want him to repeat to everybody what I told him."
+
+"Trust him to tell Susy," said Nanny, "and Susy to tell the town."
+
+"His wife is a gossip?"
+
+"Ay, she's aye tonguing, especially about her teeth. They're folk wi'
+siller, and she has a set o' false teeth. It's fair scumfishing to
+hear her blawing about thae teeth, she's so fleid we dinna ken that
+they're false."
+
+Nanny had spoken jealously, but suddenly she trembled with apprehension.
+
+"Babbie," she cried, "you didna speak about the poorhouse to Enoch?"
+
+The Egyptian shook her head, though of the poorhouse she had been
+forced to speak, for Enoch, having seen the doctor going home alone,
+insisted on knowing why.
+
+"But I knew," the gypsy said, "that the Thrums people would be very
+unhappy until they discovered where you get the money I am to give
+you, and as that is a secret, I hinted to Enoch that your benefactor
+is Mr. Dishart."
+
+"You should not have said that," interposed Gavin. "I cannot foster
+such a deception."
+
+"They will foster it without your help," the Egyptian said. "Besides,
+if you choose, you can say you get the money from a friend."
+
+"Ay, you can say that," Nanny entreated with such eagerness that
+Babbie remarked a little bitterly:
+
+"There is no fear of Nanny's telling any one that the friend is a
+gypsy girl."
+
+"Na, na," agreed Nanny, again losing Babbie's sarcasm. "I winna let
+on. It's so queer to be befriended by an Egyptian."
+
+"It is scarcely respectable," Babbie said.
+
+"It's no," answered simple Nanny.
+
+I suppose Nanny's unintentional cruelty did hurt Babbie as much as
+Gavin thought. She winced, and her face had two expressions, the one
+cynical, the other pained. Her mouth curled as if to tell the minister
+that gratitude was nothing to her, but her eyes had to struggle to
+keep back a tear. Gavin was touched, and she saw it, and for a moment
+they were two people who understood each other.
+
+"I, at least," Gavin said in a low voice, "will know who is the
+benefactress, and think none the worse of her because she is a
+gypsy."
+
+At this Babbie smiled gratefully to him, and then both laughed, for
+they had heard Nanny remarking to the kettle, "But I wouldna hae been
+nane angry if she had telled Enoch that the minister was to take his
+tea here. Susy'll no believe't though I tell her, as tell her I
+will."
+
+To Nanny the table now presented a rich appearance, for besides the
+teapot there were butter and loaf-bread and cheesies: a biscuit of
+which only Thrums knows the secret.
+
+"Draw in your chair, Mr. Dishart," she said, in suppressed excitement.
+
+"Yes," said Babbie, "you take this chair, Mr. Dishart, and Nanny will
+have that one, and I can sit humbly on the stool."
+
+But Nanny held up her hands in horror.
+
+"Keep us a'!" she exclaimed; "the lassie thinks her and me is to sit
+down wi' the minister! We're no to gang that length, Babbie; we're
+just to stand and serve him, and syne we'll sit down when he has
+risen."
+
+"Delightful!" said Babbie, clapping her hands. "Nanny, you kneel on
+that side of him, and I will kneel on this. You will hold the butter
+and I the biscuits."
+
+But Gavin, as this girl was always forgetting, was a lord of
+creation.
+
+"Sit down both of you at once!" he thundered, "I command you."
+
+[Illustration: "SIT DOWN, BOTH OF YOU, AT ONCE!"]
+
+Then the two women fell into their seats; Nanny in terror, Babbie
+affecting it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fifteen.
+
+THE MINISTER BEWITCHED--SECOND SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.
+
+
+To Nanny it was a dizzying experience to sit at the head of her own
+table, and, with assumed calmness, invite the minister not to spare
+the loaf-bread. Babbie's prattle, and even Gavin's answers, were but
+an indistinct noise to her, to be as little regarded, in the
+excitement of watching whether Mr. Dishart noticed that there was a
+knife for the butter, as the music of the river by a man who is
+catching trout. Every time Gavin's cup went to his lips Nanny
+calculated (correctly) how much he had drunk, and yet, when the right
+moment arrived, she asked in the English voice that is fashionable at
+ceremonies, "if his cup was toom."
+
+Perhaps it was well that Nanny had these matters to engross her, for
+though Gavin spoke freely, he was saying nothing of lasting value, and
+some of his remarks to the Egyptian, if preserved for the calmer
+contemplation of the morrow, might have seemed frivolous to himself.
+Usually his observations were scrambled for, like ha'pence at a
+wedding, but to-day they were only for one person. Infected by the
+Egyptian's high spirits, Gavin had laid aside the minister with his
+hat, and what was left was only a young man. He who had stamped his
+feet at thought of a soldier's cloak now wanted to be reminded of it.
+The little minister, who used to address himself in terms of scorn
+every time he wasted an hour, was at present dallying with a teaspoon.
+He even laughed boisterously, flinging back his head, and little knew
+that behind Nanny's smiling face was a terrible dread, because his
+chair had once given way before.
+
+Even though our thoughts are not with our company, the mention of our
+name is a bell to which we usually answer. Hearing hers Nanny
+started.
+
+"You can tell me, Nanny," the Egyptian had said, with an arch look at
+the minister. "Oh, Nanny, for shame! How can you expect to follow our
+conversation when you only listen to Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"She is saying, Nanny," Gavin broke in, almost gaily for a minister,
+"that she saw me recently wearing a cloak. You know I have no such
+thing."
+
+"Na," Nanny answered artlessly, "you have just the thin brown coat wi'
+the braid round it, forby the ane you have on the now."
+
+"You see," Gavin said to Babbie, "I could not have a new neckcloth,
+not to speak of a cloak, without everybody in Thrums knowing about it.
+I dare say Nanny knows all about the braid, and even what it cost."
+
+"Three bawbees the yard at Kyowowy's shop," replied Nanny, promptly,
+"and your mother sewed it on. Sam'l Fairweather has the marrows o't on
+his top coat. No that it has the same look on him."
+
+"Nevertheless," Babbie persisted, "I am sure the minister has a cloak;
+but perhaps he is ashamed of it. No doubt it is hidden away in the
+garret."
+
+"Na, we would hae kent o't if it was there," said Nanny.
+
+"But it may be in a chest, and the chest may be locked," the Egyptian
+suggested.
+
+"Ay, but the kist in the garret isna locked," Nanny answered.
+
+"How do you get to know all these things, Nanny?" asked Gavin,
+sighing.
+
+[Illustration: "'HE ISN'T MARRIED?' ASKED BABBIE."]
+
+"Your congregation tells me. Naebody would lay by news about a
+minister."
+
+"But how do they know?"
+
+"I dinna ken. They just find out, because they're so fond o' you."
+
+"I hope they will never become so fond of me as that," said Babbie.
+"Still, Nanny, the minister's cloak is hidden somewhere."
+
+"Losh, what would make him hod it?" demanded the old woman. "Folk that
+has cloaks doesna bury them in boxes."
+
+At the word "bury" Gavin's hand fell on the table, and he returned to
+Nanny apprehensively.
+
+"That would depend on how the cloak was got," said the cruel Egyptian.
+"If it was not his own----"
+
+"Lassie," cried Nanny, "behave yoursel'."
+
+"Or if he found it in his possession against his will?" suggested
+Gavin, slyly. "He might have got it from some one who picked it up
+cheap."
+
+"From his wife, for instance," said Babbie, whereupon Gavin suddenly
+became interested in the floor.
+
+"Ay, ay, the minister was hitting at you there, Babbie," Nanny
+explained, "for the way you made off wi' the captain's cloak. The
+Thrums folk wondered less at your taking it than at your no keeping
+it. It's said to be michty grand."
+
+"It was rather like the one the minister's wife gave him," said
+Babbie.
+
+"The minister has neither a wife nor a cloak," retorted Nanny.
+
+"He isn't married?" asked Babbie, the picture of incredulity.
+
+Nanny gathered from the minister's face that he deputed to her the
+task of enlightening this ignorant girl, so she replied with emphasis,
+"Na, they hinna got him yet, and I'm cheated if it doesna tak them all
+their time."
+
+Thus do the best of women sell their sex for nothing.
+
+"I did wonder," said the Egyptian, gravely, "at any mere woman's
+daring to marry such a minister."
+
+"Ay," replied Nanny, spiritedly, "but there's dauring limmers wherever
+there's a single man."
+
+"So I have often suspected," said Babbie, duly shocked. "But, Nanny, I
+was told the minister had a wife, by one who said he saw her."
+
+"He lied, then," answered Nanny turning to Gavin for further
+instructions.
+
+"But, see, the minister does not deny the horrid charge himself."
+
+"No, and for the reason he didna deny the cloak: because it's no worth
+his while. I'll tell you wha your friend had seen. It would be
+somebody that would like to be Mrs. Dishart. There's a hantle o' that
+kind. Ay, lassie, but wishing winna land a woman in a manse."
+
+"It was one of the soldiers," Babbie said, "who told me about her. He
+said Mr. Dishart introduced her to him."
+
+"Sojers!" cried Nanny. "I could never thole the name o' them. Sanders
+in his young days hankered after joining them, and so he would, if it
+hadna been for the fechting. Ay, and now they've ta'en him awa to the
+gaol, and sworn lies about him. Dinna put any faith in sojers,
+lassie."
+
+"I was told," Babbie went on, "that the minister's wife was rather
+like me."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Nanny, so fervently that all three
+suddenly sat back from the table.
+
+"I'm no meaning," Nanny continued hurriedly, fearing to offend her
+benefactress, "but what you're the bonniest tid I ever saw out o' an
+almanack. But you would ken Mr. Dishart's contempt for bonny faces if
+you had heard his sermon against them. I didna hear it mysel', for I'm
+no Auld Licht, but it did the work o' the town for an aucht days."
+
+If Nanny had not taken her eyes off Gavin for the moment she would
+have known that he was now anxious to change the topic. Babbie saw it,
+and became suspicious.
+
+"When did he preach against the wiles of women, Nanny?"
+
+"It was long ago," said Gavin, hastily.
+
+"No so very lang syne," corrected Nanny. "It was the Sabbath after the
+sojers was in Thrums; the day you changed your text so hurriedly. Some
+thocht you wasna weel, but Lang Tammas----"
+
+"Thomas Whamond is too officious," Gavin said with dignity. "I forbid
+you, Nanny, to repeat his story."
+
+"But what made you change your text?" asked Babbie.
+
+"You see he winna tell," Nanny said, wistfully. "Ay, I dinna deny but
+what I would like richt to ken. But the session's as puzzled as
+yoursel', Babbie."
+
+"Perhaps more puzzled," answered the Egyptian, with a smile that
+challenged Gavin's frowns to combat and overthrow them. "What
+surprises me, Mr. Dishart, is that such a great man can stoop to see
+whether women are pretty or not. It was very good of you to remember
+me to-day. I suppose you recognized me by my frock?"
+
+"By your face," he replied, boldly; "by your eyes."
+
+"Nanny," exclaimed the Egyptian, "did you hear what the minister
+said?"
+
+"Woe is me," answered Nanny, "I missed it."
+
+"He says he would know me anywhere by my eyes."
+
+"So would I mysel'," said Nanny.
+
+"Then what colour are they, Mr. Dishart?" demanded Babbie. "Don't
+speak, Nanny, for I want to expose him."
+
+She closed her eyes tightly. Gavin was in a quandary. I suppose he had
+looked at her eyes too long to know much about them.
+
+"Blue," he guessed at last.
+
+"Na, they're black," said Nanny, who had doubtless known this for an
+hour. I am always marvelling over the cleverness of women, as every
+one must see who reads this story.
+
+"No but what they micht be blue in some lichts," Nanny added, out of
+respect to the minister.
+
+"Oh, don't defend him, Nanny," said Babbie, looking reproachfully at
+Gavin. "I don't see that any minister has a right to denounce women
+when he is so ignorant of his subject. I will say it, Nanny, and you
+need not kick me beneath the table."
+
+Was not all this intoxicating to the little minister, who had never
+till now met a girl on equal terms? At twenty-one a man is a musical
+instrument given to the other sex, but it is not as instruments
+learned at school, for when She sits down to it she cannot tell what
+tune she is about to play. That is because she has no notion of what
+the instrument is capable. Babbie's kind-heartedness, her gaiety, her
+coquetry, her moments of sadness, had been a witch's fingers, and
+Gavin was still trembling under their touch. Even in being taken to
+task by her there was a charm, for every pout of her mouth, every
+shake of her head, said, "You like me, and therefore you have given me
+the right to tease you." Men sign these agreements without reading
+them. But, indeed, man is a stupid animal at the best, and thinks all
+his life that he did not propose until he blurted out, "I love you."
+
+It was later than it should have been when the minister left the mud
+house, and even then he only put on his hat because Babbie said that
+she must go.
+
+"But not your way," she added. "I go into the wood and vanish. You
+know, Nanny, I live up a tree."
+
+"Dinna say that," said Nanny, anxiously, "or I'll be fleid about the
+siller."
+
+"Don't fear about it. Mr. Dishart will get some of it to-morrow at the
+Kaims. I would bring it here, but I cannot come so far to-morrow."
+
+[Illustration: "I HAVE READ MY FORTUNE."]
+
+"Then I'll hae peace to the end o' my days," said the old woman, "and,
+Babbie, I wish the same to you wi' all my heart."
+
+"Ah," Babbie replied, mournfully, "I have read my fortune, Nanny, and
+there is not much happiness in it."
+
+"I hope that is not true," Gavin said, simply.
+
+They were standing at the door, and she was looking toward the hill,
+perhaps without seeing it. All at once it came to Gavin that this
+fragile girl might have a history far sadder and more turbulent than
+his.
+
+"Do you really care?" she asked, without looking at him.
+
+"Yes," he said stoutly, "I care."
+
+"Because you do not know me," she said.
+
+"Because I do know you," he answered.
+
+Now she did look at him.
+
+"I believe," she said, making a discovery, "that you misunderstand me
+less than those who have known me longer."
+
+This was a perilous confidence, for it at once made Gavin say
+"Babbie."
+
+"Ah," she answered, frankly, "I am glad to hear that. I thought you
+did not really like me, because you never called me by my name."
+
+Gavin drew a great breath.
+
+"That was not the reason," he said.
+
+The reason was now unmistakable.
+
+"I was wrong," said the Egyptian, a little alarmed; "you do not
+understand me at all."
+
+She returned to Nanny, and Gavin set off, holding his head high, his
+brain in a whirl. Five minutes afterwards, when Nanny was at the fire,
+the diamond ring on her little finger, he came back, looking like one
+who had just seen sudden death.
+
+"I had forgotten," he said, with a fierceness aimed at himself, "that
+to-morrow is the Sabbath."
+
+"Need that make any difference?" asked the gypsy.
+
+"At this hour on Monday," said Gavin, hoarsely, "I will be at the
+Kaims."
+
+He went away without another word, and Babbie watched him from the
+window. Nanny had not looked up from the ring.
+
+"What a pity he is a minister!" the girl said, reflectively. "Nanny,
+you are not listening."
+
+The old woman was making the ring flash by the light of the fire.
+
+"Nanny, do you hear me? Did you see Mr. Dishart come back?"
+
+"I heard the door open," Nanny answered, without taking her greedy
+eyes off the ring. "Was it him? Whaur did you get this, lassie?"
+
+"Give it me back, Nanny, I am going now."
+
+But Nanny did not give it back; she put her other hand over it to
+guard it, and there she crouched, warming herself not at the fire, but
+at the ring.
+
+"Give it me, Nanny."
+
+"It winna come off my finger." She gloated over it, nursed it, kissed
+it.
+
+"I must have it, Nanny."
+
+The Egyptian put her hand lightly on the old woman's shoulder, and
+Nanny jumped up, pressing the ring to her bosom. Her face had become
+cunning and ugly; she retreated into a corner.
+
+"Nanny, give me back my ring or I will take it from you."
+
+The cruel light of the diamond was in Nanny's eyes for a moment, and
+then, shuddering, she said, "Tak your ring awa, tak it out o' my
+sicht."
+
+In the meantime Gavin was trudging home gloomily composing his second
+sermon against women. I have already given the entry in my own diary
+for that day: this is his:--"Notes on Jonah. Exchanged vol. xliii.,
+'European Magazine,' for Owen's 'Justification' (_per_ flying
+stationer). Began Second Samuel. Visited Nanny Webster." There is no
+mention of the Egyptian.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Sixteen.
+
+CONTINUED MISBEHAVIOUR OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
+
+
+By the following Monday it was known at many looms that something sat
+heavily on the Auld Licht minister's mind. On the previous day he had
+preached his second sermon of warning to susceptible young men, and
+his first mention of the word "woman" had blown even the sleepy heads
+upright. Now he had salt fish for breakfast, and on clearing the table
+Jean noticed that his knife and fork were uncrossed. He was observed
+walking into a gooseberry bush by Susy Linn, who possessed the pioneer
+spring-bed of Thrums, and always knew when her man jumped into it by
+suddenly finding herself shot to the ceiling. Lunan, the tinsmith, and
+two women, who had the luck to be in the street at the time, saw him
+stopping at Dr. McQueen's door, as if about to knock, and then turning
+smartly away. His hat blew off in the school wynd, where a wind
+wanders ever, looking for hats, and he chased it so passionately that
+Lang Tammas went into Allardyce's smiddy to say--
+
+"I dinna like it. Of course he couldna afford to lose his hat, but he
+should hae run after it mair reverently."
+
+Gavin, indeed, was troubled. He had avoided speaking of the Egyptian
+to his mother. He had gone to McQueen's house to ask the doctor to
+accompany him to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand he
+changed his mind, and now he was at the place of meeting alone. It was
+a day of thaw, nothing to be heard from a distance but the swish of
+curling-stones through water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the
+eldership was going on. Around him, Gavin saw only dejected firs with
+drops of water falling listlessly from them, clods of snow, and grass
+that rustled as if animals were crawling through it. All the roads
+were slack.
+
+I suppose no young man to whom society has not become a cheap thing
+can be in Gavin's position, awaiting the coming of an attractive girl,
+without giving thought to what he should say to her. When in the
+pulpit or visiting the sick, words came in a rush to the little
+minister, but he had to set his teeth to determine what to say to the
+Egyptian.
+
+This was because he had not yet decided which of two women she was.
+Hardly had he started on one line of thought when she crossed his
+vision in a new light, and drew him after her.
+
+Her "Need that make any difference?" sang in his ear like another
+divit, cast this time at religion itself, and now he spoke aloud,
+pointing his finger at a fir: "I said at the mud house that I believed
+you because I knew you. To my shame be it said that I spoke falsely.
+How dared you bewitch me? In your presence I flung away the precious
+hours in frivolity; I even forgot the Sabbath. For this I have myself
+to blame. I am an unworthy preacher of the Word. I sinned far more
+than you who have been brought up godlessly from your cradle.
+Nevertheless, whoever you are, I call upon you, before we part never
+to meet again, to repent of your----"
+
+And then it was no mocker of the Sabbath he was addressing, but a
+woman with a child's face, and there were tears in her eyes. "Do you
+care?" she was saying, and again he answered, "Yes, I care." This
+girl's name was not Woman, but Babbie.
+
+Now Gavin made an heroic attempt to look upon both these women at
+once. "Yes, I believe in you," he said to them, "but henceforth you
+must send your money to Nanny by another messenger. You are a gypsy
+and I am a minister; and that must part us. I refuse to see you again.
+I am not angry with you, but as a minister----"
+
+It was not the disappearance of one of the women that clipped this
+argument short; it was Babbie singing--
+
+  "It fell on a day, on a bonny summer day,
+    When the corn grew green and yellow,
+  That there fell out a great dispute
+    Between Argyle and Airly.
+
+  "The Duke of Montrose has written to Argyle
+    To come in the morning early,
+  An' lead in his men by the back o' Dunkeld
+    To plunder the bonny house o' Airly."
+
+"Where are you?" cried Gavin in bewilderment.
+
+"I am watching you from my window so high," answered the Egyptian; and
+then the minister, looking up, saw her peering at him from a fir.
+
+"How did you get up there?" he asked in amazement.
+
+"On my broomstick," Babbie replied, and sang on--
+
+  "The lady looked o'er her window sae high,
+    And oh! but she looked weary,
+  And there she espied the great Argyle
+    Come to plunder the bonny house o' Airly."
+
+"What are you doing there?" Gavin said, wrathfully.
+
+"This is my home," she answered. "I told you I lived in a tree."
+
+"Come down at once," ordered Gavin. To which the singer responded--
+
+  "'Come down, come down, Lady Margaret,' he says;
+    'Come down and kiss me fairly
+  Or before the morning clear day light
+    I'll no leave a standing stane in Airly.'"
+
+"If you do not come down this instant," Gavin said in a rage, "and
+give me what I was so foolish as to come for, I----"
+
+The Egyptian broke in--
+
+  "'I wouldna kiss thee, great Argyle,
+    I wouldna kiss thee fairly;
+  I wouldna kiss thee, great Argyle,
+    Gin you shouldna leave a standing stane in Airly.'"
+
+"You have deceived Nanny," Gavin cried, hotly, "and you have brought
+me here to deride me. I will have no more to do with you."
+
+He walked away quickly, but she called after him, "I am coming down. I
+have the money," and next moment a snowball hit his hat.
+
+"That is for being cross," she explained, appearing so unexpectedly at
+his elbow that he was taken aback. "I had to come close up to you
+before I flung it, or it would have fallen over my shoulder. Why are
+you so nasty to-day? and, oh, do you know you were speaking to
+yourself?"
+
+"You are mistaken," said Gavin, severely. "I was speaking to you."
+
+"You didn't see me till I began to sing, did you?"
+
+"Nevertheless I was speaking to you, or rather, I was saying to myself
+what----"
+
+"What you had decided to say to me?" said the delighted gypsy. "Do you
+prepare your talk like sermons? I hope you have prepared something
+nice for me. If it is very nice I may give you this bunch of holly."
+
+She was dressed as he had seen her previously, but for a cluster of
+holly berries at her breast.
+
+"I don't know that you will think it nice," the minister answered,
+slowly, "but my duty----"
+
+"If it is about duty," entreated Babbie, "don't say it. Don't, and I
+will give you the berries."
+
+She took the berries from her dress, smiling triumphantly the while
+like one who had discovered a cure for duty; and instead of pointing
+the finger of wrath at her, Gavin stood expectant.
+
+"But no," he said, remembering who he was, and pushing the gift from
+him, "I will not be bribed. I must tell you----"
+
+"Now," said the Egyptian, sadly, "I see you are angry with me. Is it
+because I said I lived in a tree? Do forgive me for that dreadful
+lie."
+
+She had gone on her knees before he could stop her, and was gazing
+imploringly at him, with her hands clasped.
+
+"You are mocking me again," said Gavin, "but I am not angry with you.
+Only you must understand----"
+
+She jumped up and put her fingers to her ears.
+
+"You see I can hear nothing," she said.
+
+"Listen while I tell you----"
+
+"I don't hear a word. Why do you scold me when I have kept my promise?
+If I dared to take my fingers from my ears I would give you the money
+for Nanny. And, Mr. Dishart, I must be gone in five minutes."
+
+"In five minutes!" echoed Gavin, with such a dismal face that Babbie
+heard the words with her eyes, and dropped her hands.
+
+"Why are you in such haste?" he asked, taking the five pounds
+mechanically, and forgetting all that he had meant to say.
+
+"Because they require me at home," she answered, with a sly glance at
+her fir. "And, remember, when I run away you must not follow me."
+
+"I won't," said Gavin, so promptly that she was piqued.
+
+"Why not?" she asked. "But of course you only came here for the money.
+Well, you have got it. Good-bye."
+
+"You know that was not what I meant," said Gavin, stepping after her.
+"I have told you already that whatever other people say, I trust you.
+I believe in you, Babbie."
+
+"Was that what you were saying to the tree?" asked the Egyptian,
+demurely. Then, perhaps thinking it wisest not to press this point,
+she continued irrelevantly, "It seems such a pity that you are a
+minister."
+
+"A pity to be a minister!" exclaimed Gavin, indignantly. "Why, why,
+you--why, Babbie, how have you been brought up?"
+
+"In a curious way," Babbie answered, shortly, "but I can't tell you
+about that just now. Would you like to hear all about me?" Suddenly
+she seemed to have become confidential.
+
+"Do you really think me a gypsy?" she asked.
+
+"I have tried not to ask myself that question."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it seems like doubting your word."
+
+"I don't see how you can think of me at all without wondering who I
+am."
+
+"No, and so I try not to think of you at all."
+
+"Oh, I don't know that you need do that."
+
+"I have not quite succeeded."
+
+The Egyptian's pique had vanished, but she may have thought that the
+conversation was becoming dangerous, for she said abruptly--
+
+"Well, I sometimes think about you."
+
+"Do you?" said Gavin, absurdly gratified. "What do you think about
+me?"
+
+"I wonder," answered the Egyptian, pleasantly, "which of us is the
+taller."
+
+Gavin's fingers twitched with mortification, and not only his fingers
+but his toes.
+
+"Let us measure," she said, sweetly, putting her back to his. "You are
+not stretching your neck, are you?"
+
+But the minister broke away from her.
+
+"There is one subject," he said, with great dignity, "that I allow no
+one to speak of in my presence, and that is my--my height."
+
+His face was as white as his cravat when the surprised Egyptian next
+looked at him, and he was panting like one who has run a mile. She
+was ashamed of herself, and said so.
+
+"It is a topic I would rather not speak about," Gavin answered,
+dejectedly, "especially to you."
+
+He meant that he would rather be a tall man in her company than in any
+other, and possibly she knew this, though all she answered was--
+
+"You wanted to know if I am really a gypsy. Well, I am."
+
+"An ordinary gypsy?"
+
+"Do you think me ordinary?"
+
+"I wish I knew what to think of you."
+
+"Ah, well, that is my forbidden topic. But we have a good many ideas
+in common after all, have we not, though you are only a minis--I mean,
+though I am only a gypsy?"
+
+There fell between them a silence that gave Babbie time to remember
+she must go.
+
+"I have already stayed too long," she said. "Give my love to Nanny,
+and say that I am coming to see her soon, perhaps on Monday. I don't
+suppose you will be there on Monday, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"I--I cannot say."
+
+"No, you will be too busy. Are you to take the holly berries?"
+
+"I had better not," said Gavin, dolefully.
+
+"Oh, if you don't want them----"
+
+"Give them to me," he said, and as he took them his hand shook.
+
+"I know why you are looking so troubled," said the Egyptian, archly.
+"You think I am to ask you the colour of my eyes, and you have
+forgotten again."
+
+He would have answered, but she checked him.
+
+"Make no pretence," she said, severely; "I know you think they are
+blue."
+
+She came close to him until her face almost touched his.
+
+"Look hard at them," she said, solemnly, "and after this you may
+remember that they are black, black, black!"
+
+At each repetition of the word she shook her head in his face. She was
+adorable. Gavin's arms--but they met on nothing. She had run away.
+
+When the little minister had gone, a man came from behind a tree and
+shook his fist in the direction taken by the gypsy. It was Rob Dow,
+black with passion.
+
+"It's the Egyptian!" he cried. "You limmer, wha are you that hae got
+haud o' the minister?"
+
+He pursued her, but she vanished as from Gavin in Windyghoul.
+
+"A common Egyptian!" he muttered when he had to give up the search.
+"But take care, you little devil," he called aloud; "take care; if I
+catch you playing pranks wi' that man again I'll wring your neck like
+a hen's!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seventeen.
+
+INTRUSION OF HAGGART INTO THESE PAGES AGAINST THE AUTHOR'S WISH.
+
+
+Margaret having heard the doctor say that one may catch cold in the
+back, had decided instantly to line Gavin's waistcoat with flannel.
+She was thus engaged, with pins in her mouth and the scissors hiding
+from her every time she wanted them, when Jean, red and flurried,
+abruptly entered the room.
+
+"There! I forgot to knock at the door again," Jean exclaimed, pausing
+contritely.
+
+"Never mind. Is it Rob Dow wanting the minister?" asked Margaret, who
+had seen Rob pass the manse dyke.
+
+"Na, he wasna wanting to see the minister."
+
+"Ah, then, he came to see you, Jean," said Margaret, archly.
+
+"A widow man!" cried Jean, tossing her head. "But Rob Dow was in no
+condition to be friendly wi' onybody the now."
+
+"Jean, you don't mean that he has been drinking again?"
+
+"I canna say he was drunk."
+
+"Then what condition was he in?"
+
+"He was in a--a swearing condition," Jean answered, guardedly. "But
+what I want to speir at you is, can I gang down to the Tenements for a
+minute? I'll run there and back."
+
+"Certainly you can go, Jean, but you must not run. You are always
+running. Did Dow bring you word that you were wanted in the
+Tenements?"
+
+"No exactly, but I--I want to consult Tammas Haggart about--about
+something."
+
+"About Dow, I believe, Jean?"
+
+"Na, but about something he has done. Oh, ma'am, you surely dinna
+think I would take a widow man?"
+
+It was the day after Gavin's meeting with the Egyptian at the Kaims,
+and here is Jean's real reason for wishing to consult Haggart. Half an
+hour before she hurried to the parlour she had been at the kitchen
+door wondering whether she should spread out her washing in the garret
+or risk hanging it in the courtyard. She had just decided on the
+garret when she saw Rob Dow morosely regarding her from the gateway.
+
+"Whaur is he?" growled Rob.
+
+"He's out, but it's no for me to say whaur he is," replied Jean, whose
+weakness was to be considered a church official. "No that I ken,"
+truthfulness compelled her to add, for she had an ambition to be
+everything she thought Gavin would like a woman to be.
+
+Rob seized her wrists viciously and glowered into her face.
+
+"You're ane o' them," he said.
+
+"Let me go. Ane o' what?"
+
+"Ane o' thae limmers called women."
+
+"Sal," retorted Jean with spirit, "you're ane o' thae brutes called
+men. You're drunk, Rob Dow."
+
+"In the legs maybe, but no higher. I haud a heap."
+
+"Drunk again, after all your promises to the minister! And you said
+yoursel' that he had pulled you out o' hell by the root."
+
+"It's himsel' that has flung me back again," Rob said, wildly. "Jean
+Baxter, what does it mean when a minister carries flowers in his
+pouch; ay, and takes them out to look at them ilka minute?"
+
+"How do you ken about the holly?" asked Jean, off her guard.
+
+"You limmer," said Dow, "you've been in his pouches."
+
+"It's a lie!" cried the outraged Jean. "I just saw the holly this
+morning in a jug on his chimley."
+
+"Carefully put by? Is it hod on the chimley? Does he stand looking at
+it? Do you tell me he's fond-like o't?"
+
+"Mercy me!" Jean exclaimed, beginning to shake; "wha is she, Rob
+Dow?"
+
+"Let me see it first in its jug," Rob answered, slyly, "and syne I may
+tell you."
+
+This was not the only time Jean had been asked to show the minister's
+belongings. Snecky Hobart, among others, had tried on Gavin's hat in
+the manse kitchen, and felt queer for some time afterwards. Women had
+been introduced on tiptoe to examine the handle of his umbrella. But
+Rob had not come to admire. He snatched the holly from Jean's hands,
+and casting it on the ground pounded it with his heavy boots, crying,
+"Greet as you like, Jean. That's the end o' his flowers, and if I had
+the tawpie he got them frae I would serve her in the same way."
+
+"I'll tell him what you've done," said terrified Jean, who had tried
+to save the berries at the expense of her fingers.
+
+"Tell him," Dow roared; "and tell him what I said too. Ay, and tell
+him I was at the Kaims yestreen. Tell him I'm hunting high and low for
+an Egyptian woman."
+
+He flung recklessly out of the courtyard, leaving Jean looking blankly
+at the mud that had been holly lately. Not his act of sacrilege was
+distressing her, but his news. Were these berries a love token? Had
+God let Rob Dow say they were a gypsy's love token, and not slain
+him?
+
+That Rob spoke of the Egyptian of the riots Jean never doubted. It was
+known that the minister had met this woman in Nanny Webster's house,
+but was it not also known that he had given her such a talking-to as
+she could never come above? Many could repeat the words in which he
+had announced to Nanny that his wealthy friends in Glasgow were to
+give her all she needed. They could also tell how majestic he looked
+when he turned the Egyptian out of the house. In short, Nanny having
+kept her promise of secrecy, the people had been forced to construct
+the scene in the mud house for themselves, and it was only their story
+that was known to Jean.
+
+She decided that, so far as the gypsy was concerned, Rob had talked
+trash. He had seen the holly in the minister's hand, and, being in
+drink, had mixed it up with the gossip about the Egyptian. But that
+Gavin had preserved the holly because of the donor was as obvious to
+Jean as that the vase in her hand was empty. Who could she be? No
+doubt all the single ladies in Thrums were in love with him, but that,
+Jean was sure, had not helped them a step forward.
+
+To think was to Jean a waste of time. Discovering that she had been
+thinking, she was dismayed. There were the wet clothes in the basket
+looking reproachfully at her. She hastened back to Gavin's room with
+the vase, but it too had eyes, and they said, "When the minister
+misses his holly he will question you." Now Gavin had already smiled
+several times to Jean, and once he had marked passages for her in her
+"Pilgrim's Progress," with the result that she prized the marks more
+even than the passages. To lose his good opinion was terrible to her.
+In her perplexity she decided to consult wise Tammas Haggart, and
+hence her appeal to Margaret.
+
+To avoid Chirsty, the humourist's wife, Jean sought Haggart at his
+workshop window, which was so small that an old book sufficed for its
+shutter. Haggart, whom she could see distinctly at his loom, soon
+guessed from her knocks and signs (for he was strangely quick in the
+uptake) that she wanted him to open the window.
+
+"I want to speak to you confidentially," Jean said in a low voice. "If
+you saw a grand man gey fond o' a flower, what would you think?"
+
+"I would think, Jean," Haggart answered, reflectively, "that he had
+gien siller for't; ay, I would wonder----"
+
+"What would you wonder?"
+
+"I would wonder how muckle he paid."
+
+"But if he was a--a minister, and keepit the flower--say it was a
+common rose--fond-like on his chimley, what would you think?"
+
+"I would think it was a black-burning disgrace for a minister to be
+fond o' flowers."
+
+"I dinna haud wi' that."
+
+"Jean," said Haggart, "I allow no one to contradict me."
+
+"It wasna my design. But, Tammas, if a--a minister was fond o' a
+particular flower--say a rose--and you destroyed it by an accident,
+when he wasna looking, what would you do?"
+
+"I would gie him another rose for't."
+
+"But if you didna want him to ken you had meddled wi't on his chimley,
+what would you do?"
+
+"I would put the new rose on the chimley, and he would never ken the
+differ."
+
+"That's what I'll do," muttered Jean, but she said aloud--
+
+"But it micht be that particular rose he liked?"
+
+"Havers, Jean. To a thinking man one rose is identical wi' another
+rose. But how are you speiring?"
+
+"Just out o' curiosity, and I maun be stepping now. Thank you kindly,
+Tammas, for your humour."
+
+"You're welcome," Haggart answered, and closed his window.
+
+That day Rob Dow spent in misery, but so little were his fears
+selfish that he scarcely gave a thought to his conduct at the manse.
+For an hour he sat at his loom with his arms folded. Then he slouched
+out of the house, cursing little Micah, so that a neighbour cried "You
+drucken scoundrel!" after him. "He may be a wee drunk," said Micah in
+his father's defence, "but he's no mortal." Rob wandered to the Kaims
+in search of the Egyptian, and returned home no happier. He flung
+himself upon his bed and dared Micah to light the lamp. About gloaming
+he rose, unable to keep his mouth shut on his thoughts any longer, and
+staggered to the Tenements to consult Haggart. He found the
+humourist's door ajar, and Wearyworld listening at it. "Out o' the
+road!" cried Rob, savagely, and flung the policeman into the gutter.
+
+"That was ill-dune, Rob Dow," Wearyworld said, picking himself up
+leisurely.
+
+"I'm thinking it was weel-dune," snarled Rob.
+
+"Ay," said Wearyworld, "we needna quarrel about a difference o'
+opeenion; but, Rob----"
+
+Dow, however, had already entered the house and slammed the door.
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered Wearyworld, departing, "you micht hae stood still,
+Rob, and argued it out wi' me."
+
+In less than an hour after his conversation with Jean at the window it
+had suddenly struck Haggart that the minister she spoke of must be Mr.
+Dishart. In two hours he had confided his suspicions to Chirsty. In
+ten minutes she had filled the house with gossips. Rob arrived to find
+them in full cry.
+
+"Ay, Rob," said Chirsty, genially, for gossip levels ranks, "you're
+just in time to hear a query about the minister."
+
+"Rob," said the Glen Quharity post, from whom I subsequently got the
+story, "Mr. Dishart has fallen in--in--what do you call the thing,
+Chirsty?"
+
+Birse knew well what the thing was called, but the word is a staggerer
+to say in company.
+
+"In love," answered Chirsty, boldly.
+
+"Now we ken what he was doing in the country yestreen," said Snecky
+Hobart, "the which has been bothering us sair."
+
+"The manse is fu' o' the flowers she sends him," said Tibbie Craik.
+"Jean's at her wits'-end to ken whaur to put them a'."
+
+"Wha is she?"
+
+It was Rob Dow who spoke. All saw he had been drinking, or they might
+have wondered at his vehemence. As it was, everybody looked at every
+other body, and then everybody sighed.
+
+"Ay, wha is she?" repeated several.
+
+"I see you ken nothing about her," said Rob, much relieved; and he
+then lapsed into silence.
+
+"We ken a' about her," said Snecky, "except just wha she is. Ay,
+that's what we canna bottom. Maybe you could guess, Tammas?"
+
+"Maybe I could, Sneck," Haggart replied, cautiously; "but on that
+point I offer no opinion."
+
+"If she bides on the Kaims road," said Tibbie Craik, "she maun be a
+farmer's dochter. What say you to Bell Finlay?"
+
+"Na; she's U. P. But it micht be Loups o' Malcolm's sister. She's
+promised to Muckle Haws; but no doubt she would gie him the go-by at a
+word frae the minister."
+
+"It's mair likely," said Chirsty, "to be the factor at the Spittal's
+lassie. The factor has a grand garden, and that would account for such
+basketfuls o' flowers."
+
+"Whaever she is," said Birse, "I'm thinking he could hae done
+better."
+
+"I'll be fine pleased wi' ony o' them," said Tibbie, who had a magenta
+silk, and so was jealous of no one.
+
+"It hasna been proved," Haggart pointed out, "that the flowers came
+frae thae parts. She may be sending them frae Glasgow."
+
+"I aye understood it was a Glasgow lady," said Snecky. "He'll be like
+the Tilliedrum minister that got a lady to send him to the college on
+the promise that he would marry her as soon as he got a kirk. She made
+him sign a paper."
+
+"The far-seeing limmer," exclaimed Chirsty. "But if that's what Mr.
+Dishart has done, how has he kept it so secret?"
+
+"He wouldna want the women o' the congregation to ken he was promised
+till after they had voted for him."
+
+"I dinna haud wi' that explanation o't," said Haggart, "but I may tell
+you that I ken for sure she's a Glasgow leddy. Lads, ministers is near
+aye bespoke afore they're licensed. There's a michty competition for
+them in the big toons. Ay, the leddies just stand at the college
+gates, as you may say, and snap them up as they come out."
+
+"And just as well for the ministers, I'se uphaud," said Tibbie, "for
+it saves them a heap o' persecution when they come to the like o'
+Thrums. There was Mr. Meiklejohn, the U. P. minister: he was no sooner
+placed than every genteel woman in the town was persecuting him. The
+Miss Dobies was the maist shameless; they fair hunted him."
+
+"Ay," said Snecky; "and in the tail o' the day ane o' them snacked him
+up. Billies, did you ever hear o' a minister being refused?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Weel, then, I have; and by a widow woman too. His name was Samson,
+and if it had been Tamson she would hae ta'en him. Ay, you may look,
+but it's true. Her name was Turnbull, and she had another gent after
+her, name o' Tibbets. She couldna make up her mind atween them, and
+for a while she just keeped them dangling on. Ay, but in the end she
+took Tibbets. And what, think you, was her reason? As you ken, thae
+grand folk has their initials on their spoons and nichtgowns. Ay,
+weel, she thocht it would be mair handy to take Tibbets, because if
+she had ta'en the minister the _T's_ would have had to be changed to
+_S's_. It was thoctfu' o' her."
+
+"Is Tibbets living?" asked Haggart sharply.
+
+"No; he's dead."
+
+"What," asked Haggart, "was the corp to trade?"
+
+"I dinna ken."
+
+"I thocht no," said Haggart, triumphantly. "Weel, I warrant he was a
+minister too. Ay, catch a woman giving up a minister, except for
+another minister."
+
+All were looking on Haggart with admiration, when a voice from the
+door cried--
+
+"Listen, and I'll tell you a queerer ane than that."
+
+"Dagont," cried Birse, "it's Wearywarld, and he has been hearkening.
+Leave him to me."
+
+When the post returned, the conversation was back at Mr. Dishart.
+
+"Yes, lathies," Haggart was saying, "daftness about women comes to
+all, gentle and simple, common and colleged, humourists and no
+humourists. You say Mr. Dishart has preached ower muckle at women to
+stoop to marriage, but that makes no differ. Mony a humorous thing hae
+I said about women, and yet Chirsty has me. It's the same wi'
+ministers. A' at aince they see a lassie no' unlike ither lassies,
+away goes their learning, and they skirl out, 'You dawtie!' That's
+what comes to all."
+
+"But it hasna come to Mr. Dishart," cried Rob Dow, jumping to his
+feet. He had sought Haggart to tell him all, but now he saw the wisdom
+of telling nothing. "I'm sick o' your blathers. Instead o' the
+minister's being sweethearting yesterday, he was just at the Kaims
+visiting the gamekeeper. I met him in the Wast town-end, and gaed
+there and back wi' him."
+
+"That's proof it's a Glasgow leddy," said Snecky.
+
+"I tell you there's no leddy ava!" swore Rob.
+
+"Yea, and wha sends the baskets o' flowers, then?"
+
+"There was only one flower," said Rob, turning to his host.
+
+"I aye understood," said Haggart heavily, "that there was only one
+flower."
+
+"But though there was just ane," persisted Chirsty, "what we want to
+ken is wha gae him it."
+
+"It was me that gae him it," said Rob; "it was growing on the
+roadside, and I plucked it and gae it to him."
+
+The company dwindled away shamefacedly, yet unconvinced; but Haggart
+had courage to say slowly--
+
+"Yes, Rob, I had aye a notion that he got it frae you."
+
+Meanwhile, Gavin, unaware that talk about him and a woman unknown had
+broken out in Thrums, was gazing, sometimes lovingly and again with
+scorn, at a little bunch of holly-berries which Jean had gathered from
+her father's garden. Once she saw him fling them out of his window,
+and then she rejoiced. But an hour afterwards she saw him pick them
+up, and then she mourned. Nevertheless, to her great delight, he
+preached his third sermon against Woman on the following Sabbath. It
+was universally acknowledged to be the best of the series. It was also
+the last.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eighteen.
+
+CADDAM--LOVE LEADING TO A RUPTURE.
+
+
+Gavin told himself not to go near the mud house on the following
+Monday; but he went. The distance is half a mile, and the time he took
+was two hours. This was owing to his setting out due west to reach a
+point due north; yet with the intention of deceiving none save
+himself. His reason had warned him to avoid the Egyptian, and his
+desires had consented to be dragged westward because they knew he had
+started too soon. When the proper time came they knocked reason on the
+head and carried him straight to Caddam. Here reason came to, and
+again began to state its case. Desires permitted him to halt, as if to
+argue the matter out, but were thus tolerant merely because from where
+he stood he could see Nanny's doorway. When Babbie emerged from it
+reason seems to have made one final effort, for Gavin quickly took
+that side of a tree which is loved of squirrels at the approach of an
+enemy. He looked round the tree-trunk at her, and then reason
+discarded him. The gypsy had two empty pans in her hands. For a second
+she gazed in the minister's direction, then demurely leaped the ditch
+of leaves that separated Nanny's yard from Caddam, and strolled into
+the wood. Discovering with indignation that he had been skulking
+behind the tree, Gavin came into the open. How good of the Egyptian,
+he reflected, to go to the well for water, and thus save the old
+woman's arms! Reason shouted from near the manse (he only heard the
+echo) that he could still make up on it. "Come along," said his
+desires, and marched him prisoner to the well.
+
+The path which Babbie took that day is lost in blaeberry leaves now,
+and my little maid and I lately searched for an hour before we found
+the well. It was dry, choked with broom and stones, and broken rusty
+pans, but we sat down where Babbie and Gavin had talked, and I stirred
+up many memories. Probably two of those pans, that could be broken in
+the hands to-day like shortbread, were Nanny's, and almost certainly
+the stones are fragments from the great slab that used to cover the
+well. Children like to peer into wells to see what the world is like
+at the other side, and so this covering was necessary. Rob Angus was
+the strong man who bore the stone to Caddam, flinging it a yard before
+him at a time. The well had also a wooden lid with leather hinges, and
+over this the stone was dragged.
+
+Gavin arrived at the well in time to offer Babbie the loan of his
+arms. In her struggle she had taken her lips into her mouth, but in
+vain did she tug at the stone, which refused to do more than turn
+round on the wood. But for her presence, the minister's efforts would
+have been equally futile. Though not strong, however, he had the
+national horror of being beaten before a spectator, and once at school
+he had won a fight by telling his big antagonist to come on until the
+boy was tired of pummelling him. As he fought with the stone now,
+pains shot through his head, and his arms threatened to come away at
+the shoulders; but remove it he did.
+
+"How strong you are!" Babbie said with open admiration.
+
+I am sure no words of mine could tell how pleased the minister was;
+yet he knew he was not strong, and might have known that she had seen
+him do many things far more worthy of admiration without admiring
+them. This, indeed, is a sad truth, that we seldom give our love to
+what is worthiest in its object.
+
+"How curious that we should have met here," Babbie said, in her
+dangerously friendly way, as they filled the pans. "Do you know I
+quite started when your shadow fell suddenly on the stone. Did you
+happen to be passing through the wood?"
+
+"No," answered truthful Gavin, "I was looking for you. I thought you
+saw me from Nanny's door."
+
+"Did you? I only saw a man hiding behind a tree, and of course I knew
+it could not be you."
+
+Gavin looked at her sharply, but she was not laughing at him.
+
+"It was I," he admitted; "but I was not exactly hiding behind the
+tree."
+
+"You had only stepped behind it for a moment," suggested the
+Egyptian.
+
+Her gravity gave way to laughter under Gavin's suspicious looks, but
+the laughing ended abruptly. She had heard a noise in the wood, Gavin
+heard it too, and they both turned round in time to see two ragged
+boys running from them. When boys are very happy they think they must
+be doing wrong, and in a wood, of which they are among the natural
+inhabitants, they always take flight from the enemy, adults, if given
+time. For my own part, when I see a boy drop from a tree I am as
+little surprised as if he were an apple or a nut. But Gavin was
+startled, picturing these spies handing in the new sensation about him
+at every door, as a district visitor distributes tracts. The gypsy
+noted his uneasiness and resented it.
+
+"What does it feel like to be afraid?" she asked, eyeing him.
+
+"I am afraid of nothing," Gavin answered, offended in turn.
+
+"Yes, you are. When you saw me come out of Nanny's you crept behind a
+tree; when these boys showed themselves you shook. You are afraid of
+being seen with me. Go away, then; I don't want you."
+
+"Fear," said Gavin, "is one thing, and prudence is another."
+
+"Another name for it," Babbie interposed.
+
+"Not at all; but I owe it to my position to be careful. Unhappily, you
+do not seem to feel--to recognise--to know----"
+
+"To know what?"
+
+"Let us avoid the subject."
+
+"No," the Egyptian said, petulantly. "I hate not to be told things.
+Why must you be 'prudent?'"
+
+"You should see," Gavin replied, awkwardly, "that there is a--a
+difference between a minister and a gypsy."
+
+"But if I am willing to overlook it?" asked Babbie, impertinently.
+
+Gavin beat the brushwood mournfully with his staff.
+
+"I cannot allow you," he said, "to talk disrespectfully of my calling.
+It is the highest a man can follow. I wish----"
+
+He checked himself; but he was wishing she could see him in his
+pulpit.
+
+"I suppose," said the gypsy, reflectively, "one must be very clever to
+be a minister."
+
+"As for that----" answered Gavin, waving his hand grandly.
+
+"And it must be nice, too," continued Babbie, "to be able to speak for
+a whole hour to people who can neither answer nor go away. Is it true
+that before you begin to preach you lock the door to keep the
+congregation in?"
+
+"I must leave you if you talk in that way."
+
+"I only wanted to know."
+
+"Oh, Babbie, I am afraid you have little acquaintance with the inside
+of churches. Do you sit under anybody?"
+
+"Do I sit under anybody?" repeated Babbie, blankly.
+
+Is it any wonder that the minister sighed? "Whom do you sit under?"
+was his form of salutation to strangers.
+
+"I mean, where do you belong?" he said.
+
+"Wanderers," Babbie answered, still misunderstanding him, "belong to
+nowhere in particular."
+
+"I am only asking you if you ever go to church?"
+
+"Oh, that is what you mean. Yes, I go often."
+
+"What church?"
+
+"You promised not to ask questions."
+
+"I only mean what denomination do you belong to?"
+
+"Oh, the--the----Is there an English church denomination?"
+
+Gavin groaned.
+
+"Well, that is my denomination," said Babbie, cheerfully. "Some day,
+though, I am coming to hear you preach. I should like to see how you
+look in your gown."
+
+"We don't wear gowns."
+
+"What a shame! But I am coming, nevertheless. I used to like going to
+church in Edinburgh."
+
+"You have lived in Edinburgh?"
+
+"We gypsies have lived everywhere," Babbie said, lightly, though she
+was annoyed at having mentioned Edinburgh.
+
+"But all gypsies don't speak as you do," said Gavin, puzzled again. "I
+don't understand you."
+
+"Of course you dinna," replied Babbie, in broad Scotch. "Maybe, if you
+did, you would think that it's mair imprudent in me to stand here
+cracking clavers wi' the minister than for the minister to waste his
+time cracking wi' me."
+
+"Then why do it?"
+
+"Because----Oh, because prudence and I always take different roads."
+
+"Tell me who you are, Babbie," the minister entreated; "at least, tell
+me where your encampment is."
+
+"You have warned me against imprudence," she said.
+
+"I want," Gavin continued, earnestly, "to know your people, your
+father and mother."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because," he answered, stoutly, "I like their daughter."
+
+At that Babbie's fingers played on one of the pans, and, for the
+moment, there was no more badinage in her.
+
+"You are a good man," she said, abruptly; "but you will never know my
+parents."
+
+"Are they dead?"
+
+"They may be; I cannot tell."
+
+"This is all incomprehensible to me."
+
+"I suppose it is. I never asked any one to understand me."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Gavin, excitedly; "but the time has come when I
+must know everything of you that is to be known."
+
+Babbie receded from him in quick fear.
+
+"You must never speak to me in that way again," she said, in a warning
+voice.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+Gavin knew what way very well, but he thirsted to hear in her words
+what his own had implied. She did not choose to oblige him, however.
+
+"You never will understand me," she said. "I daresay I might be more
+like other people now, if--if I had been brought up differently. Not,"
+she added, passionately, "that I want to be like others. Do you never
+feel, when you have been living a humdrum life for months, that you
+must break out of it, or go crazy?"
+
+Her vehemence alarmed Gavin, who hastened to reply--
+
+"My life is not humdrum. It is full of excitement, anxieties,
+pleasures, and I am too fond of the pleasures. Perhaps it is because I
+have more of the luxuries of life than you that I am so content with
+my lot."
+
+"Why, what can you know of luxuries?"
+
+"I have eighty pounds a year."
+
+Babbie laughed. "Are ministers so poor?" she asked, calling back her
+gravity.
+
+"It is a considerable sum," said Gavin, a little hurt, for it was the
+first time he had ever heard any one speak disrespectfully of eighty
+pounds.
+
+The Egyptian looked down at her ring, and smiled.
+
+"I shall always remember your saying that," she told him, "after we
+have quarrelled."
+
+"We shall not quarrel," said Gavin, decidedly.
+
+"Oh, yes, we shall."
+
+"We might have done so once, but we know each other too well now."
+
+"That is why we are to quarrel."
+
+"About what?" said the minister. "I have not blamed you for deriding
+my stipend, though how it can seem small in the eyes of a gypsy----"
+
+"Who can afford," broke in Babbie, "to give Nanny seven shillings a
+week?"
+
+"True," Gavin said, uncomfortably, while the Egyptian again toyed with
+her ring. She was too impulsive to be reticent except now and then,
+and suddenly she said, "You have looked at this ring before now. Do
+you know that if you had it on your finger you would be more worth
+robbing than with eighty pounds in each of your pockets?"
+
+"Where did you get it?" demanded Gavin, fiercely.
+
+"I am sorry I told you that," the gypsy said, regretfully.
+
+"Tell me how you got it," Gavin insisted, his face now hard.
+
+"Now, you see, we are quarrelling."
+
+"I must know."
+
+"Must know! You forget yourself," she said haughtily.
+
+"No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where did you get that
+ring?"
+
+"Good afternoon to you," said the Egyptian, lifting her pans.
+
+"It is not good afternoon," he cried, detaining her. "It is good-bye
+for ever, unless you answer me."
+
+"As you please," she said. "I will not tell you where I got my ring.
+It is no affair of yours."
+
+"Yes, Babbie, it is."
+
+She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him say so, for she made
+no answer.
+
+"You are no gypsy," he continued, suspiciously.
+
+"Perhaps not," she answered, again taking the pans.
+
+"This dress is but a disguise."
+
+"It may be. Why don't you go away and leave me?"
+
+"I am going," he replied, wildly. "I will have no more to do with you.
+Formerly I pitied you, but----"
+
+He could not have used a word more calculated to rouse the Egyptian's
+ire, and she walked away with her head erect. Only once did she look
+back, and it was to say--
+
+"This is prudence--now."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nineteen.
+
+CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THE FIRST SERMON IN APPROVAL OF WOMEN.
+
+
+A young man thinks that he alone of mortals is impervious to love, and
+so the discovery that he is in it suddenly alters his views of his own
+mechanism. It is thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone. Did Gavin
+make this discovery when the Egyptian left him? Apparently he only
+came to the brink of it and stood blind. He had driven her from him
+for ever, and his sense of loss was so acute that his soul cried out
+for the cure rather than for the name of the malady.
+
+In time he would have realised what had happened, but time was denied
+him, for just as he was starting for the mud house Babbie saved his
+dignity by returning to him. It was not her custom to fix her eyes on
+the ground as she walked, but she was doing so now, and at the same
+time swinging the empty pans. Doubtless she had come back for more
+water, in the belief that Gavin had gone. He pronounced her name with
+a sense of guilt, and she looked up surprised, or seemingly surprised,
+to find him still there.
+
+"I thought you had gone away long ago," she said stiffly.
+
+"Otherwise," asked Gavin the dejected, "you would not have come back
+to the well?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I am very sorry. Had you waited another moment I should have been
+gone."
+
+This was said in apology, but the wilful Egyptian chose to change its
+meaning.
+
+"You have no right to blame me for disturbing you," she declared with
+warmth.
+
+"I did not. I only----"
+
+"You could have been a mile away by this time. Nanny wanted more
+water."
+
+Babbie scrutinised the minister sharply as she made this statement.
+Surely her conscience troubled her, for on his not answering
+immediately she said, "Do you presume to disbelieve me? What could
+have made me return except to fill the pans again?"
+
+"Nothing," Gavin admitted eagerly, "and I assure you----"
+
+Babbie should have been grateful to his denseness, but it merely set
+her mind at rest.
+
+"Say anything against me you choose," she told him. "Say it as
+brutally as you like, for I won't listen."
+
+She stopped to hear his response to that, and she looked so cold that
+it almost froze on Gavin's lips.
+
+"I had no right," he said, dolefully, "to speak to you as I did."
+
+"You had not," answered the proud Egyptian. She was looking away from
+him to show that his repentance was not even interesting to her.
+However, she had forgotten already not to listen.
+
+"What business is it of mine?" asked Gavin, amazed at his late
+presumption, "whether you are a gypsy or no?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"And as for the ring----"
+
+Here he gave her an opportunity of allowing that his curiosity about
+the ring was warranted. She declined to help him, however, and so he
+had to go on.
+
+"The ring is yours," he said, "and why should you not wear it?"
+
+"Why, indeed?"
+
+"I am afraid I have a very bad temper."
+
+He paused for a contradiction, but she nodded her head in agreement.
+
+"And it is no wonder," he continued, "that you think me a--a brute."
+
+"I'm sure it is not."
+
+"But, Babbie, I want you to know that I despise myself for my base
+suspicions. No sooner did I see them than I loathed them and myself
+for harbouring them. Despite this mystery, I look upon you as a
+noble-hearted girl. I shall always think of you so."
+
+This time Babbie did not reply.
+
+"That was all I had to say," concluded Gavin, "except that I hope you
+will not punish Nanny for my sins. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye," said the Egyptian, who was looking at the well.
+
+The minister's legs could not have heard him give the order to march,
+for they stood waiting.
+
+"I thought," said the Egyptian, after a moment, "that you said you
+were going."
+
+"I was only--brushing my hat," Gavin answered with dignity. "You want
+me to go?"
+
+She bowed, and this time he did set off.
+
+"You can go if you like," she remarked now.
+
+He turned at this.
+
+"But you said----" he began, diffidently.
+
+"No, I did not," she answered, with indignation.
+
+He could see her face at last.
+
+"You--you are crying!" he exclaimed, in bewilderment.
+
+"Because you are so unfeeling," sobbed Babbie.
+
+"What have I said, what have I done?" cried Gavin, in an agony of
+self-contempt. "Oh, that I had gone away at once!"
+
+"That is cruel."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"To say that."
+
+"What did I say?"
+
+"That you wished you had gone away."
+
+"But surely," the minister faltered, "you asked me to go."
+
+"How can you say so?" asked the gypsy, reproachfully.
+
+Gavin was distracted. "On my word," he said, earnestly, "I thought you
+did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody
+but myself; I am a hopeless lout."
+
+"Now you are unjust," said Babbie, hiding her face.
+
+"Again? To you?"
+
+"No, you stupid," she said, beaming on him in her most delightful
+manner, "to yourself!"
+
+She gave him both her hands impetuously, and he did not let them go
+until she added:
+
+"I am so glad that you are reasonable at last. Men are so much more
+unreasonable than women, don't you think?"
+
+"Perhaps we are," Gavin said, diplomatically.
+
+"Of course you are. Why, every one knows that. Well, I forgive you;
+only remember, you have admitted that it was all your fault?"
+
+She was pointing her finger at him like a schoolmistress, and Gavin
+hastened to answer--
+
+"You were not to blame at all."
+
+"I like to hear you say that," explained the representative of the
+more reasonable sex, "because it was really all my fault."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"Yes, it was; but of course I could not say so until you had asked my
+pardon. You must understand that?"
+
+The representative of the less reasonable sex could not understand it,
+but he agreed recklessly, and it seemed so plain to the woman that she
+continued confidentially--
+
+"I pretended that I did not want to make it up, but I did."
+
+"Did you?" asked Gavin, elated.
+
+"Yes, but nothing could have induced me to make the first advance. You
+see why?"
+
+"Because I was so unreasonable?" asked Gavin, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, and nasty. You admit you were nasty?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, I have an evil temper. It has brought me to shame many
+times."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the Egyptian, charitably. "I like it. I
+believe I admire bullies."
+
+"Did I bully you?"
+
+"I never knew such a bully. You quite frightened me."
+
+Gavin began to be less displeased with himself.
+
+"You are sure," inquired Babbie, "that you had no right to question me
+about the ring?"
+
+"Certain," answered Gavin.
+
+"Then I will tell you all about it," said Babbie, "for it is natural
+that you should want to know."
+
+He looked eagerly at her, and she had become serious and sad.
+
+"I must tell you at the same time," she said, "who I am, and
+then--then we shall never see each other any more."
+
+"Why should you tell me?" cried Gavin, his hand rising to stop her.
+
+"Because you have a right to know," she replied, now too much in
+earnest to see that she was yielding a point. "I should prefer not to
+tell you; yet there is nothing wrong in my secret, and it may make you
+think of me kindly when I have gone away."
+
+"Don't speak in that way, Babbie, after you have forgiven me."
+
+"Did I hurt you? It was only because I know that you cannot trust me
+while I remain a mystery. I know you would try to trust me, but
+doubts would cross your mind. Yes, they would; they are the shadows
+that mysteries cast. Who can believe a gypsy if the odds are against
+her?"
+
+"I can," said Gavin; but she shook her head, and so would he had he
+remembered three recent sermons of his own preaching.
+
+"I had better tell you all," she said, with an effort.
+
+"It is my turn now to refuse to listen to you," exclaimed Gavin, who
+was only a chivalrous boy. "Babbie, I should like to hear your story,
+but until you want to tell it to me I will not listen to it. I have
+faith in your honour, and that is sufficient."
+
+It was boyish, but I am glad Gavin said it; and now Babbie admired
+something in him that deserved admiration. His faith, no doubt, made
+her a better woman.
+
+"I admit that I would rather tell you nothing just now," she said,
+gratefully. "You are sure you will never say again that you don't
+understand me?"
+
+"Quite sure," said Gavin, bravely. "And by-and-by you will offer to
+tell me of your free will?"
+
+"Oh, don't let us think of the future," answered Babbie. "Let us be
+happy for the moment."
+
+This had been the Egyptian's philosophy always, but it was ill-suited
+for Auld Licht ministers, as one of them was presently to discover.
+
+"I want to make one confession, though," Babbie continued, almost
+reluctantly. "When you were so nasty a little while ago, I didn't go
+back to Nanny's. I stood watching you from behind a tree, and then,
+for an excuse to come back, I--I poured out the water. Yes, and I told
+you another lie. I really came back to admit that it was all my fault,
+if I could not get you to say that it was yours. I am so glad you gave
+in first."
+
+She was very near him, and the tears had not yet dried on her eyes.
+They were laughing eyes, eyes in distress, imploring eyes. Her pale
+face, smiling, sad, dimpled, yet entreating forgiveness, was the one
+prominent thing in the world to him just then. He wanted to kiss her.
+He would have done it as soon as her eyes rested on his, but she
+continued without regarding him--
+
+"How mean that sounds! Oh, if I were a man I should wish to be
+everything that I am not, and nothing that I am. I should scorn to be
+a liar, I should choose to be open in all things, I should try to
+fight the world honestly. But I am only a woman, and so--well, that is
+the kind of man I should like to marry."
+
+"A minister may be all these things," said Gavin, breathlessly.
+
+"The man I could love," Babbie went on, not heeding him, almost
+forgetting that he was there, "must not spend his days in idleness as
+the men I know do."
+
+"I do not."
+
+"He must be brave, no mere worker among others, but a leader of men."
+
+"All ministers are."
+
+"Who makes his influence felt."
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"And takes the side of the weak against the strong, even though the
+strong be in the right."
+
+"Always my tendency."
+
+"A man who has a mind of his own, and having once made it up stands to
+it in defiance even of----"
+
+"Of his session."
+
+"Of the world. He must understand me."
+
+"I do."
+
+"And be my master."
+
+"It is his lawful position in the house."
+
+"He must not yield to my coaxing or tempers."
+
+"It would be weakness."
+
+"But compel me to do his bidding; yes, even thrash me if----"
+
+"If you won't listen to reason. Babbie," cried Gavin, "I am that
+man!"
+
+Here the inventory abruptly ended, and these two people found
+themselves staring at each other, as if of a sudden they had heard
+something dreadful. I do not know how long they stood thus, motionless
+and horrified. I cannot tell even which stirred first. All I know is
+that almost simultaneously they turned from each other and hurried out
+of the wood in opposite directions.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty.
+
+END OF THE STATE OF INDECISION.
+
+
+Long before I had any thought of writing this story, I had told it so
+often to my little maid that she now knows some of it better than I.
+If you saw me looking up from my paper to ask her, "What was it that
+Birse said to Jean about the minister's flowers?" or, "Where was
+Hendry Munn hidden on the night of the riots?" and heard her confident
+answers, you would conclude that she had been in the thick of these
+events, instead of born many years after them. I mention this now
+because I have reached a point where her memory contradicts mine. She
+maintains that Rob Dow was told of the meeting in the wood by the two
+boys whom it disturbed, while my own impression is that he was a
+witness of it. If she is right, Rob must have succeeded in frightening
+the boys into telling no other person, for certainly the scandal did
+not spread in Thrums. After all, however, it is only important to know
+that Rob did learn of the meeting. Its first effect was to send him
+sullenly to the drink.
+
+Many a time since these events have I pictured what might have been
+their upshot had Dow confided their discovery to me. Had I suspected
+why Rob was grown so dour again, Gavin's future might have been very
+different. I was meeting Rob now and again in the glen, asking, with
+an affected carelessness he did not bottom, for news of the little
+minister, but what he told me was only the gossip of the town; and
+what I should have known, that Thrums might never know it, he kept to
+himself. I suppose he feared to speak to Gavin, who made several
+efforts to reclaim him, but without avail.
+
+Yet Rob's heart opened for a moment to one man, or rather was forced
+open by that man. A few days after the meeting at the well, Rob was
+bringing the smell of whisky with him down Banker's Close when he ran
+against a famous staff, with which the doctor pinned him to the wall.
+
+"Ay," said the outspoken doctor, looking contemptuously into Rob's
+bleary eyes, "so this is what your conversion amounts to? Faugh! Rob
+Dow, if you were half a man the very thought of what Mr. Dishart has
+done for you would make you run past the public houses."
+
+"It's the thocht o' him that sends me running to them," growled Rob,
+knocking down the staff. "Let me alane."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" demanded McQueen, hooking him this time.
+
+"Speir at himsel'; speir at the woman."
+
+"What woman?"
+
+"Take your staff out o' my neck."
+
+"Not till you tell me why you, of all people, are speaking against the
+minister."
+
+Torn by a desire for a confidant and loyalty to Gavin, Rob was already
+in a fury.
+
+"Say again," he burst forth, "that I was speaking agin the minister
+and I'll practise on you what I'm awid to do to her."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Wha's wha?"
+
+"The woman whom the minister----?"
+
+"I said nothing about a woman," said poor Rob, alarmed for Gavin.
+"Doctor, I'm ready to swear afore a bailie that I never saw them
+thegither at the Kaims."
+
+"The Kaims!" exclaimed the doctor suddenly enlightened. "Pooh! you
+only mean the Egyptian. Rob, make your mind easy about this. I know
+why he met her there."
+
+"Do you ken that she has bewitched him; do you ken I saw him trying to
+put his arms round her; do you ken they have a trysting-place in
+Caddam wood?"
+
+This came from Rob in a rush, and he would fain have called it all
+back.
+
+"I'm drunk, doctor, roaring drunk," he said, hastily, "and it wasna
+the minister I saw ava; it was another man."
+
+Nothing more could the doctor draw from Rob, but he had heard
+sufficient to smoke some pipes on. Like many who pride themselves on
+being recluses, McQueen loved the gossip that came to him uninvited;
+indeed, he opened his mouth to it as greedily as any man in Thrums. He
+respected Gavin, however, too much to find this new dish palatable,
+and so his researches to discover whether other Auld Lichts shared
+Rob's fears were conducted with caution. "Is there no word of your
+minister's getting a wife yet?" he asked several, but only got for
+answers, "There's word o' a Glasgow leddy's sending him baskets o'
+flowers," or "He has his een open, but he's taking his time; ay, he's
+looking for the blade o' corn in the stack o' chaff."
+
+This convinced McQueen that the congregation knew nothing of the
+Egyptian, but it did not satisfy him, and he made an opportunity of
+inviting Gavin into the surgery. It was, to the doctor, the cosiest
+nook in his house, but to me and many others a room that smelled of
+hearses. On the top of the pipes and tobacco tins that littered the
+table there usually lay a death certificate, placed there deliberately
+by the doctor to scare his sister, who had a passion for putting the
+surgery to rights.
+
+"By the way," McQueen said, after he and Gavin had talked a little
+while, "did I ever advise you to smoke?"
+
+"It is your usual form of salutation," Gavin answered, laughing. "But
+I don't think you ever supplied me with a reason."
+
+"I daresay not. I am too experienced a doctor to cheapen my
+prescriptions in that way. However, here is one good reason. I have
+noticed, sir, that at your age a man is either a slave to a pipe or to
+a woman. Do you want me to lend you a pipe now?"
+
+"Then I am to understand," asked Gavin, slyly, "that your locket came
+into your possession in your pre-smoking days, and that you merely
+wear it from habit?"
+
+"Tuts!" answered the doctor, buttoning his coat. "I told you there was
+nothing in the locket. If there is, I have forgotten what it is."
+
+"You are a hopeless old bachelor, I see," said Gavin, unaware that the
+doctor was probing him. He was surprised next moment to find McQueen
+in the ecstasies of one who has won a rubber.
+
+"Now, then," cried the jubilant doctor, "as you have confessed so
+much, tell me all about her. Name and address, please."
+
+"Confess! What have I confessed?"
+
+"It won't do, Mr. Dishart, for even your face betrays you. No, no, I
+am an old bird, but I have not forgotten the ways of the fledgelings.
+'Hopeless bachelor,' sir, is a sweetmeat in every young man's mouth
+until of a sudden he finds it sour, and that means the banns. When is
+it to be?"
+
+"We must find the lady first," said the minister, uncomfortably.
+
+"You tell me, in spite of that face, that you have not fixed on her?"
+
+"The difficulty, I suppose, would be to persuade her to fix on me."
+
+"Not a bit of it. But you admit there is some one?"
+
+"Who would have me?"
+
+"You are wriggling out of it. Is it the banker's daughter?"
+
+"No," Gavin cried.
+
+"I hear you have walked up the back wynd with her three times this
+week. The town is in a ferment about it."
+
+"She is a great deal in the back wynd."
+
+"Fiddle-de-dee! I am oftener in the back wynd than you, and I never
+meet her there."
+
+"That is curious."
+
+"No, it isn't, but never mind. Perhaps you have fallen to Miss
+Pennycuick's piano? Did you hear it going as we passed the house?"
+
+"She seems always to be playing on her piano."
+
+"Not she; but you are supposed to be musical, and so when she sees you
+from her window she begins to thump. If I am in the school wynd and
+hear the piano going, I know you will turn the corner immediately.
+However, I am glad to hear it is not Miss Pennycuick. Then it is the
+factor at the Spittal's lassie? Well done, sir. You should arrange to
+have the wedding at the same time as the old earl's, which comes off
+in summer, I believe."
+
+"One foolish marriage is enough in a day, doctor."
+
+"Eh? You call him a fool for marrying a young wife? Well, no doubt he
+is, but he would have been a bigger fool to marry an old one. However,
+it is not Lord Rintoul we are discussing, but Gavin Dishart. I suppose
+you know that the factor's lassie is an heiress?"
+
+"And, therefore, would scorn me."
+
+"Try her," said the doctor, drily. "Her father and mother, as I know,
+married on a ten-pound note. But if I am wrong again, I must adopt the
+popular view in Thrums. It is a Glasgow lady after all? Man, you
+needn't look indignant at hearing that the people are discussing your
+intended. You can no more stop it than a doctor's orders could keep
+Lang Tammas out of church. They have discovered that she sends you
+flowers twice every week."
+
+"They never reach me," answered Gavin, then remembered the holly and
+winced.
+
+"Some," persisted the relentless doctor, "even speak of your having
+been seen together; but of course, if she is a Glasgow lady, that is a
+mistake."
+
+"Where did they see us?" asked Gavin, with a sudden trouble in his
+throat.
+
+"You are shaking," said the doctor, keenly, "like a medical student at
+his first operation. But as for the story that you and the lady have
+been seen together, I can guess how it arose. Do you remember that
+gypsy girl?"
+
+The doctor had begun by addressing the fire, but he suddenly wheeled
+round and fired his question in the minister's face. Gavin, however,
+did not even blink.
+
+"Why should I have forgotten her?" he replied, coolly.
+
+"Oh, in the stress of other occupations. But it was your getting the
+money from her at the Kaims for Nanny that I was to speak of. Absurd
+though it seems, I think some dotard must have seen you and her at the
+Kaims, and mistaken her for the lady."
+
+McQueen flung himself back in his chair to enjoy this joke.
+
+"Fancy mistaking that woman for a lady!" he said to Gavin, who had not
+laughed with him.
+
+"I think Nanny has some justification for considering her a lady," the
+minister said, firmly.
+
+"Well, I grant that. But what made me guffaw was a vision of the
+harum-scarum, devil-may-care little Egyptian mistress of an Auld Licht
+manse!"
+
+"She is neither harum-scarum nor devil-may-care," Gavin answered,
+without heat, for he was no longer a distracted minister. "You don't
+understand her as I do."
+
+"No, I seem to understand her differently."
+
+"What do you know of her?"
+
+"That is just it," said the doctor, irritated by Gavin's coolness. "I
+know she saved Nanny from the poorhouse, but I don't know where she
+got the money. I know she can talk fine English when she chooses, but
+I don't know where she learned it. I know she heard that the soldiers
+were coming to Thrums before they knew of their destination
+themselves, but I don't know who told her. You who understand her can
+doubtless explain these matters?"
+
+"She offered to explain them to me," Gavin answered, still unmoved,
+"but I forbade her."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It is no business of yours, doctor. Forgive me for saying so."
+
+"In Thrums," replied McQueen, "a minister's business is everybody's
+business. I have often wondered who helped her to escape from the
+soldiers that night. Did she offer to explain that to you?"
+
+"She did not."
+
+"Perhaps," said the doctor, sharply, "because it was unnecessary?"
+
+"That was the reason."
+
+"You helped her to escape?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"And you are not ashamed of it?"
+
+"I am not."
+
+"Why were you so anxious to screen her?"
+
+"She saved some of my people from gaol."
+
+"Which was more than they deserved."
+
+"I have always understood that you concealed two of them in your own
+stable."
+
+"Maybe I did," the doctor had to allow. "But I took my stick to them
+next morning. Besides, they were Thrums folk, while you had never set
+eyes on that imp of mischief before."
+
+"I cannot sit here, doctor, and hear her called names," Gavin said,
+rising, but McQueen gripped him by the shoulder.
+
+"For pity's sake, sir, don't let us wrangle like a pair of women. I
+brought you here to speak my mind to you, and speak it I will. I warn
+you, Mr. Dishart, that you are being watched. You have been seen
+meeting this lassie in Caddam as well as at the Kaims."
+
+"Let the whole town watch, doctor. I have met her openly."
+
+"And why? Oh, don't make Nanny your excuse."
+
+"I won't. I met her because I love her."
+
+"Are you mad?" cried McQueen. "You speak as if you would marry her."
+
+"Yes," replied Gavin, determinedly, "and I mean to do it."
+
+The doctor flung up his hands.
+
+"I give you up," he said, raging. "I give you up. Think of your
+congregation, man."
+
+"I have been thinking of them, and as soon as I have a right to do so
+I shall tell them what I have told you."
+
+"And until you tell them I will keep your madness to myself, for I
+warn you that, as soon as they do know, there will be a vacancy in the
+Auld Licht kirk of Thrums."
+
+"She is a woman," said Gavin, hesitating, though preparing to go, "of
+whom any minister might be proud."
+
+"She is a woman," the doctor roared, "that no congregation would
+stand. Oh, if you will go, there is your hat."
+
+Perhaps Gavin's face was whiter as he left the house than when he
+entered it, but there was no other change. Those who were watching him
+decided that he was looking much as usual, except that his mouth was
+shut very firm, from which they concluded that he had been taking the
+doctor to task for smoking. They also noted that he returned to
+McQueen's house within half an hour after leaving it, but remained no
+time.
+
+Some explained this second visit by saying that the minister had
+forgotten his cravat, and had gone back for it. What really sent him
+back, however, was his conscience. He had said to McQueen that he
+helped Babbie to escape from the soldiers because of her kindness to
+his people, and he returned to own that it was a lie.
+
+Gavin knocked at the door of the surgery, but entered without waiting
+for a response. McQueen was no longer stamping through the room, red
+and furious. He had even laid aside his pipe. He was sitting back in
+his chair, looking half-mournfully, half-contemptuously, at something
+in his palm. His hand closed instinctively when he heard the door
+open, but Gavin had seen that the object was an open locket.
+
+"It was only your reference to the thing," the detected doctor said,
+with a grim laugh, "that made me open it. Forty years ago, sir,
+I----Phew! it is forty-two years, and I have not got over it yet." He
+closed the locket with a snap. "I hope you have come back, Dishart, to
+speak more rationally?"
+
+Gavin told him why he had come back, and the doctor said he was a fool
+for his pains.
+
+"Is it useless, Dishart, to make another appeal to you?"
+
+"Quite useless, doctor," Gavin answered, promptly. "My mind is made up
+at last."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-One.
+
+NIGHT--MARGARET--FLASHING OF A LANTERN.
+
+
+That evening the little minister sat silently in his parlour. Darkness
+came, and with it weavers rose heavy-eyed from their looms, sleepy
+children sought their mothers, and the gate of the field above the
+manse fell forward to let cows pass to their byre; the great Bible was
+produced in many homes, and the ten o'clock bell clanged its last word
+to the night. Margaret had allowed the lamp to burn low. Thinking that
+her boy slept, she moved softly to his side and spread her shawl over
+his knees. He had forgotten her. The doctor's warnings scarcely
+troubled him. He was Babbie's lover. The mystery of her was only a
+veil hiding her from other men, and he was looking through it upon the
+face of his beloved.
+
+It was a night of long ago, but can you not see my dear Margaret still
+as she bends over her son? Not twice in many days dared the minister
+snatch a moment's sleep from grey morning to midnight, and, when this
+did happen, he jumped up by-and-by in shame, to revile himself for an
+idler and ask his mother wrathfully why she had not tumbled him out of
+his chair? To-night Margaret was divided between a desire to let him
+sleep and a fear of his self-reproach when he awoke; and so, perhaps,
+the tear fell that roused him.
+
+"I did not like to waken you," Margaret said, apprehensively. "You
+must have been very tired, Gavin?"
+
+"I was not sleeping, mother," he said, slowly. "I was only thinking."
+
+"Ah, Gavin, you never rise from your loom. It is hardly fair that your
+hands should be so full of other people's troubles."
+
+"They only fill one hand, mother; I carry the people's joys in the
+other hand, and that keeps me erect, like a woman between her pan and
+pitcher. I think the joys have outweighed the sorrows since we came
+here."
+
+"It has been all joy to me, Gavin, for you never tell me of the
+sorrows. An old woman has no right to be so happy."
+
+"Old woman, mother!" said Gavin. But his indignation was vain.
+Margaret was an old woman. I made her old before her time.
+
+"As for these terrible troubles," he went on, "I forget them the
+moment I enter the garden and see you at your window. And, maybe, I
+keep some of the joys from you as well as the troubles."
+
+Words about Babbie leaped to his mouth, but with an effort he
+restrained them. He must not tell his mother of her until Babbie of
+her free will had told him all there was to tell.
+
+"I have been a selfish woman, Gavin."
+
+"You selfish, mother!" Gavin said, smiling. "Tell me when you did not
+think of others before yourself?"
+
+"Always, Gavin. Has it not been selfishness to hope that you would
+never want to bring another mistress to the manse? Do you remember how
+angry you used to be in Glasgow when I said that you would marry some
+day?"
+
+"I remember," Gavin said, sadly.
+
+"Yes; you used to say, 'Don't speak of such a thing, mother, for the
+horrid thought of it is enough to drive all the Hebrew out of my
+head.' Was not that lightning just now?"
+
+"I did not see it. What a memory you have, mother, for all the boyish
+things I said."
+
+"I can't deny," Margaret admitted with a sigh, "that I liked to hear
+you speak in that way, though I knew you would go back on your word.
+You see, you have changed already."
+
+"How, mother?" asked Gavin, surprised.
+
+"You said just now that those were boyish speeches. Gavin, I can't
+understand the mothers who are glad to see their sons married; though
+I had a dozen I believe it would be a wrench to lose one of them. It
+would be different with daughters. You are laughing, Gavin!"
+
+"Yes, at your reference to daughters. Would you not have preferred me
+to be a girl?"
+
+"'Deed I would not," answered Margaret, with tremendous conviction.
+"Gavin, every woman on earth, be she rich or poor, good or bad, offers
+up one prayer about her firstborn, and that is, 'May he be a boy!'"
+
+"I think you are wrong, mother. The banker's wife told me that there
+is nothing for which she thanks the Lord so much as that all her
+children are girls."
+
+"May she be forgiven for that, Gavin!" exclaimed Margaret; "though she
+maybe did right to put the best face on her humiliation. No, no, there
+are many kinds of women in the world, but there never was one yet that
+didn't want to begin with a laddie. You can speculate about a boy so
+much more than about a girl. Gavin, what is it a woman thinks about
+the day her son is born? yes, and the day before too? She is picturing
+him a grown man, and a slip of a lassie taking him from her. Ay, that
+is where the lassies have their revenge on the mothers. I remember as
+if it were this morning a Harvie fishwife patting your head and asking
+who was your sweetheart, and I could never thole the woman again. We
+were at the door of the cottage, and I mind I gripped you up in my
+arms. You had on a tartan frock with a sash and diamond socks. When I
+look back, Gavin, it seems to me that you have shot up from that frock
+to manhood in a single hour."
+
+"There are not many mothers like you," Gavin said, laying his hand
+fondly on Margaret's shoulder.
+
+"There are many better mothers, but few such sons. It is easily seen
+why God could not afford me another. Gavin, I am sure that was
+lightning."
+
+"I think it was; but don't be alarmed, mother."
+
+"I am never frightened when you are with me."
+
+"And I always will be with you."
+
+"Ah, if you were married----"
+
+"Do you think," asked Gavin, indignantly, "that it would make any
+difference to you?"
+
+Margaret did not answer. She knew what a difference it would make.
+
+"Except," continued Gavin, with a man's obtuseness, "that you would
+have a daughter as well as a son to love you and take care of you."
+
+Margaret could have told him that men give themselves away needlessly
+who marry for the sake of their mother, but all she said was--
+
+"Gavin, I see you can speak more composedly of marrying now than you
+spoke a year ago. If I did not know better, I should think a Thrums
+young lady had got hold of you."
+
+It was a moment before Gavin replied; then he said, gaily--
+
+"Really, mother, the way the best of women speak of each other is
+lamentable. You say I should be better married, and then you take for
+granted that every marriageable woman in the neighbourhood is trying
+to kidnap me. I am sure you did not take my father by force in that
+way."
+
+He did not see that Margaret trembled at the mention of his father. He
+never knew that she was many times pining to lay her head upon his
+breast and tell him of me. Yet I cannot but believe that she always
+shook when Adam Dishart was spoken of between them. I cannot think
+that the long-cherishing of the secret which was hers and mine kept
+her face steady when that horror suddenly confronted her as now. Gavin
+would have suspected much had he ever suspected anything.
+
+"I know," Margaret said, courageously, "that you would be better
+married; but when it comes to selecting the woman I grow fearful. O
+Gavin!" she said, earnestly, "it is an awful thing to marry the wrong
+man!"
+
+Here in a moment had she revealed much, though far from all, and there
+must have been many such moments between them. But Gavin was thinking
+of his own affairs.
+
+"You mean the wrong woman, don't you, mother?" he said, and she
+hastened to agree. But it was the wrong man she meant.
+
+"The difficulty, I suppose, is to hit upon the right one?" Gavin said,
+blithely.
+
+"To know which is the right one in time," answered Margaret, solemnly.
+"But I am saying nothing against the young ladies of Thrums, Gavin.
+Though I have scarcely seen them, I know there are good women among
+them. Jean says----"
+
+"I believe, mother," Gavin interposed, reproachfully, "that you have
+been questioning Jean about them?"
+
+"Just because I was afraid--I mean because I fancied--you might be
+taking a liking to one of them."
+
+"And what is Jean's verdict?"
+
+"She says every one of them would jump at you, like a bird at a
+berry."
+
+"But the berry cannot be divided. How would Miss Pennycuick please
+you, mother?"
+
+"Gavin!" cried Margaret, in consternation, "you don't mean to----But
+you are laughing at me again."
+
+"Then there is the banker's daughter?"
+
+"I can't thole her."
+
+"Why, I question if you ever set eyes on her, mother."
+
+"Perhaps not, Gavin; but I have suspected her ever since she offered
+to become one of your tract distributors."
+
+"The doctor," said Gavin, not ill-pleased, "was saying that either of
+these ladies would suit me."
+
+"What business has he," asked Margaret, vindictively, "to put such
+thoughts into your head?"
+
+"But he only did as you are doing. Mother, I see you will never be
+satisfied without selecting the woman for me yourself."
+
+"Ay, Gavin," said Margaret, earnestly; "and I question if I should be
+satisfied even then. But I am sure I should be a better guide to you
+than Dr. McQueen is."
+
+"I am convinced of that. But I wonder what sort of woman would content
+you?"
+
+"Whoever pleased you, Gavin, would content me," Margaret ventured to
+maintain. "You would only take to a clever woman."
+
+"She must be nearly as clever as you, mother."
+
+"Hoots, Gavin," said Margaret, smiling, "I'm not to be caught with
+chaff. I am a stupid, ignorant woman."
+
+"Then I must look out for a stupid, ignorant woman, for that seems to
+be the kind I like," answered Gavin, of whom I may confess here
+something that has to be told sooner or later. It is this: he never
+realised that Babbie was a great deal cleverer than himself. Forgive
+him, you who read, if you have any tolerance for the creature, man.
+
+"She will be terribly learned in languages," pursued Margaret, "so
+that she may follow you in your studies, as I have never been able to
+do."
+
+"Your face has helped me more than Hebrew, mother," replied Gavin. "I
+will give her no marks for languages."
+
+"At any rate," Margaret insisted, "she must be a grand housekeeper,
+and very thrifty."
+
+"As for that," Gavin said, faltering a little, "one can't expect it of
+a mere girl."
+
+"I should expect it," maintained his mother.
+
+"No, no; but she would have you," said Gavin, happily, "to teach her
+housekeeping."
+
+"It would be a pleasant occupation to me, that," Margaret admitted.
+"And she would soon learn: she would be so proud of her position as
+mistress of a manse."
+
+"Perhaps," Gavin said, doubtfully. He had no doubt on the subject in
+his college days.
+
+"And we can take for granted," continued his mother, "that she is a
+lassie of fine character."
+
+"Of course," said Gavin, holding his head high, as if he thought the
+doctor might be watching him.
+
+"I have thought," Margaret went on, "that there was a great deal of
+wisdom in what you said at that last marriage in the manse, the one
+where, you remember, the best man and the bridesmaid joined hands
+instead of the bride and bridegroom."
+
+"What did I say?" asked the little minister, with misgivings.
+
+"That there was great danger when people married out of their own rank
+of life."
+
+"Oh--ah--well, of course, that would depend on circumstances."
+
+"They were wise words, Gavin. There was the sermon, too, that you
+preached a month or two ago against marrying into other denominations.
+Jean told me that it greatly impressed the congregation. It is a sad
+sight, as you said, to see an Auld Licht lassie changing her faith
+because her man belongs to the U. P.'s."
+
+"Did I say that?"
+
+"You did, and it so struck Jean that she told me she would rather be
+an old maid for life, 'the which,' she said, 'is a dismal prospect,'
+than marry out of the Auld Licht kirk."
+
+"Perhaps that was a rather narrow view I took, mother. After all, the
+fitting thing is that the wife should go with her husband; especially
+if it is he that is the Auld Licht."
+
+"I don't hold with narrowness myself, Gavin," Margaret said, with an
+effort, "and admit that there are many respectable persons in the
+other denominations. But though a weaver might take a wife from
+another kirk without much scandal, an Auld Licht minister's madam must
+be Auld Licht born and bred. The congregation would expect no less. I
+doubt if they would be sure of her if she came from some other Auld
+Licht kirk. 'Deed, though she came from our own kirk, I'm thinking the
+session would want to catechise her. Ay, and if all you tell me of
+Lang Tammas be true (for, as you know, I never spoke to him), I
+warrant he would catechise the session."
+
+"I would brook no interference from my session," said Gavin, knitting
+his brows, "and I do not consider it necessary that a minister's wife
+should have been brought up in his denomination. Of course she would
+join it. We must make allowance, mother, for the thousands of young
+women who live in places where there is no Auld Licht kirk."
+
+"You can pity them, Gavin," said Margaret, "without marrying them. A
+minister has his congregation to think of."
+
+"So the doctor says," interposed her son.
+
+"Then it was just like his presumption!" cried Margaret. "A minister
+should marry to please himself."
+
+"Decidedly he should," Gavin agreed, eagerly, "and the bounden duty of
+the congregation is to respect and honour his choice. If they forget
+that duty, his is to remind them of it."
+
+"Ah, well, Gavin," said Margaret, confidently, "your congregation are
+so fond of you that your choice would doubtless be theirs. Jean tells
+me that even Lang Tammas, though he is so obstinate, has a love for
+you passing the love of woman. These were her words. Jean is more
+sentimental than you might think."
+
+"I wish he would show his love," said Gavin, "by contradicting me less
+frequently."
+
+"You have Rob Dow to weigh against him."
+
+"No; I cannot make out what has come over Rob lately. He is drinking
+heavily again, and avoiding me. The lightning is becoming very
+vivid."
+
+"Yes, and I hear no thunder. There is another thing, Gavin. I am one
+of those that like to sit at home, but if you had a wife she would
+visit the congregation. A truly religious wife would be a great help
+to you."
+
+"Religious," Gavin repeated slowly. "Yes, but some people are
+religious without speaking of it. If a woman is good she is religious.
+A good woman who has been, let us say, foolishly brought up, only
+needs to be shown the right way to tread it. Mother, I question if any
+man, minister or layman, ever yet fell in love because the woman was
+thrifty, or clever, or went to church twice on Sabbath."
+
+"I believe that is true," Margaret said, "and I would not have it
+otherwise. But it is an awful thing, Gavin, as you said from the
+pulpit two weeks ago, to worship only at a beautiful face."
+
+"You think too much about what I say in the pulpit, mother," Gavin
+said, with a sigh, "though of course a man who fell in love merely
+with a face would be a contemptible creature. Yet I see that women do
+not understand how beauty affects a man."
+
+"Yes, yes, my boy--oh, indeed, they do," said Margaret, who on some
+matters knew far more than her son.
+
+Twelve o'clock struck, and she rose to go to bed, alarmed lest she
+should not waken early in the morning. "But I am afraid I shan't
+sleep," she said, "if that lightning continues."
+
+"It is harmless," Gavin answered, going to the window. He started back
+next moment, and crying, "Don't look out, mother," hastily pulled down
+the blind.
+
+"Why, Gavin," Margaret said in fear, "you look as if it had struck
+you."
+
+"Oh, no," Gavin answered, with a forced laugh, and he lit her lamp for
+her.
+
+But it had struck him, though it was not lightning. It was the
+flashing of a lantern against the window to attract his attention, and
+the holder of the lantern was Babbie.
+
+"Good-night, mother."
+
+"Good-night, Gavin. Don't sit up any later."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Two.
+
+LOVERS.
+
+
+Only something terrible, Gavin thought, could have brought Babbie to
+him at such an hour; yet when he left his mother's room it was to
+stand motionless on the stair, waiting for a silence in the manse that
+would not come. A house is never still in darkness to those who listen
+intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand
+presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created
+when the first man woke in the night.
+
+Now Margaret slept. Two hours earlier, Jean, sitting on the
+salt-bucket, had read the chapter with which she always sent herself
+to bed. In honour of the little minister she had begun her Bible
+afresh when he came to Thrums, and was progressing through it, a
+chapter at night, sighing, perhaps, on washing days at a long chapter,
+such as Exodus twelfth, but never making two of it. The kitchen
+wag-at-the-wall clock was telling every room in the house that she had
+neglected to shut her door. As Gavin felt his way down the dark stair,
+awakening it into protest at every step, he had a glimpse of the
+pendulum's shadow running back and forward on the hearth; he started
+back from another shadow on the lobby wall, and then seeing it start
+too, knew it for his own. He opened the door and passed out
+unobserved; it was as if the sounds and shadows that filled the manse
+were too occupied with their game to mind an interloper.
+
+"Is that you?" he said to a bush, for the garden was in semi-darkness.
+Then the lantern's flash met him, and he saw the Egyptian in the
+summer-seat.
+
+"At last!" she said, reproachfully. "Evidently a lantern is a poor
+door-bell."
+
+"What is it?" Gavin asked, in suppressed excitement, for the least he
+expected to hear was that she was again being pursued for her share in
+the riot. The tremor in his voice surprised her into silence, and he
+thought she faltered because what she had to tell him was so woeful.
+So, in the darkness of the summer-seat, he kissed her, and she might
+have known that with that kiss the little minister was hers forever.
+
+Now Babbie had been kissed before, but never thus, and she turned from
+Gavin, and would have liked to be alone, for she had begun to know
+what love was, and the flash that revealed it to her laid bare her own
+shame, so that her impulse was to hide herself from her lover. But of
+all this Gavin was unconscious, and he repeated his question. The
+lantern was swaying in her hand, and when she turned fearfully to him
+its light fell on his face, and she saw how alarmed he was.
+
+"I am going away back to Nanny's," she said suddenly, and rose cowed,
+but he took her hand and held her.
+
+"Babbie," he said, huskily, "tell me what has happened to bring you
+here at this hour."
+
+She sought to pull her hand from him, but could not.
+
+"How you are trembling!" he whispered. "Babbie," he cried, "something
+terrible has happened to you, but do not fear. Tell me what it is, and
+then--then I will take you to my mother: yes, I will take you now."
+
+The Egyptian would have given all she had in the world to be able to
+fly from him then, that he might never know her as she was, but it
+could not be, and so she spoke out remorselessly. If her voice had
+become hard, it was a new-born scorn of herself that made it so.
+
+"You are needlessly alarmed," she said; "I am not at all the kind of
+person who deserves sympathy or expects it. There is nothing wrong. I
+am staying with Nanny over-night, and only came to Thrums to amuse
+myself. I chased your policeman down the Roods with my lantern, and
+then came here to amuse myself with you. That is all."
+
+"It was nothing but a love of mischief that brought you here?" Gavin
+asked, sternly, after an unpleasant pause.
+
+"Nothing," the Egyptian answered, recklessly.
+
+"I could not have believed this of you," the minister said; "I am
+ashamed of you."
+
+"I thought," Babbie retorted, trying to speak lightly until she could
+get away from him, "that you would be glad to see me. Your last words
+in Caddam seemed to justify that idea."
+
+"I am very sorry to see you," he answered, reproachfully.
+
+"Then I will go away at once," she said, stepping out of the
+summer-seat.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "you must go at once."
+
+"Then I won't," she said, turning back defiantly. "I know what you are
+to say: that the Thrums people would be shocked if they knew I was
+here; as if I cared what the Thrums people think of me."
+
+"I care what they think of you," Gavin said, as if that were decisive,
+"and I tell you I will not allow you to repeat this freak."
+
+"You 'will not allow me,'" echoed Babbie, almost enjoying herself,
+despite her sudden loss of self-respect.
+
+"I will not," Gavin said, resolutely. "Henceforth you must do as I
+think fit."
+
+"Since when have you taken command of me?" demanded Babbie.
+
+"Since a minute ago," Gavin replied, "when you let me kiss you."
+
+"Let you!" exclaimed Babbie, now justly incensed. "You did it
+yourself. I was very angry."
+
+"No, you were not."
+
+"I am not allowed to say that even?" asked the Egyptian. "Tell me
+something I may say, then, and I will repeat it after you."
+
+"I have something to say to you," Gavin told her, after a moment's
+reflection; "yes, and there is something I should like to hear you
+repeat after me, but not to-night."
+
+"I don't want to hear what it is," Babbie said, quickly, but she knew
+what it was, and even then, despite the new pain at her heart, her
+bosom swelled with pride because this man still loved her. Now she
+wanted to run away with his love for her before he could take it from
+her, and then realising that this parting must be forever, a great
+desire filled her to hear him put that kiss into words, and she said,
+faltering:
+
+"You can tell me what it is if you like."
+
+"Not to-night," said Gavin.
+
+"To-night, if at all," the gypsy almost entreated.
+
+"To-morrow, at Nanny's," answered Gavin, decisively: and this time he
+remembered without dismay that the morrow was the Sabbath.
+
+In the fairy tale the beast suddenly drops his skin and is a prince,
+and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some such change had come over
+this man, her plaything.
+
+"Your lantern is shining on my mother's window," were the words that
+woke her from this discovery, and then she found herself yielding the
+lantern to him. She became conscious vaguely that a corresponding
+change was taking place in herself.
+
+"You spoke of taking me to your mother," she said, bitterly.
+
+"Yes," he answered at once, "to-morrow"; but she shook her head,
+knowing that to-morrow he would be wiser.
+
+"Give me the lantern," she said, in a low voice, "I am going back to
+Nanny's now."
+
+"Yes," he said, "we must set out now, but I can carry the lantern."
+
+"You are not coming with me!" she exclaimed, shaking herself free of
+his hand.
+
+"I am coming," he replied, calmly, though he was not calm. "Take my
+arm, Babbie."
+
+She made a last effort to free herself from bondage, crying
+passionately, "I will not let you come."
+
+"When I say I am coming," Gavin answered between his teeth, "I mean
+that I am coming, and so let that be an end of this folly. Take my
+arm."
+
+"I think I hate you," she said, retreating from him.
+
+"Take my arm," he repeated, and, though her breast was rising
+rebelliously, she did as he ordered, and so he escorted her from the
+garden. At the foot of the field she stopped, and thought to frighten
+him by saying, "What would the people say if they saw you with me
+now?"
+
+"It does not much matter what they would say," he answered, still
+keeping his teeth together as if doubtful of their courage. "As for
+what they would do, that is certain; they would put me out of my
+church."
+
+"And it is dear to you?"
+
+"Dearer than life."
+
+"You told me long ago that your mother's heart would break if----"
+
+"Yes, I am sure it would."
+
+They had begun to climb the fields, but she stopped him with a jerk.
+
+"Go back, Mr. Dishart," she implored, clutching his arm with both
+hands. "You make me very unhappy for no purpose. Oh, why should you
+risk so much for me?"
+
+"I cannot have you wandering here alone at midnight," Gavin answered,
+gently.
+
+"That is nothing to me," she said, eagerly, but no longer resenting
+his air of proprietorship.
+
+"You will never do it again if I can prevent it."
+
+"But you cannot," she said, sadly. "Oh, yes, you can, Mr. Dishart. If
+you will turn back now I shall promise never to do anything again
+without first asking myself whether it would seem right to you. I know
+I acted very wrongly to-night."
+
+"Only thoughtlessly," he said.
+
+"Then have pity on me," she besought him, "and go back. If I have only
+been thoughtless, how can you punish me thus? Mr. Dishart," she
+entreated, her voice breaking, "if you were to suffer for this folly
+of mine, do you think I could live?"
+
+"We are in God's hands, dear," he answered, firmly, and he again drew
+her arm to him. So they climbed the first field, and were almost at
+the hill before either spoke again.
+
+"Stop," Babbie whispered, crouching as she spoke; "I see some one
+crossing the hill."
+
+"I have seen him for some time," Gavin answered, quietly; "but I am
+doing no wrong, and I will not hide."
+
+The Egyptian had to walk on with him, and I suppose she did not think
+the less of him for that. Yet she said, warningly--
+
+"If he sees you, all Thrums will be in an uproar before morning."
+
+"I cannot help that," Gavin replied. "It is the will of God."
+
+"To ruin you for my sins?"
+
+"If He thinks fit."
+
+The figure drew nearer, and with every step Babbie's distress
+doubled.
+
+"We are walking straight to him," she whispered. "I implore you to
+wait here until he passes, if not for your own sake, for your
+mother's."
+
+At that he wavered, and she heard his teeth sliding against each
+other, as if he could no longer clench them.
+
+"But, no," he said moving on again, "I will not be a skulker from any
+man. If it be God's wish that I should suffer for this, I must
+suffer."
+
+"Oh, why," cried Babbie, beating her hands together in grief, "should
+you suffer for me?"
+
+"You are mine," Gavin answered. Babbie gasped. "And if you act
+foolishly," he continued, "it is right that I should bear the brunt of
+it. No, I will not let you go on alone; you are not fit to be alone.
+You need some one to watch over you and care for you and love you,
+and, if need be, to suffer with you."
+
+"Turn back, dear, before he sees us."
+
+"He has seen us."
+
+Yes, I had seen them, for the figure on the hill was no other than the
+dominie of Glen Quharity. The park gate clicked as it swung to, and I
+looked up and saw Gavin and the Egyptian. My eyes should have found
+them sooner, but it was to gaze upon Margaret's home, while no one saw
+me, that I had trudged into Thrums so late, and by that time, I
+suppose, my eyes were of little service for seeing through. Yet, when
+I knew that of these two people suddenly beside me on the hill one was
+the little minister and the other a strange woman, I fell back from
+their side with dread before I could step forward and cry "Gavin!"
+
+"I am Mr. Dishart," he answered, with a composure that would not have
+served him for another sentence. He was more excited than I, for the
+"Gavin" fell harmlessly on him, while I had no sooner uttered it than
+there rushed through me the shame of being false to Margaret. It was
+the only time in my life that I forgot her in him, though he has ever
+stood next to her in my regard.
+
+I looked from Gavin to the gypsy woman, and again from her to him, and
+she began to tell a lie in his interest. But she got no farther than
+"I met Mr. Dishart accid----" when she stopped, ashamed. It was
+reverence for Gavin that checked the lie. Not every man has had such a
+compliment paid him.
+
+"It is natural," Gavin said, slowly, "that you, sir, should wonder why
+I am here with this woman at such an hour, and you may know me so
+little as to think ill of me for it."
+
+I did not answer, and he misunderstood my silence.
+
+"No," he continued, in a harder voice, as if I had asked him a
+question, "I will explain nothing to you. You are not my judge. If you
+would do me harm, sir, you have it in your power."
+
+It was with these cruel words that Gavin addressed me. He did not know
+how cruel they were. The Egyptian, I think, must have seen that his
+suspicions hurt me, for she said, softly, with a look of appeal in her
+eyes--
+
+"You are the schoolmaster in Glen Quharity? Then you will perhaps save
+Mr. Dishart the trouble of coming farther by showing me the way to old
+Nanny Webster's house at Windyghoul?"
+
+"I have to pass the house at any rate," I answered eagerly, and she
+came quickly to my side.
+
+I knew, though in the darkness I could see but vaguely, that Gavin was
+holding his head high and waiting for me to say my worst. I had not
+told him that I dared think no evil of him, and he still suspected me.
+Now I would not trust myself to speak lest I should betray Margaret,
+and yet I wanted him to know that base doubts about him could never
+find a shelter in me. I am a timid man who long ago lost the glory of
+my life by it, and I was again timid when I sought to let Gavin see
+that my faith in him was unshaken. I lifted my bonnet to the gypsy,
+and asked her to take my arm. It was done clumsily, I cannot doubt,
+but he read my meaning and held out his hand to me. I had not touched
+it since he was three years old, and I trembled too much to give it
+the grasp I owed it. He and I parted without a word, but to the
+Egyptian he said, "To-morrow, dear, I will see you at Nanny's," and he
+was to kiss her, but I pulled her a step farther from him, and she put
+her hands over her face, crying, "No, no!"
+
+If I asked her some questions between the hill and Windyghoul you must
+not blame me, for this was my affair as well as theirs. She did not
+answer me; I know now that she did not hear me. But at the mud house
+she looked abruptly into my face, and said--
+
+"You love him, too!"
+
+I trudged to the school house with these words for company, and it was
+less her discovery than her confession that tortured me. How much I
+slept that night you may guess.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Three.
+
+CONTAINS A BIRTH, WHICH IS SUFFICIENT FOR ONE CHAPTER.
+
+
+"The kirk bell will soon be ringing," Nanny said on the following
+morning, as she placed herself carefully on a stool, one hand holding
+her Bible and the other wandering complacently over her aged merino
+gown. "Ay, lassie, though you're only an Egyptian I would hae ta'en
+you wi' me to hear Mr. Duthie, but it's speiring ower muckle o' a
+woman to expect her to gang to the kirk in her ilka day claethes."
+
+The Babbie of yesterday would have laughed at this, but the new Babbie
+sighed.
+
+"I wonder you don't go to Mr. Dishart's church now, Nanny," she said,
+gently. "I am sure you prefer him."
+
+"Babbie, Babbie," exclaimed Nanny, with spirit, "may I never be so far
+left to mysel' as to change my kirk just because I like another
+minister better! It's easy seen, lassie, that you ken little o'
+religious questions."
+
+"Very little," Babbie admitted, sadly.
+
+"But dinna be so waeful about it," the old woman continued, kindly,
+"for that's no nane like you. Ay, and if you see muckle mair o' Mr.
+Dishart he'll soon cure your ignorance."
+
+"I shall not see much more of him," Babbie answered, with averted
+head.
+
+"The like o' you couldna expect it," Nanny said, simply, whereupon
+Babbie went to the window. "I had better be stepping," Nanny said,
+rising, "for I am aye late unless I'm on the hill by the time the
+bell begins. Ay, Babbie, I'm doubting my merino's no sair in the
+fashion?"
+
+She looked down at her dress half despondently, and yet with some
+pride.
+
+"It was fowerpence the yard, and no less," she went on, fondling the
+worn merino, "when we bocht it at Sam'l Curr's. Ay, but it has been
+turned sax times since syne."
+
+She sighed, and Babbie came to her and put her arms round her, saying,
+"Nanny, you are a dear."
+
+"I'm a gey auld-farrant-looking dear, I doubt," said Nanny, ruefully.
+
+"Now, Nanny," rejoined Babbie, "you are just wanting me to flatter
+you. You know the merino looks very nice."
+
+"It's a guid merino yet," admitted the old woman, "but, oh, Babbie,
+what does the material matter if the cut isna fashionable? It's fine,
+isn't it, to be in the fashion?"
+
+She spoke so wistfully that, instead of smiling, Babbie kissed her.
+
+"I am afraid to lay hand on the merino, Nanny, but give me off your
+bonnet and I'll make it ten years younger in as many minutes."
+
+"Could you?" asked Nanny, eagerly, unloosening her bonnet-strings.
+"Mercy on me!" she had to add; "to think about altering bonnets on the
+Sabbath-day! Lassie, how could you propose sic a thing?"
+
+"Forgive me, Nanny," Babbie replied, so meekly that the old woman
+looked at her curiously.
+
+[Illustration: "IT'S A GUID MERINO YET."]
+
+"I dinna understand what has come ower you," she said. "There's an
+unca difference in you since last nicht. I used to think you were mair
+like a bird than a lassie, but you've lost a' your daft capers o'
+singing and lauching, and I take ill wi't. Twa or three times I've
+catched you greeting. Babbie, what has come ower you?"
+
+"Nothing, Nanny. I think I hear the bell."
+
+Down in Thrums two kirk-officers had let their bells loose, waking
+echoes in Windyghoul as one dog in country parts sets all the others
+barking, but Nanny did not hurry off to church. Such a surprising
+notion had filled her head suddenly that she even forgot to hold her
+dress off the floor.
+
+"Babbie," she cried, in consternation, "dinna tell me you've gotten
+ower fond o' Mr. Dishart."
+
+"The like of me, Nanny!" the gypsy answered, with affected raillery,
+but there was a tear in her eye.
+
+"It would be a wild, presumptious thing," Nanny said, "and him a grand
+minister, but----"
+
+Babbie tried to look her in the face, but failed, and then all at once
+there came back to Nanny the days when she and her lover wandered the
+hill together.
+
+"Ah, my dawtie," she cried, so tenderly, "what does it matter wha he
+is when you canna help it!"
+
+Two frail arms went round the Egyptian, and Babbie rested her head on
+the old woman's breast. But do you think it could have happened had
+not Nanny loved a weaver two-score years before?
+
+And now Nanny has set off for church and Babbie is alone in the mud
+house. Some will pity her not at all, this girl who was a dozen women
+in the hour, and all made of impulses that would scarce stand still to
+be photographed. To attempt to picture her at any time until now would
+have been like chasing a spirit that changes to something else as your
+arms clasp it; yet she has always seemed a pathetic little figure to
+me. If I understand Babbie at all, it is, I think, because I loved
+Margaret, the only woman I have ever known well, and one whose nature
+was not, like the Egyptian's, complex, but most simple, as if God had
+told her only to be good. Throughout my life since she came into it
+she has been to me a glass in which many things are revealed that I
+could not have learned save through her, and something of all
+womankind, even of bewildering Babbie, I seem to know because I knew
+Margaret.
+
+No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart thrills to
+love, for then God has her by the hand. There is no love but this.
+She may dream of what love is, but it is only of a sudden that she
+knows. Babbie, who was without a guide from her baby days, had
+dreamed but little of it, hearing its name given to another thing.
+She had been born wild and known no home; no one had touched her
+heart except to strike it, she had been educated, but never tamed;
+her life had been thrown strangely among those who were great in the
+world's possessions, but she was not of them. Her soul was in such
+darkness that she had never seen it; she would have danced away
+cynically from the belief that there is such a thing, and now all at
+once she had passed from disbelief to knowledge. Is not love God's
+doing? To Gavin He had given something of Himself, and the moment she
+saw it the flash lit her own soul.
+
+It was but little of his Master that was in Gavin, but far smaller
+things have changed the current of human lives; the spider's thread
+that strikes our brow on a country road may do that. Yet this I will
+say, though I have no wish to cast the little minister on my pages
+larger than he was, that he had some heroic hours in Thrums, of which
+one was when Babbie learned to love him. Until the moment when he
+kissed her she had only conceived him a quaint fellow whose life was a
+string of Sundays, but behold what she saw in him now. Evidently to
+his noble mind her mystery was only some misfortune, not of her
+making, and his was to be the part of leading her away from it into
+the happiness of the open life. He did not doubt her, for he loved,
+and to doubt is to dip love in the mire. She had been given to him by
+God, and he was so rich in her possession that the responsibility
+attached to the gift was not grievous. She was his, and no mortal man
+could part them. Those who looked askance at her were looking askance
+at him; in so far as she was wayward and wild, he was those things; so
+long as she remained strange to religion, the blame lay on him.
+
+All this Babbie read in the Gavin of the past night, and to her it was
+the book of love. What things she had known, said and done in that
+holy name! How shamefully have we all besmirched it! She had only
+known it as the most selfish of the passions, a brittle image that men
+consulted because it could only answer in the words they gave it to
+say. But here was a man to whom love was something better than his own
+desires leering on a pedestal. Such love as Babbie had seen hitherto
+made strong men weak, but this was a love that made a weak man strong.
+All her life, strength had been her idol, and the weakness that bent
+to her cajolery her scorn. But only now was it revealed to her that
+strength, instead of being the lusty child of passions, grows by
+grappling with and throwing them.
+
+So Babbie loved the little minister for the best that she had ever
+seen in man. I shall be told that she thought far more of him than he
+deserved, forgetting the mean in the worthy: but who that has had a
+glimpse of heaven will care to let his mind dwell henceforth on earth?
+Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye,
+which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to
+see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.
+
+Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon Gavin preached a sermon in
+praise of Woman, and up in the mudhouse in Windyghoul Babbie sat
+alone. But it was the Sabbath day to her: the first Sabbath in her
+life. Her discovery had frozen her mind for a time, so that she could
+only stare at it with eyes that would not shut; but that had been in
+the night. Already her love seemed a thing of years, for it was as old
+as herself, as old as the new Babbie. It was such a dear delight that
+she clasped it to her, and exulted over it because it was hers, and
+then she cried over it because she must give it up.
+
+For Babbie must only look at this love and then turn from it. My heart
+aches for the little Egyptian, but the Promised Land would have
+remained invisible to her had she not realized that it was only for
+others. That was the condition of her seeing.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Four.
+
+THE NEW WORLD, AND THE WOMAN WHO MAY NOT DWELL THEREIN.
+
+
+Up here in the glen school-house after my pupils have straggled home,
+there comes to me at times, and so sudden that it may be while I am
+infusing my tea, a hot desire to write great books. Perhaps an hour
+afterwards I rise, beaten, from my desk, flinging all I have written
+into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on second thought), and curse
+myself as an ingle-nook man, for I see that one can only paint what he
+himself has felt, and in my passion I wish to have all the vices, even
+to being an impious man, that I may describe them better. For this may
+I be pardoned. It comes to nothing in the end, save that my tea is
+brackish.
+
+Yet though my solitary life in the glen is cheating me of many
+experiences, more helpful to a writer than to a Christian, it has not
+been so tame but that I can understand why Babbie cried when she went
+into Nanny's garden and saw the new world. Let no one who loves be
+called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow, and
+Babbie knew that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff
+berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to Love and sees
+him looking for her, and knows she must shrink from the arms she would
+lie in, and only call to him in a voice he cannot hear. This is not a
+love that is always bitter. It grows sweet with age. But could that
+dry the tears of the little Egyptian, who had only been a woman for a
+day?
+
+Much was still dark to her. Of one obstacle that must keep her and
+Gavin ever apart she knew, and he did not; but had it been removed she
+would have given herself to him humbly, not in her own longing, but
+because he wanted her. "Behold what I am," she could have said to him
+then, and left the rest to him, believing that her unworthiness would
+not drag him down, it would lose itself so readily in his strength.
+That Thrums could rise against such a man if he defied it, she did not
+believe; but she was to learn the truth presently from a child.
+
+To most of us, I suppose, has come some shock that was to make us
+different men from that hour, and yet, how many days elapsed before
+something of the man we had been leapt up in us? Babbie thought she
+had buried her old impulsiveness, and then remembering that from the
+top of the field she might see Gavin returning from church, she
+hastened to the hill to look upon him from a distance. Before she
+reached the gate where I had met her and him, however, she stopped,
+distressed at her selfishness, and asked bitterly, "Why am I so
+different from other women; why should what is so easy to them be so
+hard to me?"
+
+"Gavin, my beloved!" the Egyptian cried in her agony, and the wind
+caught her words and flung them in the air, making sport of her.
+
+She wandered westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a
+great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and
+muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys--a kind of
+horse--and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery
+dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies
+dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in the dyke
+that separates the hill from a fir wood, and it is the fairy-book of
+Thrums. If you would be a knight yourself, you must sit on it and
+whisper to it your desire.
+
+Babbie came to the Standing Stone, and there was a little boy astride
+it. His hair stood up through holes in his bonnet, and he was very
+ragged and miserable.
+
+"Why are you crying, little boy?" Babbie asked him, gently; but he did
+not look up, and the tongue was strange to him.
+
+"How are you greeting so sair?" she asked.
+
+"I'm no greeting very sair," he answered, turning his head from her
+that a woman might not see his tears. "I'm no greeting so sair but
+what I grat sairer when my mither died."
+
+"When did she die?" Babbie inquired.
+
+"Lang syne," he answered, still with averted face.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Micah is my name. Rob Dow's my father."
+
+"And have you no brothers nor sisters?" asked Babbie, with a
+fellow-feeling for him.
+
+"No, juist my father," he said.
+
+"You should be the better laddie to him then. Did your mither no tell
+you to be that afore she died?"
+
+"Ay," he answered, "she telled me ay to hide the bottle frae him when
+I could get haed o't. She took me into the bed to make me promise
+that, and syne she died."
+
+"Does your father drina?"
+
+"He hauds mair than ony other man in Thrums," Micah replied, almost
+proudly.
+
+"And he strikes you?" Babbie asked, compassionately.
+
+"That's a lie," retorted the boy, fiercely. "Leastwise, he doesna
+strike me except when he's mortal, and syne I can jouk him."
+
+"What are you doing there?"
+
+"I'm wishing. It's a wishing stane."
+
+"You are wishing your father wouldna drink."
+
+"No, I'm no," answered Micah. "There was a lang time he didna drink,
+but the woman has sent him to it again. It's about her I'm wishing.
+I'm wishing she was in hell."
+
+"What woman is it?" asked Babbie, shuddering.
+
+"I dinna ken," Micah said, "but she's an ill ane."
+
+"Did you never see her at your father's house?"
+
+"Na; if he could get grip o' her he would break her ower his knee. I
+hearken to him saying that, when he's wild. He says she should be
+burned for a witch."
+
+"But if he hates her," asked Babbie, "how can she have sic power ower
+him?"
+
+"It's no him that she has haud o'," replied Micah, still looking away
+from her.
+
+"Wha is it then?"
+
+"It's Mr. Dishart."
+
+Babbie was struck as if by an arrow from the wood. It was so
+unexpected that she gave a cry, and then for the first time Micah
+looked at her.
+
+"How should that send your father to the drink?" she asked, with an
+effort.
+
+"Because my father's michty fond o' him," answered Micah, staring
+strangely at her; "and when the folk ken about the woman, they'll
+stane the minister out o' Thrums."
+
+The wood faded for a moment from the Egyptian's sight. When it came
+back, the boy had slid off the Standing Stone and was stealing away.
+
+"Why do you run frae me?" Babbie asked, pathetically.
+
+"I'm fleid at you," he gasped, coming to a standstill at a safe
+distance: "you're the woman!"
+
+Babbie cowered before her little judge, and he drew nearer her
+slowly.
+
+"What makes you think that?" she said.
+
+It was a curious time for Babbie's beauty to be paid its most princely
+compliment.
+
+[Illustration: "I'M WISHING SHE WAS IN HELL."]
+
+"Because you're so bonny," Micah whispered across the dyke. Her tears
+gave him courage. "You micht gang awa," he entreated. "If you kent
+what a differ Mr. Dishart made in my father till you came, you
+would maybe gang awa. When he's roaring fou I have to sleep in the
+wood, and it's awfu' cauld. I'm doubting he'll kill me, woman, if you
+dinna gang awa."
+
+Poor Babbie put her hand to her heart, but the innocent lad continued
+mercilessly--
+
+"If ony shame comes to the minister, his auld mither'll die. How have
+you sic an ill will at the minister?"
+
+Babbie held up her hands like a supplicant.
+
+"I'll gie you my rabbit," Micah said, "if you'll gang awa. I've juist
+the ane." She shook her head, and, misunderstanding her, he cried,
+with his knuckles in his eye, "I'll gie you them baith, though I'm
+michty sweer to part wi' Spotty."
+
+Then at last Babbie found her voice.
+
+"Keep your rabbits, laddie," she said, "and greet no more. I'm gaen
+awa."
+
+"And you'll never come back no more a' your life?" pleaded Micah.
+
+"Never no more a' my life," repeated Babbie.
+
+"And ye'll leave the minister alane for ever and ever?"
+
+"For ever and ever."
+
+Micah rubbed his face dry, and said, "Will you let me stand on the
+Standing Stane and watch you gaen awa for ever and ever?"
+
+At that a sob broke from Babbie's heart, and looking at her doubtfully
+Micah said--
+
+"Maybe you're gey ill for what you've done?"
+
+"Ay," Babbie answered, "I'm gey ill for what I've done."
+
+A minute passed, and in her anguish she did not know that still she
+was standing at the dyke. Micah's voice roused her:
+
+"You said you would gang awa, and you're no gaen."
+
+Then Babbie went away. The boy watched her across the hill. He climbed
+the Standing Stone and gazed after her until she was but a coloured
+ribbon among the broom. When she disappeared into Windyghoul he ran
+home joyfully, and told his father what a good day's work he had done.
+Rob struck him for a fool for taking a gypsy's word, and warned him
+against speaking of the woman in Thrums.
+
+[Illustration: "ROB STRUCK HIM FOR A FOOL FOR TAKING A GYPSY'S WORD."]
+
+But though Dow believed that Gavin continued to meet the Egyptian
+secretly, he was wrong. A sum of money for Nanny was sent to the
+minister, but he could guess only from whom it came. In vain did he
+search for Babbie. Some months passed and he gave up the search,
+persuaded that he should see her no more. He went about his duties
+with a drawn face that made many folk uneasy when it was stern, and
+pained them when it tried to smile. But to Margaret, though the effort
+was terrible, he was as he had ever been, and so no thought of a woman
+crossed her loving breast.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Five.
+
+BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+I can tell still how the whole of the glen was engaged about the hour
+of noon on the fourth of August month; a day to be among the last
+forgotten by any of us, though it began as quietly as a roaring March.
+At the Spittal, between which and Thrums this is a halfway house, were
+gathered two hundred men in kilts, and many gentry from the
+neighboring glens, to celebrate the earl's marriage, which was to take
+place on the morrow, and thither, too, had gone many of my pupils to
+gather gossip, at which girls of six are trustier hands than boys of
+twelve. Those of us, however, who were neither children nor of gentle
+blood, remained at home, the farmers more taken up with the want of
+rain, now become a calamity, than with an old man's wedding, and their
+womenfolk wringing their hands for rain also, yet finding time to
+marvel at the marriage's taking place at the Spittal instead of in
+England, of which the ignorant spoke vaguely as an estate of the
+bride's.
+
+For my own part I could talk of the disastrous drought with Waster
+Lunny as I walked over his parched fields, but I had not such cause as
+he to brood upon it by day and night; and the ins and outs of the
+earl's marriage were for discussing at a tea-table, where there were
+women to help one to conclusions, rather than for the reflections of a
+solitary dominie, who had seen neither bride nor bridegroom. So it
+must be confessed that when I might have been regarding the sky
+moodily, or at the Spittal, where a free table that day invited all,
+I was sitting in the school-house, heeling my left boot, on which I
+have always been a little hard.
+
+I made small speed, not through lack of craft, but because one can no
+more drive in tackets properly than take cities unless he gives his
+whole mind to it; and half of mine was at the Auld Licht manse. Since
+our meeting six months earlier on the hill I had not seen Gavin, but I
+had heard much of him, and of a kind to trouble me.
+
+"I saw nothing queer about Mr. Dishart," was Waster Lunny's frequent
+story, "till I hearkened to Elspeth speaking about it to the lasses
+(for I'm the last Elspeth would tell onything to, though I'm her man),
+and syne I minded I had been noticing it for months. Elspeth says," he
+would go on, for he could no more forbear quoting his wife than
+complaining of her, "that the minister'll listen to you nowadays wi'
+his een glaring at you as if he had a perfectly passionate interest in
+what you were telling him (though it may be only about a hen wi' the
+croup), and then, after all, he hasna heard a sylib. Ay, I listened to
+Elspeth saying that, when she thocht I was at the byre, and yet, would
+you believe it, when I says to her after lousing time, 'I've been
+noticing of late that the minister loses what a body tells him,' all
+she answers is 'Havers.' Tod, but women's provoking."
+
+"I allow," Birse said, "that on the first Sabbath o' June month, and
+again on the third Sabbath, he poured out the Word grandly, but I've
+ta'en note this curran Sabbaths that if he's no michty magnificent
+he's michty poor. There's something damming up his mind, and when he
+gets by it he's a roaring water, but when he doesna he's a despizable
+trickle. The folk thinks it's a woman that's getting in his way, but
+dinna tell me that about sic a scholar; I tell you he would gang ower
+a toon o' women like a loaded cart ower new-laid stanes."
+
+Wearyworld hobbled after me up the Roods one day, pelting me with
+remarks, though I was doing my best to get away from him. "Even Rob
+Dow sees there's something come ower the minister," he bawled, "for
+Rob's fou ilka Sabbath now. Ay, but this I will say for Mr. Dishart,
+that he aye gies me a civil word," I thought I had left the policeman
+behind with this, but next minute he roared, "And whatever is the
+matter wi' him it has made him kindlier to me than ever." He must have
+taken the short cut through Lunan's close, for at the top of the Roods
+his voice again made up on me. "Dagone you, for a cruel pack to put
+your fingers to your lugs ilka time I open my mouth."
+
+As for Waster Lunny's daughter Easie, who got her schooling free for
+redding up the school-house and breaking my furniture, she would never
+have been off the gossip about the minister, for she was her mother in
+miniature, with a tongue that ran like a pump after the pans are full,
+not for use but for the mere pleasure of spilling.
+
+On that awful fourth of August I not only had all this confused talk
+in my head but reason for jumping my mind between it and the Egyptian
+(as if to catch them together unawares), and I was like one who, with
+the mechanism of a watch jumbled in his hand, could set it going if he
+had the art.
+
+Of the gypsy I knew nothing save what I had seen that night, yet
+what more was there to learn? I was aware that she loved Gavin and
+that he loved her. A moment had shown it to me. Now with the Auld
+Lichts, I have the smith's acquaintance with his irons, and so I
+could not believe that they would suffer their minister to marry a
+vagrant. Had it not been for this knowledge, which made me fearful
+for Margaret, I would have done nothing to keep these two young people
+apart. Some to whom I have said this maintain that the Egyptian
+turned my head at our first meeting. Such an argument is not perhaps
+worth controverting. I admit that even now I straighten under the
+fire of a bright eye, as a pensioner may salute when he sees a
+young officer. In the shooting season, should I chance to be leaning
+over my dyke while English sportsmen pass (as is usually the case
+if I have seen them approaching), I remember nought of them save that
+they call me "she," and end their greetings with "whatever" (which
+Waster Lunny takes to be a southron mode of speech), but their
+ladies dwell pleasantly in my memory, from their engaging faces to
+the pretty crumpled thing dangling on their arms, that is a hat or a
+basket, I am seldom sure which. The Egyptian's beauty, therefore,
+was a gladsome sight to me, and none the less so that I had come
+upon it as unexpectedly as some men step into a bog. Had she been
+alone when I met her I cannot deny that I would have been content to
+look on her face, without caring what was inside it; but she was
+with her lover, and that lover was Gavin, and so her face was to me
+as little for admiring as this glen in a thunderstorm, when I know
+that some fellow-creature is lost on the hills.
+
+If, however, it was no quick liking for the gypsy that almost tempted
+me to leave these two lovers to each other, what was it? It was the
+warning of my own life. Adam Dishart had torn my arm from Margaret's,
+and I had not recovered the wrench in eighteen years. Rather than act
+his part between these two I felt tempted to tell them, "Deplorable as
+the result may be, if you who are a minister marry this vagabond, it
+will be still more deplorable if you do not."
+
+But there was Margaret to consider, and at thought of her I cursed the
+Egyptian aloud. What could I do to keep Gavin and the woman apart? I
+could tell him the secret of his mother's life. Would that be
+sufficient? It would if he loved Margaret, as I did not doubt. Pity
+for her would make him undergo any torture rather than she should
+suffer again. But to divulge our old connection would entail her
+discovery of me, and I questioned if even the saving of Gavin could
+destroy the bitterness of that.
+
+I might appeal to the Egyptian. I might tell her even what I shuddered
+to tell him. She cared for him, I was sure, well enough to have the
+courage to give him up. But where was I to find her?
+
+Were she and Gavin meeting still? Perhaps the change which had come
+over the little minister meant that they had parted. Yet what I had
+heard him say to her on the hill warned me not to trust in any such
+solution of the trouble.
+
+Boys play at casting a humming-top into the midst of others on the
+ground, and if well aimed it scatters them prettily. I seemed to be
+playing such a game with my thoughts, for each new one sent the others
+here and there, and so what could I do in the end but fling my tops
+aside, and return to the heeling of my boot?
+
+I was thus engaged when the sudden waking of the glen into life took
+me to my window. There is seldom silence up here, for if the wind be
+not sweeping the heather, the Quharity, that I may not have heard for
+days, seems to have crept nearer to the school-house in the night, and
+if both wind and water be out of earshot, there is the crack of a gun,
+or Waster Lunny's shepherd is on a stone near at hand whistling, or a
+lamb is scrambling through a fence, and kicking foolishly with its
+hind legs. These sounds I am unaware of until they stop, when I look
+up. Such a stillness was broken now by music.
+
+From my window I saw a string of people walking rapidly down the glen,
+and Waster Lunny crossing his potato-field to meet them. Remembering
+that, though I was in my stocking soles, the ground was dry, I
+hastened to join the farmer, for I like to miss nothing. I saw a
+curious sight. In front of the little procession coming down the glen
+road, and so much more impressive than his satellites that they may be
+put of mind as merely ploughman and the like following a show, was a
+Highlander that I knew to be Lauchlan Campbell, one of the pipers
+engaged to lend music to the earl's marriage. He had the name of a
+thrawn man when sober, but pretty at the pipes at both times, and he
+came marching down the glen blowing gloriously, as if he had the clan
+of Campbell at his heels. I know no man who is so capable on occasion
+of looking like twenty as a Highland piper, and never have I seen a
+face in such a blaze of passion as was Lauchlan Campbell's that day.
+His following were keeping out of his reach, jumping back every time
+he turned round to shake his fist in the direction of the Spittal.
+While this magnificent man was yet some yards from us, I saw Waster
+Lunny, who had been in the middle of the road to ask questions, fall
+back in fear, and not being a fighting man myself, I jumped the dyke.
+Lauchlan gave me a look that sent me farther into the field, and
+strutted past, shrieking defiance through his pipes, until I lost him
+and his followers in a bend of the road.
+
+"That's a terrifying spectacle," I heard Waster Lunny say when the
+music had become but a distant squeal. "You're bonny at louping dykes,
+dominie, when there is a wild bull in front o' you. Na, I canna tell
+what has happened, but at the least Lauchlan maun hae dirked the earl.
+Thae loons cried out to me as they gaed by that he has been blawing
+awa' at that tune till he canna halt. What a wind's in the crittur!
+I'm thinking there's a hell in ilka Highlandman."
+
+"Take care then, Waster Lunny, that you dinna licht it," said an angry
+voice that made us jump, though it was only Duncan, the farmer's
+shepherd, who spoke.
+
+"I had forgotten you was a Highlandman yoursel', Duncan," Waster Lunny
+said nervously; but Elspeth, who had come to us unnoticed, ordered
+the shepherd to return to the hillside, which he did haughtily.
+
+"How did you no lay haud on that blast o' wind, Lauchlan Campbell,"
+asked Elspeth of her husband, "and speir at him what had happened at
+the Spittal? A quarrel afore a marriage brings ill luck."
+
+"I'm thinking," said the farmer, "that Rintoul's making his ain ill
+luck by marrying on a young leddy."
+
+"A man's never ower auld to marry," said Elspeth.
+
+"No, nor a woman," rejoined Waster Lunny, "when she gets the chance.
+But, Elspeth, I believe I can guess what has fired that fearsome
+piper. Depend upon it, somebody has been speaking disrespectful about
+the crittur's ancestors."
+
+"His ancestors!" exclaimed Elspeth, scornfully. "I'm thinking mine
+could hae bocht them at a crown the dozen."
+
+"Hoots," said the farmer, "you're o' a weaving stock, and dinna
+understand about ancestors. Take a stick to a Highland laddie, and
+it's no him you hurt, but his ancestors. Likewise it's his ancestors
+that stanes you for it. When Duncan stalked awa the now, what think
+you he saw? He saw a farmer's wife dauring to order about his
+ancestors; and if that's the way wi' a shepherd, what will it be wi' a
+piper that has the kilts on him a' day to mind him o' his ancestors
+ilka time he looks down?"
+
+Elspeth retired to discuss the probable disturbance at the Spittal
+with her family, giving Waster Lunny the opportunity of saying to me
+impressively--
+
+"Man, man, has it never crossed you that it's a queer thing the like
+o' you and me having no ancestors? Ay, we had them in a manner o'
+speaking, no doubt, but they're as completely lost sicht o' as a
+flagon lid that's fallen ahint the dresser. Hech, sirs, but they would
+need a gey rubbing to get the rust off them now. I've been thinking
+that if I was to get my laddies to say their grandfather's name a
+curran times ilka day, like the Catechism, and they were to do the
+same wi' their bairns, and it was continued in future generations, we
+micht raise a fell field o' ancestors in time. Ay, but Elspeth wouldna
+hear o't. Nothing angers her mair than to hear me speak o' planting
+trees for the benefit o' them that's to be farmers here after me; and
+as for ancestors, she would howk them up as quick as I could plant
+them. Losh, dominie, is that a boot in your hand?"
+
+To my mortification I saw that I had run out of the school-house
+with the boot on my hand as if it were a glove, and back I went
+straightway, blaming myself for a man wanting in dignity. It was
+but a minor trouble this, however, even at the time; and to recall
+it later in the day was to look back on happiness, for though I did
+not know it yet, Lauchlan's playing raised the curtain on the great
+act of Gavin's life, and the twenty-four hours had begun, to which
+all I have told as yet is no more than the prologue.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Six.
+
+SCENE AT THE SPITTAL.
+
+
+Within an hour after I had left him, Waster Lunny walked into the
+school-house and handed me his snuff-mull, which I declined politely.
+It was with this ceremony that we usually opened our conversations.
+
+"I've seen the post," he said, "and he tells me there has been a queer
+ploy at the Spittal. It's a wonder the marriage hasna been turned into
+a burial, and all because o' that Highland stirk, Lauchlan Campbell."
+
+Waster Lunny was a man who had to retrace his steps in telling a story
+if he tried short cuts, and so my custom was to wait patiently while
+he delved through the ploughed fields that always lay between him and
+his destination.
+
+"As you ken, Rintoul's so little o' a Scotchman that he's no muckle
+better than an Englisher. That maun be the reason he hadna mair sense
+than to tramp on a Highlandman's ancestors, as he tried to tramp on
+Lauchlan's this day."
+
+"If Lord Rintoul insulted the piper," I suggested, giving the farmer a
+helping hand cautiously, "it would be through inadvertence. Rintoul
+only bought the Spittal a year ago, and until then, I daresay, he had
+seldom been on our side of the Border."
+
+This was a foolish interruption, for it set Waster Lunny off in a new
+direction.
+
+"That's what Elspeth says. Says she, 'When the earl has grand estates
+in England, what for does he come to a barren place like the Spittal
+to be married? It's gey like,' she says, 'as if he wanted the
+marriage to be got by quietly; a thing,' says she, 'that no woman can
+stand. Furthermore,' Elspeth says, 'how has the marriage been
+postponed twice?' We ken what the servants at the Spittal says to
+that, namely, that the young lady is no keen to take him, but Elspeth
+winna listen to sic arguments. She says either the earl had grown
+timid (as mony a man does) when the wedding-day drew near, or else his
+sister that keeps his house is mad at the thocht o' losing her place;
+but as for the young leddy's being sweer, says Elspeth, 'an earl's an
+earl however auld he is, and a lassie's a lassie however young she is,
+and weel she kens you're never sure o' a man's no changing his mind
+about you till you're tied to him by law, after which it doesna so
+muckle matter whether he changes his mind about you or no.' Ay,
+there's a quirk in it some gait, dominie; but it's a deep water
+Elspeth canna bottom."
+
+"It is," I agreed; "but you were to tell me what Birse told you of the
+disturbance at the Spittal."
+
+"Ay, weel," he answered, "the post puts the wite o't on her little
+leddyship, as they call her, though she winna be a leddyship till the
+morn. All I can say is that if the earl was saft enough to do sic a
+thing out of fondness for her, it's time he was married on her, so
+that he may come to his senses again. That's what I say; but Elspeth
+conters me, of course, and says she, 'If the young leddy was so
+careless o' insulting other folks' ancestors, it proves she has nane
+o' her ain; for them that has china plates themsel's is the maist
+careful no to break the china plates of others.'"
+
+"But what was the insult? Was Lauchlan dismissed?"
+
+"Na, faags! It was waur than that. Dominie, you're dull in the uptake
+compared to Elspeth. I hadna telled her half the story afore she
+jaloused the rest. However, to begin again; there's great feasting and
+rejoicings gaen on at the Spittal the now, and also a banquet, which
+the post says is twa dinners in one. Weel, there's a curran Ogilvys
+among the guests, and it was them that egged on her little leddyship
+to make the daring proposal to the earl. What was the proposal? It was
+no less than that the twa pipers should be ordered to play 'The Bonny
+House o' Airlie.' Dominie, I wonder you can tak it so calm when you
+ken that's the Ogilvy's sang, and that it's aimed at the clan o'
+Campbell."
+
+"Pooh!" I said. "The Ogilvys and the Campbells used to be mortal
+enemies, but the feud has been long forgotten."
+
+"Ay, I've heard tell," Waster Lunny said sceptically, "that Airlie and
+Argyle shakes hands now like Christians; but I'm thinking that's just
+afore the Queen. Dinna speak now, for I'm in the thick o't. Her little
+leddyship was all hinging in gold and jewels, the which winna be her
+ain till the morn; and she leans ower to the earl and whispers to him
+to get the pipers to play 'The Bonny House.' He wasna willing, for
+says he, 'There's Ogilvys at the table, and ane o' the pipers is a
+Campbell, and we'll better let sleeping dogs lie.' However, the
+Ogilvys lauched at his caution; and he was so infatuated wi' her
+little leddyship that he gae in, and he cried out to the pipers to
+strike up 'The Bonny House.'"
+
+Waster Lunny pulled his chair nearer me and rested his hand on my
+knees.
+
+"Dominie," he said in a voice that fell now and again into a whisper,
+"them looking on swears that when Lauchlan Campbell heard these
+monstrous orders his face became ugly and black, so that they kent in
+a jiffy what he would do. It's said a' body jumped back frae him in a
+sudden dread, except poor Angus, the other piper, wha was busy tuning
+up for 'The Bonny House.' Weel, Angus had got no farther in the tune
+than the first skirl when Lauchlan louped at him, and ripped up the
+startled crittur's pipes wi' his dirk. The pipes gae a roar o' agony
+like a stuck swine, and fell gasping on the floor. What happened next
+was that Lauchlan wi' his dirk handy for onybody that micht try to
+stop him, marched once round the table, playing 'The Campbells are
+Coming,' and then straucht out o' the Spittal, his chest far afore
+him, and his head so weel back that he could see what was going on
+ahint. Frae the Spittal to here he never stopped that fearsome tune,
+and I'se warrant he's blawing away at it at this moment through the
+streets o' Thrums."
+
+Waster Lunny was not in his usual spirits, or he would have repeated
+his story before he left me, for he had usually as much difficulty in
+coming to an end as in finding a beginning. The drought was to him as
+serious a matter as death in the house, and as little to be forgotten
+for a lengthened period.
+
+"There's to be a prayer-meeting for rain in the Auld Licht kirk the
+night," he told me as I escorted him as far as my side of the
+Quharity, now almost a dead stream, pitiable to see, "and I'm gaen;
+though I'm sweer to leave thae puir cattle o' mine. You should see how
+they look at me when I gie them mair o' that rotten grass to eat. It's
+eneuch to mak a man greet, for what richt hae I to keep kye when I
+canna meat them?"
+
+Waster Lunny has said to me more than once that the great surprise of
+his life was when Elspeth was willing to take him. Many a time,
+however, I have seen that in him which might have made any weaver's
+daughter proud of such a man, and I saw it again when we came to the
+river side.
+
+"I'm no ane o' thae farmers," he said, truthfully, "that's aye girding
+at the weather, and Elspeth and me kens that we hae been dealt wi'
+bountifully since we took this farm wi' gey anxious hearts. That
+woman, dominie, is eneuch to put a brave face on a coward, and it's
+no langer syne than yestreen when I was sitting in the dumps, looking
+at the aurora borealis, which I canna but regard as a messenger o'
+woe, that she put her hand on my shoulder and she says, 'Waster Lunny,
+twenty year syne we began life thegither wi' nothing but the claethes
+on our back, and an it please God we can begin it again, for I hae you
+and you hae me, and I'm no cast down if you're no.' Dominie, is there
+mony sic women in the warld as that?"
+
+"Many a one," I said.
+
+"Ay, man, it shamed me, for I hae a kind o' delight in angering
+Elspeth, just to see what she'll say. I could hae ta'en her on my knee
+at that minute, but the bairns was there, and so it wouldna hae dune.
+But I cheered her up, for, after all, the drought canna put us so far
+back as we was twenty years syne, unless it's true what my father
+said, that the aurora borealis is the devil's rainbow. I saw it sax
+times in July month, and it made me shut my een. You was out admiring
+it, dominie, but I can never forget that it was seen in the year
+twelve just afore the great storm. I was only a laddie then, but I
+mind how that awful wind stripped a' the standing corn in the glen in
+less time than we've been here at the water's edge. It was called the
+deil's besom. My father's hinmost words to me was, 'It's time eneuch
+to greet, laddie, when you see the aurora borealis.' I mind he was so
+complete ruined in an hour that he had to apply for relief frae the
+poor's rates. Think o' that, and him a proud man. He would tak'
+nothing till one winter day when we was a' starving, and syne I gaed
+wi' him to speir for't, and he telled me to grip his hand ticht, so
+that the cauldness o' mine micht gie him courage. They were doling out
+the charity in the Town's House, and I had never been in't afore. I
+canna look at it now without thinking o' that day when me and my
+father gaed up the stair thegither. Mr. Duthie was presiding at the
+time, and he wasna muckle older than Mr. Dishart is now. I mind he
+speired for proof that we was needing, and my father couldna speak. He
+just pointed at me. 'But you have a good coat on your back yoursel','
+Mr. Duthie said, for there were mony waiting, sair needing. 'It was
+lended him to come here,' I cried, and without a word my father opened
+the coat, and they saw he had nothing on aneath, and his skin blue wi
+'cauld. Dominie, Mr. Duthie handed him one shilling and saxpence, and
+my father's fingers closed greedily on't for a minute, and syne it
+fell to the ground. They put it back in his hand, and it slipped out
+again, and Mr. Duthie gave it back to him, saying, 'Are you so cauld
+as that?' But, oh, man, it wasna cauld that did it, but shame o' being
+on the rates. The blood a' ran to my father's head, and syne left it
+as quick, and he flung down the siller and walked out o' the Town
+House wi' me running after him. We warstled through that winter, God
+kens how, and it's near a pleasure to me to think o't now, for, rain
+or no rain, I can never be reduced to sic straits again."
+
+The farmer crossed the water without using the stilts which were no
+longer necessary, and I little thought, as I returned to the
+school-house, what terrible things were to happen before he could
+offer me his snuff-mull again. Serious as his talk had been it was
+neither of drought nor of the incident at the Spittal that I sat down
+to think. My anxiety about Gavin came back to me until I was like a
+man imprisoned between walls of his own building. It may be that my
+presentiments of that afternoon look gloomier now than they were,
+because I cannot return to them save over a night of agony, black
+enough to darken any time connected with it. Perhaps my spirits only
+fell as the wind rose, for wind ever takes me back to Harvie, and when
+I think of Harvie my thoughts are of the saddest. I know that I sat
+for some hours, now seeing Gavin pay the penalty of marrying the
+Egyptian, and again drifting back to my days with Margaret, until the
+wind took to playing tricks with me, so that I heard Adam Dishart
+enter our home by the sea every time the school-house door shook.
+
+I became used to the illusion after starting several times, and thus
+when the door did open, about seven o'clock, it was only the wind
+rushing to my fire like a shivering dog that made me turn my head.
+Then I saw the Egyptian staring at me, and though her sudden
+appearance on my threshold was a strange thing, I forgot it in the
+whiteness of her face. She was looking at me like one who has asked a
+question of life or death, and stopped her heart for the reply.
+
+"What is it?" I cried, and for a moment I believe I was glad she did
+not answer. She seemed to have told me already as much as I could
+bear.
+
+"He has not heard," she said aloud in an expressionless voice, and,
+turning, would have slipped away without another word.
+
+"Is any one dead?" I asked, seizing her hands and letting them fall,
+they were so clammy. She nodded, and trying to speak could not.
+
+"He is dead," she said at last in a whisper. "Mr. Dishart is dead,"
+and she sat down quietly.
+
+At that I covered my face, crying, "God help Margaret!" and then she
+rose, saying fiercely, so that I drew back from her, "There is no
+Margaret; he only cared for me."
+
+"She is his mother," I said hoarsely, and then she smiled to me, so
+that I thought her a harmless mad thing. "He was killed by a piper
+called Lauchlan Campbell," she said, looking up at me suddenly. "It
+was my fault."
+
+"Poor Margaret!" I wailed.
+
+"And poor Babbie," she entreated pathetically; "will no one say, 'Poor
+Babbie'?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Seven.
+
+FIRST JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+"How did it happen?" I asked more than once, but the Egyptian was only
+with me in the body, and she did not hear. I might have been talking
+to some one a mile away whom a telescope had drawn near my eyes.
+
+When I put on my bonnet, however, she knew that I was going to Thrums,
+and she rose and walked to the door, looking behind to see that I
+followed.
+
+"You must not come," I said harshly, but her hand started to her heart
+as if I had shot her, and I added quickly, "Come." We were already
+some distance on our way before I repeated my question.
+
+"What matter how it happened?" she answered piteously, and they were
+words of which I felt the force. But when she said a little later, "I
+thought you would say it is not true," I took courage, and forced her
+to tell me all she knew. She sobbed while she spoke, if one may sob
+without tears.
+
+"I heard of it at the Spittal," she said. "The news broke out suddenly
+there that the piper had quarrelled with some one in Thrums, and that
+in trying to separate them Mr. Dishart was stabbed. There is no doubt
+of its truth."
+
+"We should have heard of it here," I said hopefully, "before the news
+reached the Spittal. It cannot be true."
+
+"It was brought to the Spittal," she answered, "by the hill road."
+
+Then my spirits sank again, for I knew that this was possible. There
+is a path, steep but short, across the hills between Thrums and the
+top of the glen, which Mr. Glendinning took frequently when he had to
+preach at both places on the same Sabbath. It is still called the
+Minister's Road.
+
+"Yet if the earl had believed it he would have sent some one into
+Thrums for particulars," I said, grasping at such comfort as I could
+make.
+
+"He does believe it," she answered. "He told me of it himself."
+
+You see the Egyptian was careless of her secret now; but what was that
+secret to me? An hour ago it would have been much, and already it was
+not worth listening to. If she had begun to tell me why Lord Rintoul
+took a gypsy girl into his confidence I should not have heard her.
+
+"I ran quickly," she said. "Even if a messenger was sent he might be
+behind me."
+
+Was it her words or the tramp of a horse that made us turn our heads
+at that moment? I know not. But far back in a twist of the road we saw
+a horseman approaching at such a reckless pace that I thought he was
+on a runaway. We stopped instinctively, and waited for him, and twice
+he disappeared in hollows of the road, and then was suddenly tearing
+down upon us. I recognised in him young Mr. McKenzie, a relative of
+Rintoul, and I stretched out my arms to compel him to draw up. He
+misunderstood my motive, and was raising his whip threateningly, when
+he saw the Egyptian. It is not too much to say that he swayed in the
+saddle. The horse galloped on, though he had lost hold of the reins.
+He looked behind until he rounded a corner, and I never saw such
+amazement mixed with incredulity on a human face. For some minutes I
+expected to see him coming back, but when he did not I said
+wonderingly to the Egyptian--
+
+"He knew you."
+
+"Did he?" she answered indifferently, and I think we spoke no more
+until we were in Windyghoul. Soon we were barely conscious of each
+other's presence. Never since have I walked between the school-house
+and Thrums in so short a time, nor seen so little on the way.
+
+In the Egyptian's eyes, I suppose, was a picture of Gavin lying dead;
+but if her grief had killed her thinking faculties, mine, that was
+only less keen because I had been struck down once before, had set all
+the wheels of my brain in action. For it seemed to me that the hour
+had come when I must disclose myself to Margaret.
+
+I had realised always that if such a necessity did arise it could only
+be caused by Gavin's premature death, or by his proving a bad son to
+her. Some may wonder that I could have looked calmly thus far into the
+possible, but I reply that the night of Adam Dishart's homecoming had
+made of me a man whom the future could not surprise again. Though I
+saw Gavin and his mother happy in our Auld Licht manse, that did not
+prevent my considering the contingencies which might leave her without
+a son. In the school-house I had brooded over them as one may think
+over moves on a draught-board. It may have been idle, but it was done
+that I might know how to act best for Margaret if anything untoward
+occurred. The time for such action had come. Gavin's death had struck
+me hard, but it did not crush me. I was not unprepared. I was going to
+Margaret now.
+
+What did I see as I walked quickly along the glen road, with Babbie
+silent by my side, and I doubt not pods of the broom cracking all
+around us? I saw myself entering the Auld Licht manse, where Margaret
+sat weeping over the body of Gavin, and there was none to break my
+coming to her, for none but she and I knew what had been.
+
+I saw my Margaret again, so fragile now, so thin the wrists, her hair
+turned grey. No nearer could I go, but stopped at the door, grieving
+for her, and at last saying her name aloud.
+
+I saw her raise her face, and look upon me for the first time for
+eighteen years. She did not scream at sight of me, for the body of her
+son lay between us, and bridged the gulf that Adam Dishart had made.
+
+I saw myself draw near her reverently and say, "Margaret, he is dead,
+and that is why I have come back," and I saw her put her arms around
+my neck as she often did long ago.
+
+But it was not to be. Never since that night at Harvie have I spoken
+to Margaret.
+
+The Egyptian and I were to come to Windyghoul before I heard her
+speak. She was not addressing me. Here Gavin and she had met first,
+and she was talking of that meeting to herself.
+
+"It was there," I heard her say softly, as she gazed at the bush
+beneath which she had seen him shaking his fist at her on the night of
+the riots. A little farther on she stopped where a path from
+Windyghoul sets off for the well in the wood. She looked up it
+wistfully, and there I left her behind, and pressed on to the mudhouse
+to ask Nanny Webster if the minister was dead. Nanny's gate was
+swinging in the wind, but her door was shut, and for a moment I stood
+at it like a coward, afraid to enter and hear the worst.
+
+The house was empty. I turned from it relieved, as if I had got a
+respite, and while I stood in the garden the Egyptian came to me
+shuddering, her twitching face asking the question that would not
+leave her lips.
+
+"There is no one in the house," I said. "Nanny is perhaps at the
+well."
+
+But the gypsy went inside, and pointing to the fire said, "It has been
+out for hours. Do you not see? The murder has drawn every one into
+Thrums."
+
+So I feared. A dreadful night was to pass before I knew that this was
+the day of the release of Sanders Webster, and that frail Nanny had
+walked into Tilliedrum to meet him at the prison gate.
+
+Babbie sank upon a stool, so weak that I doubt whether she heard me
+tell her to wait there until my return. I hurried into Thrums, not by
+the hill, though it is the shorter way, but by the Roods, for I must
+hear all before I ventured to approach the manse. From Windyghoul to
+the top of the Roods it is a climb and then a steep descent. The road
+has no sooner reached its highest point than it begins to fall in the
+straight line of houses called the Roods, and thus I came upon a full
+view of the street at once. A cart was laboring up it. There were
+women sitting on stones at their doors, and girls playing at
+palaulays, and out of the house nearest me came a black figure. My
+eyes failed me; I was asking so much from them. They made him tall and
+short, and spare and stout, so that I knew it was Gavin, and yet,
+looking again, feared, but all the time, I think, I knew it was he.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Eight.
+
+THE HILL BEFORE DARKNESS FELL--SCENE OF THE IMPENDING CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+"You are better now?" I heard Gavin ask, presently.
+
+He thought that having been taken ill suddenly I had waved to him for
+help because he chanced to be near. With all my wits about me I might
+have left him in that belief, for rather would I have deceived him
+than had him wonder why his welfare seemed so vital to me. But I, who
+thought the capacity for being taken aback had gone from me, clung to
+his arm and thanked God audibly that he still lived. He did not tell
+me then how my agitation puzzled him, but led me kindly to the hill,
+where we could talk without listeners. By the time we reached it I was
+again wary, and I had told him what had brought me to Thrums, without
+mentioning how the story of his death reached my ears, or through
+whom.
+
+"Mr. McKenzie," he said, interrupting me, "galloped all the way from
+the Spittal on the same errand. However, no one has been hurt much,
+except the piper himself."
+
+Then he told me how the rumor arose.
+
+"You know of the incident at the Spittal, and that Campbell marched
+off in high dudgeon? I understand that he spoke to no one between the
+Spittal and Thrums, but by the time he arrived here he was more
+communicative; yes, and thirstier. He was treated to drink in several
+public-houses by persons who wanted to hear his story, and by-and-by
+he began to drop hints of knowing something against the earl's bride.
+Do you know Rob Dow?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "and what you have done for him."
+
+"Ah, sir!" he said, sighing, "for a long time I thought I was to be
+God's instrument in making a better man of Rob, but my power over him
+went long ago. Ten short months of the ministry takes some of the
+vanity out of a man."
+
+Looking sideways at him I was startled by the unnatural brightness of
+his eyes. Unconsciously he had acquired the habit of pressing his
+teeth together in the pauses of his talk, shutting them on some woe
+that would proclaim itself, as men do who keep their misery to
+themselves.
+
+"A few hours ago," he went on, "I heard Rob's voice in altercation as
+I passed the Bull tavern, and I had a feeling that if I failed with
+him so should I fail always throughout my ministry. I walked into the
+public-house, and stopped at the door of a room in which Dow and the
+piper were sitting drinking. I heard Rob saying, fiercely, 'If what
+you say about her is true, Highlandman, she's the woman I've been
+looking for this half year and mair; what is she like?' I guessed,
+from what I had been told of the piper, that they were speaking of the
+earl's bride; but Rob saw me and came to an abrupt stop, saying to his
+companion, 'Dinna say another word about her afore the minister.' Rob
+would have come away at once in answer to my appeal, but the piper was
+drunk and would not be silenced. 'I'll tell the minister about her,
+too,' he began. 'You dinna ken what you're doing,' Rob roared, and
+then, as if to save my ears from scandal at any cost, he struck
+Campbell a heavy blow on the mouth. I tried to intercept the blow,
+with the result that I fell, and then some one ran out of the tavern
+crying, 'He's killed!' The piper had been stunned, but the story went
+abroad that he had stabbed me for interfering with him. That is really
+all. Nothing, as you know, can overtake an untruth if it has a
+minute's start."
+
+"Where is Campbell now?"
+
+"Sleeping off the effect of the blow: but Dow has fled. He was
+terrified at the shouts of murder, and ran off up the West Town end.
+The doctor's dogcart was standing at a door there and Rob jumped into
+it and drove off. They did not chase him far, because he is sure to
+hear the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will come back."
+
+Though in a few hours we were to wonder at our denseness, neither
+Gavin nor I saw why Dow had struck the Highlander down rather than let
+him tell his story in the minister's presence. One moment's suspicion
+would have lit our way to the whole truth, but of the spring to all
+Rob's behavior in the past eight months we were ignorant, and so to
+Gavin the Bull had only been the scene of a drunken brawl, while I
+forgot to think in the joy of finding him alive.
+
+"I have a prayer-meeting for rain presently," Gavin said, breaking a
+picture that had just appeared unpleasantly before me of Babbie still
+in agony at Nanny's, "but before I leave you tell me why this rumor
+caused you such distress."
+
+The question troubled me, and I tried to avoid it. Crossing the hill
+we had by this time drawn near a hollow called the Toad's-hole, then
+gay and noisy with a caravan of gypsies. They were those same wild
+Lindsays, for whom Gavin had searched Caddam one eventful night, and
+as I saw them crowding round their king, a man well known to me, I
+guessed what they were at.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," I said abruptly, "would you like to see a gypsy
+marriage? One is taking place there just now. That big fellow is the
+king, and he is about to marry two of his people over the tongs. The
+ceremony will not detain us five minutes, though the rejoicings will
+go on all night."
+
+I have been present at more than one gypsy wedding in my time, and at
+the wild, weird orgies that followed them, but what is interesting to
+such as I may not be for a minister's eyes, and, frowning at my
+proposal, Gavin turned his back upon the Toad's-hole. Then, as we
+recrossed the hill, to get away from the din of the camp, I pointed
+out to him that the report of his death had brought McKenzie to
+Thrums, as well as me.
+
+"As soon as McKenzie heard I was not dead," he answered, "he galloped
+off to the Spittal, without even seeing me. I suppose he posted back
+to be in time for the night's rejoicings there. So you see, it was not
+solicitude for me that brought him. He came because a servant at the
+Spittal was supposed to have done the deed."
+
+"Well, Mr. Dishart," I had to say, "why should I deny that I have a
+warm regard for you? You have done brave work in our town."
+
+"It has been little," he replied. "With God's help it will be more in
+future."
+
+He meant that he had given time to his sad love affair that he owed to
+his people. Of seeing Babbie again I saw that he had given up hope.
+Instead of repining, he was devoting his whole soul to God's work. I
+was proud of him, and yet I grieved, for I could not think that God
+wanted him to bury his youth so soon.
+
+"I had thought," he confessed to me, "that you were one of those who
+did not like my preaching."
+
+"You were mistaken," I said, gravely. I dared not tell him that,
+except his mother, none would have sat under him so eagerly as I.
+
+"Nevertheless," he said, "you were a member of the Auld Licht church
+in Mr. Carfrae's time, and you left it when I came."
+
+"I heard your first sermon," I said.
+
+"Ah," he replied. "I had not been long in Thrums before I discovered
+that if I took tea with any of my congregation and declined a second
+cup, they thought it a reflection on their brewing."
+
+"You must not look upon my absence in that light," was all I could
+say. "There are reasons why I cannot come."
+
+He did not press me further, thinking I meant that the distance was
+too great, though frailer folk than I walked twenty miles to hear him.
+We might have parted thus had we not wandered by chance to the very
+spot where I had met him and Babbie. There is a seat there now for
+those who lose their breath on the climb up, and so I have two reasons
+nowadays for not passing the place by.
+
+We read each other's thoughts, and Gavin said calmly, "I have not seen
+her since that night. She disappeared as into a grave."
+
+How could I answer when I knew that Babbie was dying for want of him,
+not half a mile away?
+
+"You seemed to understand everything that night," he went on; "or if
+you did not, your thoughts were very generous to me."
+
+In my sorrow for him I did not notice that we were moving on again,
+this time in the direction of Windyghoul.
+
+"She was only a gypsy girl," he said, abruptly, and I nodded. "But I
+hoped," he continued, "that she would be my wife."
+
+"I understood that," I said.
+
+"There was nothing monstrous to you," he asked, looking me in the
+face, "in a minister's marrying a gypsy?"
+
+I own that if I had loved a girl, however far below or above me in
+degree, I would have married her had she been willing to take me. But
+to Gavin I only answered, "These are matters a man must decide for
+himself."
+
+"I had decided for myself," he said, emphatically.
+
+"Yet," I said, wanting him to talk to me of Margaret, "in such a case
+one might have others to consider besides himself."
+
+"A man's marriage," he answered, "is his own affair, I would have
+brooked no interference from my congregation."
+
+I thought, "There is some obstinacy left in him still;" but aloud I
+said, "It was of your mother I was thinking."
+
+"She would have taken Babbie to her heart," he said, with the fond
+conviction of a lover.
+
+I doubted it, but I only asked, "Your mother knows nothing of her?"
+
+"Nothing," he rejoined. "It would be cruelty to tell my mother of her
+now that she is gone."
+
+Gavin's calmness had left him, and he was striding quickly nearer to
+Windyghoul. I was in dread lest he should see the Egyptian at Nanny's
+door, yet to have turned him in another direction might have roused
+his suspicions. When we were within a hundred yards of the mudhouse, I
+knew that there was no Babbie in sight. We halved the distance and
+then I saw her at the open window. Gavin's eyes were on the ground,
+but she saw him. I held my breath, fearing that she would run out to
+him.
+
+"You have never seen her since that night?" Gavin asked me, without
+hope in his voice.
+
+Had he been less hopeless he would have wondered why I did not reply
+immediately. I was looking covertly at the mudhouse, of which we were
+now within a few yards. Babbie's face had gone from the window, and
+the door remained shut. That she could hear every word we uttered now,
+I could not doubt. But she was hiding from the man for whom her soul
+longed. She was sacrificing herself for him.
+
+"Never," I answered, notwithstanding my pity of the brave girl, and
+then while I was shaking lest he should go in to visit Nanny, I heard
+the echo of the Auld Licht bell.
+
+"That calls me to the meeting for rain," Gavin said, bidding me
+good-night. I had acted for Margaret, and yet I had hardly the
+effrontery to take his hand. I suppose he saw sympathy in my face, for
+suddenly the cry broke from him--
+
+"If I could only know that nothing evil had befallen her!"
+
+Babbie heard him and could not restrain a heart-breaking sob.
+
+"What was that?" he said, starting.
+
+A moment I waited, to let her show herself if she chose. But the
+mudhouse was silent again.
+
+"It was some boy in the wood," I answered.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, trying to smile.
+
+Had I let him go, here would have been the end of his love story, but
+that piteous smile unmanned me, and I could not keep the words back.
+
+"She is in Nanny's house," I cried.
+
+In another moment these two were together for weal or woe, and I had
+set off dizzily for the school-house, feeling now that I had been
+false to Margaret, and again exulting in what I had done. By and by
+the bell stopped, and Gavin and Babbie regarded it as little as I
+heeded the burns now crossing the glen road noisily at places that had
+been dry two hours before.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Nine.
+
+STORY OF THE EGYPTIAN.
+
+
+God gives us more than, were we not overbold, we should dare to ask
+for, and yet how often (perhaps after saying "Thank God" so curtly
+that it is only a form of swearing) we are suppliants again within the
+hour. Gavin was to be satisfied if he were told that no evil had
+befallen her he loved, and all the way between the school-house and
+Windyghoul Babbie craved for no more than Gavin's life. Now they had
+got their desires; but do you think they were content?
+
+The Egyptian had gone on her knees when she heard Gavin speak of her.
+It was her way of preventing herself from running to him. Then, when
+she thought him gone, he opened the door. She rose and shrank back,
+but first she had stepped toward him with a glad cry. His disappointed
+arms met on nothing.
+
+"You, too, heard that I was dead?" he said, thinking her strangeness
+but grief too sharply turned to joy.
+
+There were tears in the word with which she answered him, and he would
+have kissed her, but she defended her face with her hand.
+
+"Babbie," he asked, beginning to fear that he had not sounded her
+deepest woe, "why have you left me all this time? You are not glad to
+see me now?"
+
+"I was glad," she answered in a low voice, "to see you from the
+window, but I prayed to God not to let you see me."
+
+She even pulled away her hand when he would have taken it. "No, no, I
+am to tell you everything now, and then----"
+
+"Say that you love me first," he broke in, when a sob checked her
+speaking.
+
+"No," she said, "I must tell you first what I have done, and then you
+will not ask me to say that. I am not a gypsy."
+
+"What of that?" cried Gavin. "It was not because you were a gypsy that
+I loved you."
+
+"That is the last time you will say you love me," said Babbie. "Mr.
+Dishart, I am to be married to-morrow."
+
+She stopped, afraid to say more lest he should fall, but except that
+his arms twitched he did not move.
+
+"I am to be married to Lord Rintoul," she went on. "Now you know who I
+am."
+
+She turned from him, for his piercing eyes frightened her. Never
+again, she knew, would she see the love-light in them. He plucked
+himself from the spot where he had stood looking at her and walked to
+the window. When he wheeled round there was no anger on his face, only
+a pathetic wonder that he had been deceived so easily. It was at
+himself that he was smiling grimly rather than at her, and the change
+pained Babbie as no words could have hurt her. He sat down on a chair
+and waited for her to go on.
+
+"Don't look at me," she said, "and I will tell you everything." He
+dropped his eyes listlessly, and had he not asked her a question from
+time to time, she would have doubted whether he heard her.
+
+"After all," she said, "a gypsy dress is my birth-right, and so the
+Thrums people were scarcely wrong in calling me an Egyptian. It is a
+pity any one insisted on making me something different. I believe I
+could have been a good gypsy."
+
+"Who were your parents?" Gavin asked, without looking up.
+
+"You ask that," she said, "because you have a good mother. It is not
+a question that would occur to me. My mother--If she was bad, may not
+that be some excuse for me? Ah, but I have no wish to excuse myself.
+Have you seen a gypsy cart with a sort of hammock swung beneath it in
+which gypsy children are carried about the country? If there are no
+children, the pots and pans are stored in it. Unless the roads are
+rough it makes a comfortable cradle, and it was the only one I ever
+knew. Well, one day I suppose the road was rough, for I was capsized.
+I remember picking myself up after a little and running after the
+cart, but they did not hear my cries. I sat down by the roadside and
+stared after the cart until I lost sight of it. That was in England,
+and I was not three years old."
+
+"But surely," Gavin said, "they came back to look for you?"
+
+"So far as I know," Babbie answered hardly, "they did not come back. I
+have never seen them since. I think they were drunk. My only
+recollection of my mother is that she once took me to see the dead
+body of some gypsy who had been murdered. She told me to dip my hand
+in the blood, so that I could say I had done so when I became a woman.
+It was meant as a treat to me, and is the one kindness I am sure I got
+from her. Curiously enough, I felt the shame of her deserting me for
+many years afterwards. As a child I cried hysterically at thought of
+it; it pained me when I was at school in Edinburgh every time I saw
+the other girls writing home; I cannot think of it without a shudder
+even now. It is what makes me worse than other women."
+
+Her voice had altered, and she was speaking passionately.
+
+"Sometimes," she continued, more gently, "I try to think that my
+mother did come back for me, and then went away because she heard I
+was in better hands than hers. It was Lord Rintoul who found me, and I
+owe everything to him. You will say that he has no need to be proud
+of me. He took me home on his horse, and paid his gardener's wife to
+rear me. She was Scotch, and that is why I can speak two languages. It
+was he, too, who sent me to school in Edinburgh."
+
+"He has been very kind to you," said Gavin, who would have preferred
+to dislike the earl.
+
+"So kind," answered Babbie, "that now he is to marry me. But do you
+know why he has done all this?"
+
+Now again she was agitated, and spoke indignantly.
+
+"It is all because I have a pretty face," she said, her bosom rising
+and falling. "Men think of nothing else. He had no pity for the
+deserted child. I knew that while I was yet on his horse. When he came
+to the gardener's afterwards, it was not to give me some one to love,
+it was only to look upon what was called my beauty; I was merely a
+picture to him, and even the gardener's children knew it and sought to
+terrify me by saying, 'You are losing your looks; the earl will not
+care for you any more.' Sometimes he brought his friends to see me,
+'because I was such a lovely child,' and if they did not agree with
+him on that point he left without kissing me. Throughout my whole
+girlhood I was taught nothing but to please him, and the only way to
+do that was to be pretty. It was the only virtue worth striving for;
+the others were never thought of when he asked how I was getting on.
+Once I had fever and nearly died, yet this knowledge that my face was
+everything was implanted in me so that my fear lest he should think me
+ugly when I recovered terrified me into hysterics. I dream still that
+I am in that fever and all my fears return. He did think me ugly when
+he saw me next. I remember the incident so well still. I had run to
+him, and he was lifting me up to kiss me when he saw that my face had
+changed. 'What a cruel disappointment,' he said, and turned his back
+on me. I had given him a child's love until then, but from that day I
+was hard and callous."
+
+"And when was it you became beautiful again?" Gavin asked, by no means
+in the mind to pay compliments.
+
+"A year passed," she continued, "before I saw him again. In that time
+he had not asked for me once, and the gardener had kept me out of
+charity. It was by an accident that we met, and at first he did not
+know me. Then he said, 'Why, Babbie, I believe you are to be a beauty,
+after all!' I hated him for that, and stalked away from him, but he
+called after me, 'Bravo! she walks like a queen'; and it was because I
+walked like a queen that he sent me to an Edinburgh school. He used to
+come to see me every year, and as I grew up the girls called me Lady
+Rintoul. He was not fond of me; he is not fond of me now. He would as
+soon think of looking at the back of a picture as at what I am apart
+from my face, but he dotes on it, and is to marry it. Is that love?
+Long before I left school, which was shortly before you came to
+Thrums, he had told his sister that he was determined to marry me, and
+she hated me for it, making me as uncomfortable as she could, so that
+I almost looked forward to the marriage because it would be such a
+humiliation to her."
+
+In admitting this she looked shamefacedly at Gavin, and then went on:
+
+"It is humiliating him too. I understand him. He would like not to
+want to marry me, for he is ashamed of my origin, but he cannot help
+it. It is this feeling that has brought him here, so that the marriage
+may take place where my history is not known."
+
+"The secret has been well kept," Gavin said, "for they have failed to
+discover it even in Thrums."
+
+"Some of the Spittal servants suspect it, nevertheless," Babbie
+answered, "though how much they know I cannot say. He has not a
+servant now, either here or in England, who knew me as a child. The
+gardener who befriended me was sent away long ago. Lord Rintoul looks
+upon me as a disgrace to him that he cannot live without."
+
+"I dare say he cares for you more than you think," Gavin said
+gravely.
+
+"He is infatuated about my face, or the pose of my head, or something
+of that sort," Babbie said bitterly, "or he would not have endured me
+so long. I have twice had the wedding postponed, chiefly, I believe,
+to enrage my natural enemy, his sister, who is as much aggravated by
+my reluctance to marry him as by his desire to marry me. However, I
+also felt that imprisonment for life was approaching as the day drew
+near, and I told him that if he did not defer the wedding I should run
+away. He knows I am capable of it, for twice I ran away from school.
+If his sister only knew that!"
+
+For a moment it was the old Babbie Gavin saw; but her glee was
+short-lived, and she resumed sedately:
+
+"They were kind to me at school, but the life was so dull and prim
+that I ran off in a gypsy dress of my own making. That is what it is
+to have gypsy blood in one. I was away for a week the first time,
+wandering the country alone, telling fortunes, dancing and singing in
+woods, and sleeping in barns. I am the only woman in the world well
+brought up who is not afraid of mice or rats. That is my gypsy blood
+again. After that wild week I went back to the school of my own will,
+and no one knows of the escapade but my schoolmistress and Lord
+Rintoul. The second time, however, I was detected singing in the
+street, and then my future husband was asked to take me away. Yet Miss
+Feversham cried when I left, and told me that I was the nicest girl
+she knew, as well as the nastiest. She said she should love me as soon
+as I was not one of her boarders."
+
+"And then you came to the Spittal?"
+
+"Yes; and Lord Rintoul wanted me to say I was sorry for what I had
+done, but I told him I need not say that, for I was sure to do it
+again. As you know, I have done it several times since then; and
+though I am a different woman since I knew you, I dare say I shall go
+on doing it at times all my life. You shake your head because you do
+not understand. It is not that I make up my mind to break out in that
+way; I may not have had the least desire to do it for weeks, and then
+suddenly, when I am out riding, or at dinner, or at a dance, the
+craving to be a gypsy again is so strong that I never think of
+resisting it; I would risk my life to gratify it. Yes, whatever my
+life in the future is to be, I know that must be a part of it. I used
+to pretend at the Spittal that I had gone to bed, and then escape by
+the window. I was mad with glee at those times, but I always returned
+before morning, except once, the last time I saw you, when I was away
+for nearly twenty-four hours. Lord Rintoul was so glad to see me come
+back then that he almost forgave me for going away. There is nothing
+more to tell except that on the night of the riot it was not my gypsy
+nature that brought me to Thrums, but a desire to save the poor
+weavers. I had heard Lord Rintoul and the sheriff discussing the
+contemplated raid. I have hidden nothing from you. In time, perhaps, I
+shall have suffered sufficiently for all my wickedness."
+
+Gavin rose weariedly, and walked through the mudhouse looking at her.
+
+"This is the end of it all," he said harshly, coming to a standstill.
+"I loved you, Babbie."
+
+"No," she answered, shaking her head. "You never knew me until now,
+and so it was not me you loved. I know what you thought I was, and I
+will try to be it now."
+
+"If you had only told me this before," the minister said sadly, "it
+might not have been too late."
+
+"I only thought you like all the other men I knew," she replied,
+"until the night I came to the manse. It was only my face you admired
+at first."
+
+"No, it was never that," Gavin said with such conviction that her
+mouth opened in alarm to ask him if he did not think her pretty. She
+did not speak, however, and he continued, "You must have known that I
+loved you from the first night."
+
+"No; you only amused me," she said, like one determined to stint
+nothing of the truth. "Even at the well I laughed at your vows."
+
+This wounded Gavin afresh, wretched as her story had made him, and he
+said tragically, "You have never cared for me at all."
+
+"Oh, always, always," she answered, "since I knew what love was; and
+it was you who taught me."
+
+Even in his misery he held his head high with pride. At least she did
+love him.
+
+"And then," Babbie said, hiding her face, "I could not tell you what I
+was because I knew you would loathe me. I could only go away."
+
+She looked at him forlornly through her tears, and then moved toward
+the door. He had sunk upon a stool, his face resting on the table, and
+it was her intention to slip away unnoticed. But he heard the latch
+rise, and jumping up, said sharply, "Babbie, I cannot give you up."
+
+She stood in tears, swinging the door unconsciously with her hand.
+
+"Don't say that you love me still," she cried; and then, letting her
+hand fall from the door, added imploringly, "Oh, Gavin, do you?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty.
+
+THE MEETING FOR RAIN.
+
+
+Meanwhile the Auld Lichts were in church, waiting for their minister,
+and it was a full meeting, because nearly every well in Thrums had
+been scooped dry by anxious palms. Yet not all were there to ask God's
+rain for themselves. Old Charles Yuill was in his pew, after dreaming
+thrice that he would break up with the drought; and Bell Christison
+had come, though her man lay dead at home, and she thought it could
+matter no more to her how things went in the world.
+
+You, who do not love that little congregation, would have said that
+they were waiting placidly. But probably so simple a woman as Meggy
+Rattray could have deceived you into believing that because her eyes
+were downcast she did not notice who put the three-penny-bit in the
+plate. A few men were unaware that the bell was working overtime, most
+of them farmers with their eyes on the windows, but all the women at
+least were wondering. They knew better, however, than to bring their
+thoughts to their faces, and none sought to catch another's eye. The
+men-folk looked heavily at their hats in the seats in front. Even when
+Hendry Munn, instead of marching to the pulpit with the big Bible in
+his hands, came as far as the plate and signed to Peter Tosh, elder,
+that he was wanted in the vestry, you could not have guessed how every
+woman there, except Bell Christison, wished she was Peter Tosh. Peter
+was so taken aback that he merely gaped at Hendry, until suddenly he
+knew that his five daughters were furious with him, when he dived for
+his hat and staggered to the vestry with his mouth open. His boots
+cheeped all the way, but no one looked up.
+
+"I hadna noticed the minister was lang in coming," Waster Lunny told
+me afterward, "but Elspeth noticed it, and with a quickness that
+baffles me she saw I was thinking o' other things. So she let out her
+foot at me. I gae a low cough to let her ken I wasna sleeping, but in
+a minute out goes her foot again. Ay, syne I thocht I micht hae
+dropped my hanky into Snecky Hobart's pew, but no, it was in my tails.
+Yet her hand was on the board, and she was working her fingers in a
+way that I kent meant she would like to shake me. Next I looked to see
+if I was sitting on her frock, the which tries a woman sair, but I
+wasna. 'Does she want to change Bibles wi' me?' I wondered; 'or is she
+sliding yont a peppermint to me?' It was neither, so I edged as far
+frae her as I could gang. Weel, would you credit it, I saw her body
+coming nearer me inch by inch, though she was looking straucht afore
+her, till she was within kick o' me, and then out again goes her foot.
+At that, dominie, I lost patience, and I whispered, fierce-like, 'Keep
+your foot to yoursel', you limmer!' Ay, her intent, you see, was to
+waken me to what was gaen on, but I couldna be expected to ken that."
+
+In the vestry Hendry Munn was now holding counsel with three elders,
+of whom the chief was Lang Tammas.
+
+"The laddie I sent to the manse," Hendry said, "canna be back this
+five minutes, and the question is how we're to fill up that time. I'll
+ring no langer, for the bell has been in a passion ever since a
+quarter-past eight. It's as sweer to clang past the quarter as a horse
+to gallop by its stable."
+
+"You could gang to your box and gie out a psalm, Tammas," suggested
+John Spens.
+
+"And would a psalm sung wi' sic an object," retorted the precentor,
+"mount higher, think you, than a bairn's kite? I'll insult the
+Almighty to screen no minister."
+
+"You're screening him better by standing whaur you are," said the
+imperturbable Hendry; "for as lang as you dinna show your face they'll
+think it may be you that's missing instead o' Mr. Dishart."
+
+Indeed, Gavin's appearance in church without the precentor would have
+been as surprising as Tammas's without the minister. As certainly as
+the shutting of a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did
+the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a toll of the
+bell in front of the minister. Tammas's halfpenny rang in the plate as
+Gavin passed T'nowhead's pew, and Gavin's sixpence with the
+snapping-to of the precentor's door. The two men might have been
+connected by a string that tightened at ten yards.
+
+"The congregation ken me ower weel," Tammas said, "to believe I would
+keep the Lord waiting."
+
+"And they are as sure o' Mr. Dishart," rejoined Spens, with spirit,
+though he feared the precentor on Sabbaths and at prayer-meetings.
+"You're a hard man."
+
+"I speak the blunt truth," Whamond answered.
+
+"Ay," said Spens, "and to tak' credit for that may be like blawing
+that you're ower honest to wear claethes."
+
+Hendry, who had gone to the door, returned now with the information
+that Mr. Dishart had left the manse two hours ago to pay visits,
+meaning to come to the prayer-meeting before he returned home.
+
+"There's a quirk in this, Hendry," said Tosh. "Was it Mistress Dishart
+the laddie saw?"
+
+[Illustration: "THE CONSULTATION OF THE ELDERS."]
+
+"No," Hendry replied. "It was Jean. She canna get to the meeting
+because the mistress is nervous in the manse by herself; and Jean
+didna like to tell her that he's missing, for fear o' alarming her.
+What are we to do now?"
+
+"He's an unfaithful shepherd," cried the precentor, while Hendry again
+went out. "I see it written on the walls."
+
+"I dinna," said Spens doggedly.
+
+"Because," retorted Tammas, "having eyes you see not."
+
+"Tammas, I aye thocht you was fond o' Mr. Dishart."
+
+"If my right eye were to offend me," answered the precentor, "I would
+pluck it out. I suppose you think, and baith o' you farmers too, that
+there's no necessity for praying for rain the nicht? You'll be
+content, will ye, if Mr. Dishart just drops in to the kirk some day,
+accidental-like, and offers up a bit prayer?"
+
+"As for the rain," Spens said, triumphantly, "I wouldna wonder though
+it's here afore the minister. You canna deny, Peter Tosh, that there's
+been a smell o' rain in the air this twa hours back."
+
+"John," Peter said agitatedly, "dinna speak so confidently. I've kent
+it," he whispered, "since the day turned; but it wants to tak' us by
+surprise, lad, and so I'm no letting on."
+
+"See that you dinna make an idol o' the rain," thundered Whamond.
+"Your thochts is no wi' Him, but wi' the clouds; and whaur your
+thochts are, there will your prayers stick also."
+
+"If you saw my lambs," Tosh began; and then, ashamed of himself, said,
+looking upward, "He holds the rain in the hollow of His hand."
+
+"And He's closing His neive ticht on't again," said the precentor
+solemnly. "Hearken to the wind rising!"
+
+"God help me!" cried Tosh, wringing his hands. "Is it fair, think
+you," he said, passionately addressing the sky, "to show your wrath
+wi' Mr. Dishart by ruining my neeps?"
+
+"You were richt, Tammas Whamond," Spens said, growing hard as he
+listened to the wind, "the sanctuary o' the Lord has been profaned
+this nicht by him wha should be the chief pillar o' the building."
+
+They were lowering brows that greeted Hendry when he returned to say
+that Mr. Dishart had been seen last on the hill with the Glen Quharity
+dominie.
+
+"Some thinks," said the kirk officer, "that he's awa hunting for Rob
+Dow."
+
+"Nothing'll excuse him," replied Spens, "short o' his having fallen
+over the quarry."
+
+Hendry's was usually a blank face, but it must have looked troubled
+now, for Tosh was about to say, "Hendry, you're keeping something
+back," when the precentor said it before him.
+
+"Wi' that story o' Mr. Dishart's murder, no many hours auld yet," the
+kirk officer replied evasively, "we should be wary o' trusting
+gossip."
+
+"What hae you heard?"
+
+"It's through the town," Hendry answered, "that a woman was wi' the
+dominie."
+
+"A woman!" cried Tosh. "The woman there's been sic talk about in
+connection wi' the minister? Whaur are they now?"
+
+"It's no kent, but--the dominie was seen goin' hame by himsel'."
+
+"Leaving the minister and her thegither!" cried the three men at
+once.
+
+"Hendry Munn," Tammas said sternly, "there's mair about this; wha is
+the woman?"
+
+"They are liars," Hendry answered, and shut his mouth tight.
+
+"Gie her a name, I say," the precentor ordered, "or, as chief elder of
+this kirk, supported by mair than half o' the Session, I command you
+to lift your hat and go."
+
+Hendry gave an appealing look to Tosh and Spens, but the precentor's
+solemnity had cowed them.
+
+"They say, then," he answered sullenly, "that it's the Egyptian. Yes,
+and I believe they ken."
+
+The two farmers drew back from this statement incredulously; but
+Tammas Whamond jumped at the kirk officer's throat, and some who were
+in the church that night say they heard Hendry scream. Then the
+precentor's fingers relaxed their grip, and he tottered into the
+middle of the room.
+
+"Hendry," he pleaded, holding out his arms pathetically, "tak' back
+these words. Oh, man, have pity, and tak' them back!"
+
+But Hendry would not, and then Lang Tammas's mouth worked convulsively,
+and he sobbed, crying, "Nobody kent it, but mair than mortal son, O
+God, I did love the lad!"
+
+So seldom in a lifetime had any one seen into this man's heart that
+Spens said, amazed:
+
+"Tammas, Tammas Whamond, it's no like you to break down."
+
+The rusty door of Whamond's heart swung to.
+
+"Who broke down?" he asked fiercely. "Let no member of this Session
+dare to break down till his work be done."
+
+"What work?" Tosh said uneasily. "We canna interfere."
+
+"I would rather resign," Spens said, but shook when Whamond hurled
+these words at him:
+
+"'And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough
+and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.'"
+
+"It mayna be true," Hendry said eagerly.
+
+"We'll soon see."
+
+"He would gie her up," said Tosh.
+
+"Peter Tosh," answered Whamond sternly, "I call upon you to dismiss
+the congregation."
+
+"Should we no rather haud the meeting oursel's?"
+
+"We have other work afore us," replied the precentor.
+
+"But what can I say?" Tosh asked nervously. "Should I offer up a
+prayer?"
+
+"I warn you all," broke in Hendry, "that though the congregation is
+sitting there quietly, they'll be tigers for the meaning o' this as
+soon as they're in the street."
+
+"Let no ontruth be telled them," said the precentor. "Peter Tosh, do
+your duty. John Spens, remain wi' me."
+
+The church emptied silently, but a buzz of excitement arose outside.
+Many persons tried to enter the vestry, but were ordered away, and
+when Tosh joined his fellow-elders the people were collecting in
+animated groups in the square, or scattering through the wynds for
+news.
+
+"And now," said the precentor, "I call upon the three o' you to come
+wi' me. Hendry Munn, you gang first."
+
+"I maun bide ahint," Hendry said, with a sudden fear, "to lock up the
+kirk."
+
+"I'll lock up the kirk," Whamond answered harshly.
+
+"You maun gie me the keys, though," entreated the kirk officer.
+
+"I'll take care o' the keys," said Whamond.
+
+"I maun hae them," Hendry said, "to open the kirk on Sabbath."
+
+The precentor locked the doors, and buttoned up the keys in his
+trousers pockets.
+
+"Wha kens," he said, in a voice of steel, "that the kirk'll be open
+next Sabbath?"
+
+"Hae some mercy on him, Tammas," Spens implored. "He's no
+twa-and-twenty."
+
+"Wha kens," continued the precentor, "but that the next time this kirk
+is opened will be to preach it toom?"
+
+"What road do we tak'?"
+
+"The road to the hill, whaur he was seen last."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-One.
+
+VARIOUS BODIES CONVERGING ON THE HILL.
+
+
+It would be coming on for a quarter-past nine, and a misty night, when
+I reached the school-house, and I was so weary of mind and body that I
+sat down without taking off my bonnet. I had left the door open, and I
+remember listlessly watching the wind making a target of my candle,
+but never taking a sufficiently big breath to do more than frighten
+it. From this lethargy I was roused by the sound of wheels.
+
+In the daytime our glen road leads to many parts, but in the night
+only to the doctor's. Then the gallop of a horse makes farmers start
+up in bed and cry, "Who's ill?" I went to my door and listened to the
+trap coming swiftly down the lonely glen, but I could not see it, for
+there was a trailing scarf of mist between the school-house and the
+road. Presently I heard the swish of the wheels in water, and so
+learned that they were crossing the ford to come to me. I had been
+unstrung by the events of the evening, and fear at once pressed thick
+upon me that this might be a sequel to them, as indeed it was.
+
+While still out of sight the trap stopped, and I heard some one jump
+from it. Then came this conversation, as distinct as though it had
+been spoken into my ear:
+
+"Can you see the school-house now, McKenzie?"
+
+"I am groping for it, Rintoul. The mist seems to have made off with
+the path."
+
+"Where are you, McKenzie? I have lost sight of you."
+
+It was but a ribbon of mist, and as these words were spoken McKenzie
+broke through it. I saw him, though to him I was only a stone at my
+door.
+
+"I have found the house, Rintoul," he shouted, "and there is a light
+in it, so that the fellow has doubtless returned."
+
+"Then wait a moment for me."
+
+"Stay where you are, Rintoul, I entreat you, and leave him to me. He
+may recognize you."
+
+"No, no, McKenzie, I am sure he never saw me before. I insist on
+accompanying you."
+
+"Your excitement, Rintoul, will betray you. Let me go alone. I can
+question him without rousing his suspicions. Remember, she is only a
+gypsy to him."
+
+"He will learn nothing from me. I am quite calm now."
+
+"Rintoul, I warn you your manner will betray you, and to-morrow it
+will be roared through the countryside that your bride ran away from
+the Spittal in a gypsy dress, and had to be brought back by force."
+
+The altercation may have lasted another minute, but the suddenness
+with which I learned Babbie's secret had left my ears incapable of
+learning more. I daresay the two men started when they found me at my
+door, but they did not remember, as few do remember who have the noisy
+day to forget it in, how far the voice carries in the night.
+
+They came as suddenly on me as I on them, for though they had given
+unintentional notice of their approach, I had lost sight of the
+speakers in their amazing words. Only a moment did young McKenzie's
+anxiety to be spokesman give me to regard Lord Rintoul. I saw that he
+was a thin man and tall, straight in the figure, but his head began to
+sink into his shoulders and not very steady on them. His teeth had
+grip of his under-lip, as if this was a method of controlling his
+agitation, and he was opening and shutting his hands restlessly. He
+had a dog with him which I was to meet again.
+
+"Well met, Mr. Ogilvy," said McKenzie, who knew me slightly, having
+once acted as judge at a cock-fight in the school-house. "We were
+afraid we should have to rouse you."
+
+"You will step inside?" I asked awkwardly, and while I spoke I was
+wondering how long it would be before the earl's excitement broke
+out.
+
+"It is not necessary," McKenzie answered hurriedly. "My friend and I
+(this is Mr. McClure) have been caught in the mist without a lamp, and
+we thought you could perhaps favor us with one."
+
+"Unfortunately I have nothing of the kind," I said, and the state of
+mind I was in is shown by my answering seriously.
+
+"Then we must wish you a good-night and manage as best we can," he
+said; and then before he could touch, with affected indifference, on
+the real object of their visit, the alarmed earl said angrily,
+"McKenzie, no more of this."
+
+"No more of this delay, do you mean, McClure?" asked McKenzie, and
+then, turning to me said, "By the way, Mr. Ogilvy, I think this is our
+second meeting to-night. I met you on the road a few hours ago with
+your wife. Or was it your daughter?"
+
+"It was neither, Mr. McKenzie," I answered, with the calmness of one
+not yet recovered from a shock. "It was a gypsy girl."
+
+"Where is she now?" cried Rintoul feverishly; but McKenzie, speaking
+loudly at the same time, tried to drown his interference as one
+obliterates writing by writing over it.
+
+"A strange companion for a schoolmaster," he said. "What became of
+her?"
+
+"I left her near Caddam Wood," I replied, "but she is probably not
+there now."
+
+"Ah, they are strange creatures, these gypsies!" he said, casting a
+warning look at the earl. "Now I wonder where she had been bound
+for."
+
+"There is a gypsy encampment on the hill," I answered, though I cannot
+say why.
+
+"She is there!" exclaimed Rintoul, and was done with me.
+
+"I daresay," McKenzie said indifferently. "However, it is nothing to
+us. Good-night, sir."
+
+The earl had started for the trap, but McKenzie's salute reminded him
+of a forgotten courtesy, and, despite his agitation, he came back to
+apologize. I admired him for this. Then my thoughtlessness must needs
+mar all.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. McKenzie," I said. "Good-night, Lord Rintoul."
+
+I had addressed him by his real name. Never a turnip fell from a
+bumping, laden cart, and the driver more unconscious of it, than I
+that I had dropped that word. I re-entered the house, but had not
+reached my chair when McKenzie's hand fell roughly on me, and I was
+swung round.
+
+"Mr. Ogilvy," he said, the more savagely I doubt not because his
+passions had been chained so long, "you know more than you would have
+us think. Beware, sir, of recognising that gypsy should you ever see
+her again in different attire. I advise you to have forgotten this
+night when you waken to-morrow morning."
+
+With a menacing gesture he left me, and I sank into a chair, glad to
+lose sight of the glowering eyes with which he had pinned me to the
+wall. I did not hear the trap cross the ford and renew its journey.
+When I looked out next, the night had fallen very dark, and the glen
+was so deathly in its drowsiness that I thought not even the cry of
+murder could tear its eyes open.
+
+The earl and McKenzie would be some distance still from the hill when
+the office-bearers had scoured it in vain for their minister. The
+gypsies, now dancing round their fires to music that, on ordinary
+occasions, Lang Tammas would have stopped by using his fists to the
+glory of God, had seen no minister, they said, and disbelieved in the
+existence of the mysterious Egyptian.
+
+"Liars they are to trade," Spens declared to his companions, "but now
+and again they speak truth, like a standing clock, and I'm beginning
+to think the minister's lassie was invented in the square."
+
+"Not so," said the precentor, "for we saw her oursel's a short year
+syne, and Hendry Munn there allows there's townsfolk that hae passed
+her in the glen mair recently."
+
+"I only allowed," Hendry said cautiously, "that some sic talk had shot
+up sudden-like in the town. Them that pretends they saw her says that
+she joukit quick out o' sicht."
+
+"Ay, and there's another quirk in that," responded the suspicious
+precentor.
+
+"I'se uphaud the minister's sitting in the manse in his slippers by
+this time," Hendry said.
+
+"I'm willing," replied Whamond, "to gang back and speir, or to search
+Caddam next; but let the matter drop I winna, though I ken you're a'
+awid to be hame now."
+
+"And naturally," retorted Tosh, "for the nicht's coming on as black as
+pick, and by the time we're at Caddam we'll no even see the trees."
+
+Toward Caddam, nevertheless, they advanced, hearing nothing but a
+distant wind and the whish of their legs in the broom.
+
+"Whaur's John Spens?" Hendry said suddenly.
+
+They turned back and found Spens rooted to the ground, as a boy
+becomes motionless when he thinks he is within arm's reach of a nest
+and the bird sitting on the eggs.
+
+"What do you see, man?" Hendry whispered.
+
+"As sure as death," answered Spens, awe-struck, "I felt a drap o'
+rain."
+
+"It's no rain we're here to look for," said the precentor.
+
+"Peter Tosh," cried Spens, "it was a drap! Oh, Peter! how are you
+looking at me so queer, Peter, when you should be thanking the Lord
+for the promise that's in that drap?"
+
+"Come away," Whamond said, impatiently; but Spens answered, "No till
+I've offered up a prayer for the promise that's in that drap. Peter
+Tosh, you've forgotten to take off your bonnet."
+
+"Think twice, John Spens," gasped Tosh, "afore you pray for rain this
+nicht."
+
+The others thought him crazy, but he went on, with a catch in his
+voice:
+
+"I felt a drap o' rain mysel', just afore it came on dark so hurried,
+and my first impulse was to wish that I could carry that drap about
+wi' me and look at it. But, John Spens, when I looked up I saw sic a
+change running ower the sky that I thocht hell had taen the place o'
+heaven, and that there was waterspouts gathering therein for the
+drowning o' the world."
+
+"There's no water in hell," the precentor said grimly.
+
+"Genesis ix.," said Spens, "verses 8 to 17. Ay, but, Peter, you've
+startled me, and I'm thinking we should be stepping hame. Is that a
+licht?"
+
+"It'll be in Nanny Webster's," Hendry said, after they had all
+regarded the light.
+
+"I never heard that Nanny needed a candle to licht her to her bed,"
+the precentor muttered.
+
+"She was awa to meet Sanders the day as he came out o' the Tilliedrum
+gaol," Spens remembered, "and I daresay the licht means they're hame
+again."
+
+"It's well kent--" began Hendry, and would have recalled his words.
+
+"Hendry Munn," cried the precentor, "if you hae minded onything that
+may help us, out wi't."
+
+"I was just minding," the kirk officer answered reluctantly, "that
+Nanny allows it's Mr. Dishart that has been keeping her frae the
+poorhouse. You canna censure him for that, Tammas."
+
+"Can I no?" retorted Whamond. "What business has he to befriend a
+woman that belongs to another denomination? I'll see to the bottom o'
+that this nicht. Lads, follow me to Nanny's, and dinna be surprised if
+we find baith the minister and the Egyptian there."
+
+They had not advanced many yards when Spens jumped to the side,
+crying, "Be wary, that's no the wind; it's a machine!"
+
+Immediately the doctor's dogcart was close to them, with Rob Dow for
+its only occupant. He was driving slowly, or Whamond could not have
+escaped the horse's hoofs.
+
+"Is that you, Rob Dow?" said the precentor sourly. "I tell you, you'll
+be gaoled for stealing the doctor's machine."
+
+"The Hielandman wasna muckle hurt, Rob," Hendry said, more
+good-naturedly.
+
+"I ken that," replied Rob, scowling at the four of them. "What are you
+doing here on sic a nicht?"
+
+"Do you see anything strange in the nicht, Rob?" Tosh asked
+apprehensively.
+
+"It's setting to rain," Dow replied. "I dinna see it, but I feel it."
+
+"Ay," said Tosh, eagerly, "but will it be a saft, cowdie sweet
+ding-on?"
+
+"Let the heavens open if they will," interposed Spens recklessly. "I
+would swap the drought for rain, though it comes down in a sheet as in
+the year twelve."
+
+"And like a sheet it'll come," replied Dow, "and the deil'll blaw it
+about wi' his biggest bellowses."
+
+Tosh shivered, but Whamond shook him roughly, saying--
+
+"Keep your oaths to yoursel', Rob Dow, and tell me, hae you seen Mr.
+Dishart?"
+
+"I hinna," Rob answered curtly, preparing to drive on.
+
+"Nor the lassie they call the Egyptian?"
+
+Rob leaped from the dogcart, crying, "What does that mean?"
+
+"Hands off," said the precentor, retreating from him. "It means that
+Mr. Dishart neglected the prayer-meeting this nicht to philander after
+that heathen woman."
+
+"We're no sure o't, Tammas," remonstrated the kirk officer. Dow stood
+quite still. "I believe Rob kens it's true," Hendry added sadly, "or
+he would hae flown at your throat, Tammas Whamond, for saying these
+words."
+
+Even this did not rouse Dow.
+
+"Rob doesna worship the minister as he used to do," said Spens.
+
+"And what for no?" cried the precentor. "Rob Dow, is it because you've
+found out about this woman?"
+
+"You're a pack o' liars," roared Rob, desperately, "and if you say
+again that ony wandering hussy has haud o' the minister, I'll let you
+see whether I can loup at throats."
+
+"You'll swear by the Book," asked Whamond, relentlessly, "that you've
+seen neither o' them this nicht, nor them thegither at any time?"
+
+"I so swear by the Book," answered poor loyal Rob. "But what makes you
+look for Mr. Dishart here?" he demanded, with an uneasy look at the
+light in the mudhouse.
+
+"Go hame," replied the precentor, "and deliver up the machine you
+stole, and leave this Session to do its duty. John, we maun fathom the
+meaning o' that licht."
+
+Dow started, and was probably at that moment within an ace of felling
+Whamond.
+
+"I'll come wi' you," he said, hunting in his mind for a better way of
+helping Gavin.
+
+They were at Nanny's garden, but in the darkness Whamond could not
+find the gate. Rob climbed the paling, and was at once lost sight of.
+Then they saw his head obscure the window. They did not, however, hear
+the groan that startled Babbie.
+
+"There's nobody there," he said, coming back, "but Nanny and Sanders.
+You'll mind Sanders was to be freed the day."
+
+"I'll go in and see Sanders," said Hendry, but the precentor pulled
+him back, saying, "You'll do nothing o' the kind, Hendry Munn; you'll
+come awa wi' me now to the manse."
+
+"It's mair than me and Peter'll do, then," said Spens, who had been
+consulting with the other farmer. "We're gaun as straucht hame as the
+darkness'll let us."
+
+With few more words the Session parted, Spens and Tosh setting off for
+their farms, and Hendry accompanying the precentor. No one will ever
+know where Dow went. I can fancy him, however, returning to the wood,
+and there drawing rein. I can fancy his mind made up to watch the
+mudhouse until Gavin and the gypsy separated, and then pounce upon
+her. I daresay his whole plot could be condensed into a sentence, "If
+she's got rid o' this nicht, we may cheat the Session yet." But this
+is mere surmise. All I know is that he waited near Nanny's house, and
+by and by heard another trap coming up Windyghoul. That was just
+before the ten o'clock bell began to ring.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Two.
+
+LEADING SWIFTLY TO THE APPALLING MARRIAGE.
+
+
+The little minister bowed his head in assent when Babbie's cry, "Oh,
+Gavin, do you?" leapt in front of her unselfish wish that he should
+care for her no more.
+
+"But that matters very little now," he said.
+
+She was his to do with as he willed; and, perhaps, the joy of knowing
+herself loved still, begot a wild hope that he would refuse to give
+her up. If so, these words laid it low, but even the sentence they
+passed upon her could not kill the self-respect that would be hers
+henceforth. "That matters very little now," the man said, but to the
+woman it seemed to matter more than anything else in the world.
+
+Throughout the remainder of this interview until the end came, Gavin
+never faltered. His duty and hers lay so plainly before him that there
+could be no straying from it. Did Babbie think him strangely calm? At
+the Glen Quharity gathering I once saw Rob Angus lift a boulder with
+such apparent ease that its weight was discredited, until the cry
+arose that the effort had dislocated his arm. Perhaps Gavin's
+quietness deceived the Egyptian similarly. Had he stamped, she might
+have understood better what he suffered, standing there on the hot
+embers of his passion.
+
+"We must try to make amends now," he said gravely, "for the wrong we
+have done."
+
+"The wrong I have done," she said, correcting him. "You will make it
+harder for me if you blame yourself. How vile I was in those days!"
+
+"Those days," she called them, they seemed so far away.
+
+"Do not cry, Babbie," Gavin replied, gently. "He knew what you were,
+and why, and He pities you. 'For His anger endureth but a moment: in
+His favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in
+the morning.'"
+
+"Not to me."
+
+"Yes, to you," he answered. "Babbie, you will return to the Spittal
+now, and tell Lord Rintoul everything."
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"Not because I wish it, but because it is right. He must be told that
+you do not love him."
+
+"I never pretended to him that I did," Babbie said, looking up. "Oh,"
+she added, with emphasis, "he knows that. He thinks me incapable of
+caring for any one."
+
+"And that is why he must be told of me," Gavin replied. "You are no
+longer the woman you were, Babbie, and you know it, and I know it, but
+he does not know it. He shall know it before he decides whether he is
+to marry you."
+
+Babbie looked at Gavin, and wondered he did not see that this decision
+lay with him.
+
+"Nevertheless," she said, "the wedding will take place to-morrow; if
+it did not, Lord Rintoul would be the scorn of his friends."
+
+"If it does," the minister answered, "he will be the scorn of himself.
+Babbie, there is a chance."
+
+"There is no chance," she told him. "I shall be back at the Spittal
+without any one's knowing of my absence, and when I begin to tell him
+of you, he will tremble, lest it means my refusal to marry him; when
+he knows it does not, he will wonder only why I told him anything."
+
+"He will ask you to take time----"
+
+"No, he will ask me to put on my wedding-dress. You must not think
+anything else possible."
+
+"So be it, then," Gavin said firmly.
+
+"Yes, it will be better so," Babbie answered, and then, seeing him
+misunderstand her meaning, exclaimed reproachfully, "I was not
+thinking of myself. In the time to come, whatever be my lot, I shall
+have the one consolation, that this is best for you. Think of your
+mother."
+
+"She will love you," Gavin said, "when I tell her of you."
+
+"Yes," said Babbie, wringing her hands; "she will almost love me, but
+for what? For not marrying you. That is the only reason any one in
+Thrums will have for wishing me well."
+
+"No others," Gavin answered, "will ever know why I remained
+unmarried."
+
+"Will you never marry?" Babbie asked, exultingly. "Ah!" she cried,
+ashamed, "but you must."
+
+"Never."
+
+Well, many a man and many a woman has made that vow in similar
+circumstances, and not all have kept it. But shall we who are old
+smile cynically at the brief and burning passion of the young? "The
+day," you say, "will come when--" Good sir, hold your peace. Their
+agony was great and now is dead, and, maybe, they have forgotten where
+it lies buried; but dare you answer lightly when I ask you which of
+these things is saddest?
+
+Babbie believed his "Never," and, doubtless, thought no worse of him
+for it; but she saw no way of comforting him save by disparagement of
+herself.
+
+"You must think of your congregation," she said. "A minister with a
+gypsy wife----"
+
+"Would have knocked them about with a flail," Gavin interposed,
+showing his teeth at the thought of the precentor, "until they did her
+reverence."
+
+She shook her head, and told him of her meeting with Micah Dow. It
+silenced him; not, however, on account of its pathos, as she thought,
+but because it interpreted the riddle of Rob's behavior.
+
+"Nevertheless," he said ultimately, "my duty is not to do what is
+right in my people's eyes, but what seems right in my own."
+
+Babbie had not heard him.
+
+"I saw a face at the window just now," she whispered, drawing closer
+to him.
+
+"There was no face there; the very thought of Rob Dow raises him
+before you," Gavin answered reassuringly, though Rob was nearer at
+that moment than either of them thought.
+
+"I must go away at once," she said, still with her eyes on the window.
+"No, no, you shall not come or stay with me; it is you who are in
+danger."
+
+"Do not fear for me."
+
+"I must, if you will not. Before you came in, did I not hear you speak
+of a meeting you had to attend to-night?"
+
+"My pray--" His teeth met on the word; so abruptly did it conjure up
+the forgotten prayer-meeting that before the shock could reach his
+mind he stood motionless, listening for the bell. For one instant all
+that had taken place since he last heard it might have happened
+between two of its tinkles; Babbie passed from before him like a
+figure in a panorama, and he saw, instead, a congregation in their
+pews.
+
+"What do you see?" Babbie cried in alarm, for he seemed to be gazing
+at the window.
+
+"Only you," he replied, himself again; "I am coming with you."
+
+"You must let me go alone," she entreated; "if not for your own
+safety"--but it was only him she considered--"then for the sake of
+Lord Rintoul. Were you and I to be seen together now, his name and
+mine might suffer."
+
+It was an argument the minister could not answer save by putting his
+hands over his face; his distress made Babbie strong; she moved to the
+door, trying to smile.
+
+"Go, Babbie!" Gavin said, controlling his voice, though it had been a
+smile more pitiful than her tears. "God has you in His keeping; it is
+not His will to give me this to bear for you."
+
+They were now in the garden.
+
+"Do not think of me as unhappy," she said; "it will be happiness to me
+to try to be all you would have me be."
+
+He ought to have corrected her. "All that God would have me be," is
+what she should have said. But he only replied, "You will be a good
+woman, and none such can be altogether unhappy; God sees to that."
+
+He might have kissed her, and perhaps she thought so.
+
+"I am--I am going now, dear," she said, and came back a step because
+he did not answer; then she went on, and was out of his sight at three
+yards' distance. Neither of them heard the approaching dogcart.
+
+"You see, I am bearing it quite cheerfully," she said. "I shall have
+everything a woman loves; do not grieve for me so much."
+
+Gavin dared not speak nor move. Never had he found life so hard; but
+he was fighting with the ignoble in himself, and winning. She opened
+the gate, and it might have been a signal to the dogcart to stop. They
+both heard a dog barking, and then the voice of Lord Rintoul:
+
+"That is a light in the window. Jump down, McKenzie, and inquire."
+
+Gavin took one step nearer Babbie and stopped. He did not see how all
+her courage went from her, so that her knees yielded, and she held
+out her arms to him, but he heard a great sob and then his name.
+
+"Gavin, I am afraid."
+
+Gavin understood now, and I say he would have been no man to leave her
+after that; only a moment was allowed him, and it was their last
+chance on earth. He took it. His arm went round his beloved, and he
+drew her away from Nanny's.
+
+McKenzie found both house and garden empty. "And yet," he said, "I
+swear some one passed the window as we sighted it."
+
+"Waste no more time," cried the impatient earl. "We must be very near
+the hill now. You will have to lead the horse, McKenzie, in this
+darkness; the dog may find the way through the broom for us."
+
+"The dog has run on," McKenzie replied, now in an evil temper. "Who
+knows, it may be with her now? So we must feel our way cautiously;
+there is no call for capsizing the trap in our haste." But there was
+call for haste if they were to reach the gypsy encampment before Gavin
+and Babbie were made man and wife over the tongs.
+
+The Spittal dogcart rocked as it dragged its way through the broom.
+Rob Dow followed. The ten o'clock bell began to ring.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Three.
+
+WHILE THE TEN O'CLOCK BELL WAS RINGING.
+
+  _In the square and wynds--weavers in groups_:
+
+
+"No, no, Davit, Mr. Dishart hadna felt the blow the piper gave him
+till he ascended the pulpit to conduct the prayer-meeting for rain,
+and then he fainted awa. Tammas Whamond and Peter Tosh carried him to
+the Session-house. Ay, an awful scene."
+
+"How did the minister no come to the meeting? I wonder how you could
+expect it, Snecky, and his mother taen so suddenly ill; he's at her
+bedside, but the doctor has little hope."
+
+"This is what has occurred, Tailor: Mr. Dishart never got the length
+of the pulpit. He fell in a swound on the vestry floor. What caused
+it? Oh, nothing but the heat. Thrums is so dry that one spark would
+set it in a blaze."
+
+"I canna get at the richts o' what keeped him frae the meeting, Femie,
+but it had something to do wi' an Egyptian on the hill. Very like he
+had been trying to stop the gypsy marriage there. I gaed to the manse
+to speir at Jean what was wrang, but I'm thinking I telled her mair
+than she could tell me."
+
+"Man, man, Andrew, the wite o't lies wi' Peter Tosh. He thocht we was
+to hae sic a terrible rain that he implored the minister no to pray
+for it, and so angry was Mr. Dishart that he ordered the whole Session
+out o' the kirk. I saw them in Couthie's close, and michty dour they
+looked."
+
+"Yes, as sure as death, Tammas Whamond locked the kirk-door in Mr.
+Dishart's face."
+
+"I'm a' shaking! And small wonder, Marget, when I've heard this minute
+that Mr. Dishart's been struck by lichtning while looking for Rob Dow.
+He's no killed, but, woe's me! they say he'll never preach again."
+
+"Nothing o' the kind. It was Rob that the lichtning struck dead in the
+doctor's machine. The horse wasna touched; it came tearing down the
+Roods wi' the corpse sitting in the machine like a living man."
+
+"What are you listening to, woman? Is it to a dog barking? I've heard
+it this while, but it's far awa."
+
+  _In the manse kitchen_:
+
+"Jean, did you not hear me ring? I want you to--Why are you staring
+out at the window, Jean?"
+
+"I--I was just hearkening to the ten o'clock bell, ma'am."
+
+"I never saw you doing nothing before! Put the heater in the fire,
+Jean. I want to iron the minister's neckcloths. The prayer-meeting is
+long in coming out, is it not?"
+
+"The--the drouth, ma'am, has been so cruel hard."
+
+"And, to my shame, I am so comfortable that I almost forgot how others
+are suffering. But my son never forgets, Jean. You are not crying, are
+you?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Bring the iron to the parlor, then. And if the minis--Why did you
+start, Jean? I only heard a dog barking."
+
+"I thocht, ma'am--at first I thocht it was Mr. Dishart opening the
+door. Ay, it's just a dog; some gypsy dog on the hill, I'm thinking,
+for sound would carry far the nicht."
+
+"Even you, Jean, are nervous at nights, I see, if there is no man in
+the house. We shall hear no more distant dogs barking, I warrant, when
+the minister comes home."
+
+"When he comes home, ma'am."
+
+  _On the middle of a hill--a man and a woman_:
+
+"Courage, beloved; we are nearly there."
+
+"But, Gavin, I cannot see the encampment."
+
+"The night is too dark."
+
+"But the gypsy fires?"
+
+"They are in the Toad's-hole."
+
+"Listen to that dog barking."
+
+"There are several dogs at the encampment, Babbie."
+
+"There is one behind us. See, there it is!"
+
+"I have driven it away, dear. You are trembling."
+
+"What we are doing frightens me, Gavin. It is at your heels again!"
+
+"It seems to know you."
+
+"Oh, Gavin, it is Lord Rintoul's collie Snap. It will bite you."
+
+"No, I have driven it back again. Probably the earl is following us."
+
+"Gavin, I cannot go on with this."
+
+"Quicker, Babbie."
+
+"Leave me, dear, and save yourself."
+
+"Lean on me, Babbie."
+
+"Oh, Gavin, is there no way but this?"
+
+"No sure way."
+
+"Even though we are married to-night----"
+
+"We shall be married in five minutes, and then, whatever befall, he
+cannot have you."
+
+"But after?"
+
+"I will take you straight to the manse, to my mother."
+
+"Were it not for that dog, I should think we were alone on the hill."
+
+"But we are not. See, there are the gypsy fires."
+
+  _On the west side of the hill--two figures_:
+
+"Tammas, Tammas Whamond, I've lost you. Should we gang to the manse
+down the fields?"
+
+"Wheesht, Hendry!"
+
+"What are you listening for?"
+
+"I heard a dog barking."
+
+"Only a gypsy dog, Tammas, barking at the coming storm."
+
+"The gypsy dogs are all tied up, and this one's atween us and the
+Toad's-hole. What was that?"
+
+"It was nothing but the rubbing of the branches in the cemetery on ane
+another. It's said, trees mak' that fearsome sound when they're
+terrified."
+
+"It was a dog barking at somebody that's stoning it. I ken that sound,
+Hendry Munn."
+
+"May I die the death, Tammas Whamond, if a great drap o' rain didna
+strike me the now, and I swear it was warm. I'm for running hame."
+
+"I'm for seeing who drove awa that dog. Come back wi' me, Hendry."
+
+"I winna. There's no a soul on the hill but you and me and thae
+daffing and drinking gypsies. How do you no answer me, Tammas? Hie,
+Tammas Whamond, whaur are you? He's gone! Ay, then I'll mak' tracks
+hame."
+
+  _In the broom--a dogcart_:
+
+"Do you see nothing yet, McKenzie?"
+
+"Scarce the broom at my knees, Rintoul. There is not a light on the
+hill."
+
+"McKenzie, can that schoolmaster have deceived us?"
+
+"It is probable."
+
+"Urge on the horse, however. There is a road through the broom, I
+know. Have we stuck again?"
+
+"Rintoul, she is not here. I promised to help you to bring her back to
+the Spittal before this escapade became known, but we have failed to
+find her. If she is to be saved, it must be by herself. I daresay she
+has returned already. Let me turn the horse's head. There is a storm
+brewing."
+
+"I will search this gypsy encampment first, if it is on the hill.
+Hark! that was a dog's bark. Yes, it is Snap; but he would not bark at
+nothing. Why do you look behind you so often, McKenzie?"
+
+"For some time, Rintoul, it has seemed to me that we are being
+followed. Listen!"
+
+"I hear nothing. At last, McKenzie, at last, we are out of the
+broom."
+
+"And as I live, Rintoul, I see the gypsy lights!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It might have been a lantern that was flashed across the hill. Then
+all that part of the world went suddenly on fire. Everything was
+horribly distinct in that white light. The firs of Caddam were so near
+that it seemed to have arrested them in a silent march upon the hill.
+The grass would not hide a pebble. The ground was scored with shadows
+of men and things. Twice the light flickered and recovered itself. A
+red serpent shot across it, and then again black night fell.
+
+The hill had been illumined thus for nearly half a minute. During that
+time not even a dog stirred. The shadows of human beings lay on the
+ground as motionless as logs. What had been revealed seemed less a
+gypsy marriage than a picture. Or was it that during the ceremony
+every person on the hill had been turned into stone? The gypsy king,
+with his arm upraised, had not had time to let it fall. The men and
+women behind him had their mouths open, as if struck when on the point
+of calling out. Lord Rintoul had risen in the dogcart and was leaning
+forward. One of McKenzie's feet was on the shaft. The man crouching
+in the dogcart's wake had flung up his hands to protect his face. The
+precentor, his neck outstretched, had a hand on each knee. All eyes
+were fixed, as in the death glare, on Gavin and Babbie, who stood
+before the king, their hands clasped over the tongs. Fear was
+petrified on the woman's face, determination on the man's.
+
+They were all released by the crack of the thunder, but for another
+moment none could have swaggered.
+
+"That was Lord Rintoul in the dogcart," Babbie whispered, drawing in
+her breath.
+
+"Yes, dear," Gavin answered resolutely, "and now is the time for me to
+have my first and last talk with him. Remain here, Babbie. Do not move
+till I come back."
+
+"But, Gavin, he has seen. I fear him still."
+
+"He cannot touch you now, Babbie. You are my wife."
+
+In the vivid light Gavin had thought the dogcart much nearer than it
+was. He called Lord Rintoul's name, but got no answer. There were
+shouts behind, gypsies running from the coming rain, dogs whining, but
+silence in front. The minister moved on some paces. Away to the left
+he heard voices--
+
+"Who was the man, McKenzie?"
+
+"My lord, I have lost sight of you. This is not the way to the camp."
+
+"Tell me, McKenzie, that you did not see what I saw."
+
+"Rintoul, I beseech you to turn back. We are too late."
+
+"We are not too late."
+
+Gavin broke through the darkness between them and him, but they were
+gone. He called to them, and stopped to listen to their feet.
+
+"Is that you, Gavin?" Babbie asked just then.
+
+For reply, the man who had crept up to her clapped his hand upon her
+mouth. Only the beginning of a scream escaped from her. A strong arm
+drove her quickly southward.
+
+Gavin heard her cry, and ran back to the encampment. Babbie was gone.
+None of the gypsies had seen her since the darkness came back. He
+rushed hither and thither with a torch that only showed his distracted
+face to others. He flung up his arms in appeal for another moment of
+light; then he heard Babbie scream again, and this time it was from a
+distance. He dashed after her; he heard a trap speeding down the green
+sward through the broom.
+
+Lord Rintoul had kidnapped Babbie. Gavin had no other thought as he
+ran after the dogcart from which the cry had come. The earl's dog
+followed him, snapping at his heels. The rain began.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Four.
+
+THE GREAT RAIN.
+
+
+Gavin passed on through Windyghoul, thinking in his frenzy that he
+still heard the trap. In a rain that came down like iron rods every
+other sound was beaten dead. He slipped, and before he could regain
+his feet the dog bit him. To protect himself from dikes and trees and
+other horrors of the darkness he held his arm before him, but soon it
+was driven to his side. Wet whips cut his brow so that he had to
+protect it with his hands, until it had to bear the lash again, for
+they would not. Now he had forced up his knees, and would have
+succumbed but for a dread of being pinned to the earth. This fight
+between the man and the rain went on all night, and long before it
+ended the man was past the power of thinking.
+
+In the ringing of the ten o'clock bell Gavin had lived the seventh
+part of a man's natural life. Only action was required of him. That
+accomplished, his mind had begun to work again, when suddenly the loss
+of Babbie stopped it, as we may put out a fire with a great coal. The
+last thing he had reflected about was a dogcart in motion, and,
+consequently, this idea clung to him. His church, his mother, were
+lost knowledge of, but still he seemed to hear the trap in front.
+
+The rain increased in violence, appalling even those who heard it from
+under cover. However rain may storm, though it be an army of archers
+battering roofs and windows, it is only terrifying when the noise
+swells every instant. In those hours of darkness it again and again
+grew in force and doubled its fury, and was louder, louder, and
+louder, until its next attack was to be more than men and women could
+listen to. They held each other's hands and stood waiting. Then
+abruptly it abated, and people could speak. I believe a rain that
+became heavier every second for ten minutes would drive many listeners
+mad. Gavin was in it on a night that tried us repeatedly for quite
+half that time.
+
+By and by even the vision of Babbie in the dogcart was blotted out. If
+nothing had taken its place, he would not have gone on probably; and
+had he turned back objectless, his strength would have succumbed to
+the rain. Now he saw Babbie and Rintoul being married by a minister
+who was himself, and there was a fair company looking on, and always
+when he was on the point of shouting to himself, whom he could see
+clearly, that this woman was already married, the rain obscured his
+words and the light went out. Presently the ceremony began again,
+always to stop at the same point. He saw it in the lightning-flash
+that had startled the hill. It gave him courage to fight his way
+onward, because he thought he must be heard if he could draw nearer to
+the company.
+
+A regiment of cavalry began to trouble him. He heard it advancing from
+the Spittal, but was not dismayed, for it was, as yet, far distant.
+The horsemen came thundering on, filling the whole glen of Quharity.
+Now he knew that they had been sent out to ride him down. He paused in
+dread, until they had swept past him. They came back to look for him,
+riding more furiously than ever, and always missed him, yet his fears
+of the next time were not lessened. They were only the rain.
+
+All through the night the dog followed him. He would forget it for a
+time, and then it would be so close that he could see it dimly. He
+never heard it bark, but it snapped at him, and a grin had become the
+expression of its face. He stoned it, he even flung himself at it, he
+addressed it in caressing tones, and always with the result that it
+disappeared, to come back presently.
+
+He found himself walking in a lake, and now even the instinct of
+self-preservation must have been flickering, for he waded on,
+rejoicing merely in getting rid of the dog. Something in the water
+rose and struck him. Instead of stupefying him, the blow brought him
+to his senses, and he struggled for his life. The ground slipped
+beneath his feet many times, but at last he was out of the water. That
+he was out in a flood he did not realize; yet he now acted like one in
+full possession of his faculties. When his feet sank in water, he drew
+back; and many times he sought shelter behind banks and rocks, first
+testing their firmness with his hands. Once a torrent of stones,
+earth, and heather carried him down a hillside until he struck against
+a tree. He twined his arms round it, and had just done so when it fell
+with him. After that, when he touched trees growing in water, he fled
+from them, thus probably saving himself from death.
+
+What he heard now might have been the roll and crack of the thunder.
+It sounded in his ear like nothing else. But it was really something
+that swept down the hill in roaring spouts of water, and it passed on
+both sides of him so that at one moment, had he paused, it would have
+crashed into him, and at another he was only saved by stopping. He
+felt that the struggle in the dark was to go on till the crack of
+doom.
+
+Then he cast himself upon the ground. It moved beneath him like some
+great animal, and he rose and stole away from it. Several times did
+this happen. The stones against which his feet struck seemed to
+acquire life from his touch. So strong had he become, or so weak all
+other things, that whatever clump he laid hands on by which to pull
+himself out of the water was at once rooted up.
+
+The daylight would not come. He longed passionately for it. He tried
+to remember what it was like, and could not; he had been blind so
+long. It was away in front somewhere, and he was struggling to
+overtake it. He expected to see it from a dark place, when he would
+rush forward to bathe his arms in it, and then the elements that were
+searching the world for him would see him and he would perish. But
+death did not seem too great a penalty to pay for light.
+
+And at last day did come back, gray and drear. He saw suddenly once
+more. I think he must have been wandering the glen with his eyes shut,
+as one does shut them involuntarily against the hidden dangers of
+black night. How different was daylight from what he had expected! He
+looked, and then shut his dazed eyes again, for the darkness was less
+horrible than the day. Had he indeed seen, or only dreamed that he
+saw? Once more he looked to see what the world was like; and the sight
+that met his eyes was so mournful that he who had fought through the
+long night now sank hopeless and helpless among the heather. The dog
+was not far away, and it, too, lost heart. Gavin held out his hand,
+and Snap crept timidly toward him. He unloosened his coat, and the dog
+nestled against him, cowed and shivering, hiding its head from the
+day. Thus they lay, and the rain beat upon them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Five.
+
+THE GLEN AT BREAK OF DAY.
+
+
+My first intimation that the burns were in flood came from Waster
+Lunny, close on the strike of ten o'clock. This was some minutes
+before they had any rain in Thrums. I was in the school-house, now
+piecing together the puzzle Lord Rintoul had left with me, and anon
+starting upright as McKenzie's hand seemed to tighten on my arm.
+Waster Lunny had been whistling to me (with his fingers in his mouth)
+for some time before I heard him and hurried out. I was surprised and
+pleased, knowing no better, to be met on the threshold by a whisk of
+rain.
+
+The night was not then so dark but that when I reached the Quharity I
+could see the farmer take shape on the other side of it. He wanted me
+to exult with him, I thought, in the end of the drought, and I shouted
+that I would fling him the stilts.
+
+"It's yoursel' that wants them," he answered excitedly, "if you're
+fleid to be left alone in the school-house the nicht. Do you hear me,
+dominie? There has been frichtsome rain among the hills, and the Bog
+burn is coming down like a sea. It has carried awa the miller's brig,
+and the steading o' Muckle Pirley is standing three feet in water."
+
+"You're dreaming, man," I roared back, but beside his news he held my
+doubts of no account.
+
+"The Retery's in flood," he went on, "and running wild through Hazel
+Wood; T'nowdunnie's tattie field's out o' sicht, and at the Kirkton
+they're fleid they've lost twa kye."
+
+"There has been no rain here," I stammered, incredulously.
+
+"It's coming now," he replied. "And listen: the story's out that the
+Backbone has fallen into the loch. You had better cross, dominie, and
+thole out the nicht wi' us."
+
+The Backbone was a piece of mountain-side overhanging a loch among the
+hills, and legend said that it would one day fall forward and squirt
+all the water into the glen. Something of the kind had happened, but I
+did not believe it then; with little wit I pointed to the shallow
+Quharity.
+
+"It may come down at any minute," the farmer answered, "and syne, mind
+you, you'll be five miles frae Waster Lunny, for there'll be no
+crossing but by the Brig o' March. If you winna come, I maun awa back.
+I mauna bide langer on the wrang side o' the Moss ditch, though it has
+been as dry this month back as a rabbit's roady. But if you--" His
+voice changed. "God's sake, man," he cried, "you're ower late. Look at
+that! Dinna look--run, run!"
+
+If I had not run before he bade me, I might never have run again on
+earth. I had seen a great shadowy yellow river come riding down the
+Quharity. I sprang from it for my life; and when next I looked behind,
+it was upon a turbulent loch, the further bank lost in darkness. I was
+about to shout to Waster Lunny, when a monster rose in the torrent
+between me and the spot where he had stood. It frightened me to
+silence until it fell, when I knew it was but a tree that had been
+flung on end by the flood. For a time there was no answer to my cries,
+and I thought the farmer had been swept away. Then I heard his
+whistle, and back I ran recklessly through the thickening darkness to
+the school-house. When I saw the tree rise, I had been on ground
+hardly wet as yet with the rain; but by the time Waster Lunny sent
+that reassuring whistle to me I was ankle-deep in water, and the rain
+was coming down like hail. I saw no lightning.
+
+For the rest of the night I was only out once, when I succeeded in
+reaching the hen-house and brought all my fowls safely to the kitchen,
+except a hen which would not rise off her young. Between us we had the
+kitchen floor, a pool of water; and the rain had put out my fires
+already, as effectually as if it had been an overturned broth-pot.
+That I never took off my clothes that night I need not say, though of
+what was happening in the glen I could only guess. A flutter against
+my window now and again, when the rain had abated, told me of another
+bird that had flown there to die; and with Waster Lunny, I kept up
+communication by waving a light, to which he replied in a similar
+manner. Before morning, however, he ceased to answer my signals, and I
+feared some catastrophe had occurred at the farm. As it turned out,
+the family was fighting with the flood for the year's shearing of
+wool, half of which eventually went down the waters, with the
+wool-shed on top of it.
+
+The school-house stands too high to fear any flood, but there were
+moments when I thought the rain would master it. Not only the windows
+and the roof were rattling then, but all the walls, and I was like one
+in a great drum. When the rain was doing its utmost, I heard no other
+sound; but when the lull came, there was the wash of a heavy river, or
+a crack as of artillery that told of landslips, or the plaintive cry
+of the peesweep as it rose in the air, trying to entice the waters
+away from its nest.
+
+It was a dreary scene that met my gaze at break of day. Already the
+Quharity had risen six feet, and in many parts of the glen it was two
+hundred yards wide. Waster Lunny's cornfield looked like a bog grown
+over with rushes, and what had been his turnips had become a lake with
+small islands in it. No dike stood whole except one that the farmer,
+unaided, had built in a straight line from the road to the top of
+Mount Bare, and my own, the further end of which dipped in water. Of
+the plot of firs planted fifty years earlier to help on Waster Lunny's
+crops, only a triangle had withstood the night.
+
+Even with the aid of my field-glass I could not estimate the damage on
+more distant farms, for the rain, though now thin and soft, as it
+continued for six days, was still heavy and of a brown color. After
+breakfast--which was interrupted by my bantam cock's twice spilling my
+milk--I saw Waster Lunny and his son, Matthew, running towards the
+shepherd's house with ropes in their hands. The house, I thought, must
+be in the midst beyond; and then I sickened, knowing all at once that
+it should be on this side of the mist. When I had nerve to look again,
+I saw that though the roof had fallen in, the shepherd was astride one
+of the walls, from which he was dragged presently through the water by
+the help of the ropes. I remember noticing that he returned to his
+house with the rope still about him, and concluded that he had gone
+back to save some of his furniture. I was wrong, however. There was
+too much to be done at the farm to allow this, but Waster Lunny had
+consented to Duncan's forcing his way back to the shieling to stop the
+clock. To both men it seemed horrible to let a clock go on ticking in
+a deserted house.
+
+Having seen this rescue accomplished, I was letting my glass roam in
+the opposite direction, when one of its shakes brought into view
+something on my own side of the river. I looked at it long, and saw it
+move slightly. Was it a human being? No, it was a dog. No, it was a
+dog and something else. I hurried out to see more clearly, and after a
+first glance the glass shook so in my hands that I had to rest it on
+the dike. For a full minute, I daresay, did I look through the glass
+without blinking, and then I needed to look no more. That black patch
+was, indeed, Gavin.
+
+He lay quite near the school-house, but I had to make a circuit of
+half a mile to reach him. It was pitiful to see the dog doing its best
+to come to me, and falling every few steps. The poor brute was
+discolored almost beyond recognition; and when at last it reached me,
+it lay down at my feet and licked them. I stepped over it and ran on
+recklessly to Gavin. At first I thought he was dead. If tears rolled
+down my cheeks, they were not for him.
+
+I was no strong man even in those days, but I carried him to the
+school-house, the dog crawling after us. Gavin I put upon my bed, and
+I lay down beside him, holding him close to me, that some of the heat
+of my body might be taken in by his. When he was able to look at me,
+however, it was not with understanding, and in vain did my anxiety
+press him with questions. Only now and again would some word in my
+speech strike upon his brain and produce at least an echo. To "Did you
+meet Lord Rintoul's dogcart?" he sat up, saying quickly:
+
+"Listen, the dogcart!"
+
+"Egyptian" was not that forenoon among the words he knew, and I did
+not think of mentioning "hill." At "rain" he shivered; but "Spittal"
+was what told me most.
+
+"He has taken her back," he replied at once, from which I learned that
+Gavin now knew as much of Babbie as I did.
+
+I made him as comfortable as possible, and despairing of learning
+anything from him in his present state, I let him sleep. Then I went
+out into the rain, very anxious, and dreading what he might have to
+tell me when he woke. I waded and jumped my way as near to the farm as
+I dared go, and Waster Lunny, seeing me, came to the water's edge. At
+this part the breadth of the flood was not forty yards, yet for a
+time our voices could no more cross its roar than one may send a
+snowball through a stone wall. I know not whether the river then
+quieted for a space, or if it was only that the ears grow used to dins
+as the eyes distinguish the objects in a room that is at first black
+to them; but after a little we were able to shout our remarks across,
+much as boys fling pebbles, many to fall into the water, but one
+occasionally to reach the other side. Waster Lunny would have talked
+of the flood, but I had not come here for that.
+
+"How were you home so early from the prayer-meeting last night?" I
+bawled.
+
+"No meeting ... I came straucht hame ... but terrible stories ... Mr.
+Dishart," was all I caught after Waster Lunny had flung his words
+across a dozen times.
+
+I could not decide whether it would be wise to tell him that Gavin was
+in the school-house, and while I hesitated he continued to shout:
+
+"Some woman ... the Session ... Lang Tammas ... God forbid ... maun
+back to the farm ... byre running like a mill-dam."
+
+He signed to me that he must be off, but my signals delayed him, and
+after much trouble he got my question, "Any news about Lord Rintoul?"
+My curiosity about the earl must have surprised him, but he answered:
+
+"Marriage is to be the day ... cannon."
+
+I signed that I did not grasp his meaning.
+
+"A cannon is to be fired as soon as they're man and wife," he
+bellowed. "We'll hear it."
+
+With that we parted. On my way home, I remember, I stepped on a brood
+of drowned partridge. I was only out half an hour, but I had to wring
+my clothes as if they were fresh from the tub.
+
+The day wore on, and I did not disturb the sleeper. A dozen times, I
+suppose, I had to relight my fire of wet peats and roots; but I had
+plenty of time to stare out at the window, plenty of time to think.
+Probably Gavin's life depended on his sleeping, but that was not what
+kept my hands off him. Knowing so little of what had happened in
+Thrums since I left it, I was forced to guess, and my conclusion was
+that the earl had gone off with his own, and that Gavin in a frenzy
+had followed them. My wisest course, I thought, was to let him sleep
+until I heard the cannon, when his struggle for a wife must end. Fifty
+times at least did I stand regarding him as he slept; and if I did not
+pity his plight sufficiently, you know the reason. What were
+Margaret's sufferings at this moment? Was she wringing her hands for
+her son lost in the flood, her son in disgrace with the congregation?
+By one o'clock no cannon had sounded, and my suspense had become
+intolerable. I shook Gavin awake, and even as I shook him demanded a
+knowledge of all that had happened since we parted at Nanny's gate.
+
+"How long ago is that?" he asked, with bewilderment.
+
+"It was last night," I answered. "This morning I found you senseless
+on the hillside, and brought you here, to the Glen Quharity
+school-house. That dog was with you."
+
+He looked at the dog, but I kept my eyes on him, and I saw intelligence
+creep back, like a blush, into his face.
+
+"Now I remember," he said, shuddering. "You have proved yourself my
+friend, sir, twice in the four and twenty hours."
+
+"Only once, I fear," I replied gloomily. "I was no friend when I sent
+you to the earl's bride last night."
+
+"You know who she is?" he cried, clutching me, and finding it agony to
+move his limbs.
+
+"I know now," I said, and had to tell him how I knew before he would
+answer another question. Then I became listener, and you who read know
+to what alarming story.
+
+"And all that time," I cried reproachfully, when he had done, "you
+gave your mother not a thought."
+
+"Not a thought," he answered; and I saw that he pronounced a harsher
+sentence on himself than could have come from me. "All that time!" he
+repeated, after a moment. "It was only a few minutes, while the ten
+o'clock bell was ringing."
+
+"Only a few minutes," I said, "but they changed the channel of the
+Quharity, and perhaps they have done not less to you."
+
+"That may be," he answered gravely, "but it is of the present I must
+think just now. Mr. Ogilvy, what assurance have I, while lying here
+helpless, that the marriage at the Spittal is not going on?"
+
+"None, I hope," I said to myself, and listened longingly for the
+cannon. But to him I only pointed out that no woman need go through a
+form of marriage against her will.
+
+"Rintoul carried her off with no possible purport," he said, "but to
+set my marriage at defiance, and she has had a conviction always that
+to marry me would be to ruin me. It was only in the shiver Lord
+Rintoul's voice in the darkness sent through her that she yielded to
+my wishes. If she thought that marriage last night could be annulled
+by another to-day, she would consent to the second, I believe, to save
+me from the effects of the first. You are incredulous, sir; but you do
+not know of what sacrifices love is capable."
+
+Something of that I knew, but I did not tell him. I had seen from his
+manner rather than his words that he doubted the validity of the gypsy
+marriage, which the king had only consented to celebrate because
+Babbie was herself an Egyptian. The ceremony had been interrupted in
+the middle.
+
+"It was no marriage," I said, with a confidence I was far from
+feeling.
+
+"In the sight of God," he replied excitedly, "we took each other for
+man and wife."
+
+I had to hold him down in bed.
+
+"You are too weak to stand, man," I said, "and yet you think you could
+start off this minute for the Spittal."
+
+"I must go," he cried. "She is my wife. That impious marriage may have
+taken place already."
+
+"Oh, that it had!" was my prayer. "It has not," I said to him. "A
+cannon is to be fired immediately after the ceremony, and all the glen
+will hear it."
+
+I spoke on the impulse, thinking to allay his desire to be off; but he
+said, "Then I may yet be in time." Somewhat cruelly I let him rise,
+that he might realize his weakness. Every bone in him cried out at his
+first step, and he sank into a chair.
+
+"You will go to the Spittal for me?" he implored.
+
+"I will not," I told him. "You are asking me to fling away my life."
+
+To prove my words I opened the door, and he saw what the flood was
+doing. Nevertheless, he rose and tottered several times across the
+room, trying to revive his strength. Though every bit of him was
+aching, I saw that he would make the attempt.
+
+"Listen to me," I said. "Lord Rintoul can maintain with some reason
+that it was you rather than he who abducted Babbie. Nevertheless,
+there will not, I am convinced, be any marriage at the Spittal to-day.
+When he carried her off from the Toad's-hole, he acted under impulses
+not dissimilar to those that took you to it. Then, I doubt not, he
+thought possession was all the law, but that scene on the hill has
+staggered him by this morning. Even though she thinks to save you by
+marrying him, he will defer his wedding until he learns the import of
+yours."
+
+I did not believe in my own reasoning, but I would have said anything
+to detain him until that cannon was fired. He seemed to read my
+purpose, for he pushed my arguments from him with his hands, and
+continued to walk painfully to and fro.
+
+"To defer the wedding," he said, "would be to tell all his friends of
+her gypsy origin, and of me. He will risk much to avoid that."
+
+"In any case," I answered, "you must now give some thought to those
+you have forgotten, your mother and your church."
+
+"That must come afterwards," he said firmly. "My first duty is to my
+wife."
+
+The door swung to sharply just then, and he started. He thought it was
+the cannon.
+
+"I wish to God it had been!" I cried, interpreting his thoughts.
+
+"Why do you wish me ill?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," I said solemnly, rising and facing him, and disregarding
+his question, "if that woman is to be your wife, it will be at a cost
+you cannot estimate till you return to Thrums. Do you think that if
+your congregation knew of this gypsy marriage they would have you
+for their minister for another day? Do you enjoy the prospect of
+taking one who might be an earl's wife into poverty--ay, and
+disgraceful poverty? Do you know your mother so little as to think she
+could survive your shame? Let me warn you, sir, of what I see. I see
+another minister in the Auld Licht kirk, I see you and your wife
+stoned through our wynds, stoned from Thrums, as malefactors have been
+chased out of it ere now; and as certainly as I see these things I
+see a hearse standing at the manse door, and stern men denying a son's
+right to help to carry his mother's coffin to it. Go your way, sir;
+but first count the cost."
+
+His face quivered before these blows, but all he said was, "I must
+dree my dreed."
+
+"God is merciful," I went on, "and these things need not be. He is
+more merciful to you, sir, than to some, for the storm that He sent to
+save you is ruining them. And yet the farmers are to-day thanking Him
+for every pound of wool, every blade of corn He has left them, while
+you turn from Him because He would save you, not in your way, but in
+His. It was His hand that stayed your marriage. He meant Babbie for
+the earl; and if it is on her part a loveless match, she only suffers
+for her own sins. Of that scene on the hill no one in Thrums, or in
+the glen, need ever know. Rintoul will see to it that the gypsies
+vanish from these parts forever, and you may be sure the Spittal will
+soon be shut up. He and McKenzie have as much reason as yourself to be
+silent. You, sir, must go back to your congregation, who have heard as
+yet only vague rumors that your presence will dispel. Even your mother
+will remain ignorant of what has happened. Your absence from the
+prayer-meeting you can leave to me to explain."
+
+He was so silent that I thought him mine, but his first words
+undeceived me.
+
+"I thought I had nowhere so keen a friend," he said; "but, Mr. Ogilvy,
+it is devil's work you are pleading. Am I to return to my people to
+act a living lie before them to the end of my days? Do you really
+think that God devastated a glen to give me a chance of becoming a
+villain? No, sir, I am in His hands, and I will do what I think
+right."
+
+"You will be dishonored," I said, "in the sight of God and man."
+
+"Not in God's sight," he replied. "It was a sinless marriage, Mr.
+Ogilvy, and I do not regret it. God ordained that she and I should
+love each other, and He put it into my power to save her from that
+man. I took her as my wife before Him, and in His eyes I am her
+husband. Knowing that, sir, how could I return to Thrums without
+her?"
+
+I had no answer ready for him. I knew that in my grief for Margaret I
+had been advocating an unworthy course, but I would not say so. I went
+gloomily to the door, and there, presently, his hand fell on my
+shoulder.
+
+"Your advice came too late, at any rate," he said. "You forget that
+the precentor was on the hill and saw everything."
+
+It was he who had forgotten to tell me this, and to me it was the most
+direful news of all.
+
+"My God!" I cried. "He will have gone to your mother and told her."
+And straightway I began to lace my boots.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked, staring at me.
+
+"To Thrums," I answered harshly.
+
+"You said that to venture out into the glen was to court death," he
+reminded me.
+
+"What of that?" I said, and hastily put on my coat.
+
+"Mr. Ogilvy," he cried, "I will not allow you to do this for me."
+
+"For you?" I said bitterly. "It is not for you."
+
+I would have gone at once, but he got in front of me, asking, "Did you
+ever know my mother?"
+
+"Long ago," I answered shortly, and he said no more, thinking, I
+suppose, that he knew all. He limped to the door with me, and I had
+only advanced a few steps when I understood better than before what
+were the dangers I was to venture into. Since I spoke to Waster Lunny
+the river had risen several feet, and even the hillocks in his
+turnip-field were now submerged. The mist was creeping down the hills.
+But what warned me most sharply that the flood was not satisfied yet
+was the top of the school-house dike; it was lined with field-mice. I
+turned back, and Gavin, mistaking my meaning, said I did wisely.
+
+"I have not changed my mind," I told him, and then had some difficulty
+in continuing. "I expect," I said, "to reach Thrums safely, even
+though I should be caught in the mist, but I shall have to go round
+by the Kelpie brig in order to get across the river, and it is
+possible that--that something may befall me."
+
+I have all my life been something of a coward, and my voice shook when
+I said this, so that Gavin again entreated me to remain at the
+school-house, saying that if I did not he would accompany me.
+
+"And so increase my danger tenfold?" I pointed out. "No, no, Mr.
+Dishart, I go alone; and if I can do nothing with the congregation, I
+can at least send your mother word that you still live. But if
+anything should happen to me, I want you----"
+
+But I could not say what I had come back to say. I had meant to ask
+him, in the event of my death, to take a hundred pounds which were the
+savings of my life; but now I saw that this might lead to Margaret's
+hearing of me, and so I stayed my words. It was bitter to me this, and
+yet, after all, a little thing when put beside the rest.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Dishart," I said abruptly. I then looked at my desk,
+which contained some trifles that were once Margaret's. "Should
+anything happen to me," I said, "I want that old desk to be destroyed
+unopened."
+
+"Mr. Ogilvy," he answered gently, "you are venturing this because you
+loved my mother. If anything does befall you, be assured that I will
+tell her what you attempted for her sake."
+
+I believe he thought it was to make some such request that I had
+turned back.
+
+"You must tell her nothing about me," I exclaimed, in consternation.
+"Swear that my name will never cross your lips before her. No, that is
+not enough. You must forget me utterly, whether I live or die, lest
+some time you should think of me and she should read your thoughts.
+Swear, man!"
+
+"Must this be?" he said, gazing at me.
+
+"Yes," I answered more calmly, "it must be. For nearly a score of
+years I have been blotted out of your mother's life, and since she
+came to Thrums my one care has been to keep my existence from her. I
+have changed my burying-ground even from Thrums to the glen, lest I
+should die before her, and she, seeing the hearse go by the Tenements,
+might ask, 'Whose funeral is this?'"
+
+In my anxiety to warn him, I had said too much. His face grew haggard,
+and there was fear to speak on it; and I saw, I knew, that some
+damnable suspicion of Margaret----
+
+"She was my wife!" I cried sharply. "We were married by the minister
+of Harvie. You are my son."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Six.
+
+STORY OF THE DOMINIE.
+
+
+When I spoke next, I was back in the school-house, sitting there with
+my bonnet on my head, Gavin looking at me. We had forgotten the cannon
+at last.
+
+In that chair I had anticipated this scene more than once of late. I
+had seen that a time might come when Gavin would have to be told all,
+and I had even said the words aloud, as if he were indeed opposite me.
+So now I was only repeating the tale, and I could tell it without
+emotion, because it was nigh nineteen years old; and I did not look at
+Gavin, for I knew that his manner of taking it could bring no change
+to me.
+
+"Did you never ask your mother," I said, addressing the fire rather
+than him, "why you were called Gavin?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, "it was because she thought Gavin a prettier name
+than Adam."
+
+"No," I said slowly, "it was because Gavin is my name. You were called
+after your father. Do you not remember my taking you one day to the
+shore at Harvie to see the fishermen carried to their boats upon their
+wives' backs, that they might start dry on their journey?"
+
+"No," he had to reply. "I remember the women carrying the men through
+the water to the boats, but I thought it was my father who--I
+mean----"
+
+"I know whom you mean," I said. "That was our last day together, but
+you were not three years old. Yet you remembered me when you came to
+Thrums. You shake your head, but it is true. Between the diets of
+worship that first Sabbath I was introduced to you, and you must have
+had some shadowy recollection of my face, for you asked, 'Surely I saw
+you in church in the forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?' I said 'Yes,' but I had
+not been in the church in the forenoon. You have forgotten even that,
+and yet I treasured it."
+
+I could hear that he was growing impatient, though so far he had been
+more indulgent than I had any right to expect.
+
+"It can all be put into a sentence," I said calmly. "Margaret married
+Adam Dishart, and afterwards, believing herself a widow, she married
+me. You were born, and then Adam Dishart came back."
+
+That is my whole story, and here was I telling it to my son, and not a
+tear between us. It ended abruptly, and I fell to mending the fire.
+
+"When I knew your mother first," I went on, after Gavin had said some
+boyish things that were of no avail to me, "I did not think to end my
+days as a dominie. I was a student at Aberdeen, with the ministry in
+my eye, and sometimes on Saturdays I walked forty miles to Harvie to
+go to church with her. She had another lover, Adam Dishart, a sailor
+turned fisherman; and while I lingered at corners, wondering if I
+could dare to meet her and her mother on their way to church, he would
+walk past with them. He was accompanied always by a lanky black dog,
+which he had brought from a foreign country. He never signed for any
+ship without first getting permission to take it with him, and in
+Harvie they said it did not know the language of the native dogs. I
+have never known a man and dog so attached to each other."
+
+"I remember that black dog," Gavin said. "I have spoken of it to my
+mother, and she shuddered, as if it had once bitten her."
+
+"While Adam strutted by with them," I continued, "I would hang back,
+raging at his assurance or my own timidity; but I lost my next chance
+in the same way. In Margaret's presence something came over me, a kind
+of dryness in the throat, that made me dumb. I have known divinity
+students stricken in the same way, just as they were giving out their
+first text. It is no aid in getting a kirk or wooing a woman.
+
+"If any one in Harvie recalls me now, it is as a hobbledehoy who
+strode along the cliffs, shouting Homer at the sea-mews. With all my
+learning, I, who gave Margaret the name of Lalage, understood women
+less than any fisherman who bandied words with them across a boat. I
+remember a Yule night when both Adam and I were at her mother's
+cottage, and, as we were leaving, he had the audacity to kiss
+Margaret. She ran out of the room, and Adam swaggered off, and when I
+recovered from my horror, I apologized for what he had done. I shall
+never forget how her mother looked at me, and said, 'Ay, Gavin, I see
+they dinna teach everything at Aberdeen.' You will not believe it, but
+I walked away doubting her meaning. I thought more of scholarship then
+than I do now. Adam Dishart taught me its proper place.
+
+"Well, that is the dull man I was; and yet, though Adam was always
+saying and doing the things I was making up my mind to say and do, I
+think Margaret cared more for me. Nevertheless, there was something
+about him that all women seemed to find lovable, a dash that made them
+send him away and then well-nigh run after him. At any rate, I could
+have got her after her mother's death if I had been half a man. But I
+went back to Aberdeen to write a poem about her, and while I was at it
+Adam married her."
+
+I opened my desk and took from it a yellow manuscript.
+
+"Here," I said, "is the poem. You see, I never finished it."
+
+I was fingering the thing grimly when Gavin's eye fell on something
+else in the desk. It was an ungainly clasp-knife, as rusty as if it
+had spent a winter beneath a hedge.
+
+"I seem to remember that knife," he said.
+
+"Yes," I answered, "you should remember it. Well, after three months
+Adam tired of his wife."
+
+I stopped again. This was a story in which only the pauses were
+eloquent.
+
+"Perhaps I have no right to say he tired of her. One day, however, he
+sauntered away from Harvie whistling, his dog at his heels as ever,
+and was not seen again for nearly six years. When I heard of his
+disappearance I packed my books in that kist and went to Harvie, where
+I opened a school. You see, every one but Margaret believed that Adam
+had fallen over the cliffs and been drowned."
+
+"But the dog?" said Gavin.
+
+"We were all sure that, if he had fallen over, it had jumped after
+him. The fisher-folk said that he could have left his shadow behind as
+easily as it. Yet Margaret thought for long that he had tired of
+Harvie merely and gone back to sea, and not until two years had passed
+would she marry me. We lived in Adam's house. It was so near the
+little school that when I opened the window in summer-time she could
+hear the drone of our voices. During the weeks before you were born I
+kept that window open all day long, and often I went to it and waved
+my hand to her.
+
+"Sometimes, when she was washing or baking, I brought you to the
+school. The only quarrel she and I ever had was about my teaching you
+the Lord's Prayer in Greek as soon as you could say father and mother.
+It was to be a surprise for her on your second birthday. On that day,
+while she was ironing, you took hold of her gown to steady yourself,
+and began, '~Pater êmôn ho en tois ouranois~' and to me, behind the
+door, it was music. But at ~agiasthêtô~, of which you made two
+syllables, you cried, and Margaret snatched you up, thinking this was
+some new ailment. After I had explained to her that it was the Lord's
+Prayer in Greek, she would let me take you to the school-house no
+more.
+
+"Not much longer could I have taken you in any case, for already we
+are at the day when Adam Dishart came back. It was the 7th of
+September, and all the week most of the women in Harvie had been
+setting off at dawn to the harvest fields and straggling home at
+nights, merry and with yellow corn in their hair. I had sat on in the
+school-house that day after my pupils were gone. I still meant to be a
+minister, and I was studying Hebrew, and so absorbed in my book that
+as the daylight went, I followed it step by step as far as my window,
+and there I read, without knowing, until I chanced to look up, that I
+had left my desk. I have not opened that book since.
+
+"From the window I saw you on the waste ground that separated the
+school from our home. You were coming to me on your hands and feet,
+and stopping now and again to look back at your mother, who was at the
+door, laughing and shaking her fist at you. I beckoned to you, and
+took the book back to my desk to lock it up. While my head was inside
+the desk I heard the school-house door pushed open, and thinking it
+was you I smiled, without looking up. Then something touched my hand,
+and I still thought it was you; but I looked down, and I saw Adam
+Dishart's black dog.
+
+"I did not move. It looked up at me and wagged its tail. Then it drew
+back--I suppose because I had no words for it. I watched it run
+half-round the room and stop and look at me again. Then it slunk out.
+
+"All that time one of my hands had been holding the desk open. Now the
+lid fell. I put on my bonnet and went to the door. You were only a few
+yards away, with flowers in your fist. Margaret was laughing still. I
+walked round the school and there was no dog visible. Margaret nodded
+to me, meaning that I should bring you home. You thrust the flowers
+into my hand, but they fell. I stood there, dazed.
+
+"I think I walked with you some way across the waste ground. Then I
+dropped your hand and strode back to the school. I went down on my
+knees, looking for marks of a dog's paws, and I found them.
+
+"When I came out again your mother was no longer at our door, and you
+were crying because I had left you. I passed you and walked straight
+to the house. Margaret was skinning rushes for wicks. There must have
+been fear in my face, for as soon as she saw it she ran to the door to
+see if you were still alive. She brought you in with her, and so had
+strength to cry, 'What is it? Speak!'
+
+"'Come away,' I said, 'come away,' and I was drawing her to the door,
+but she pressed me into a chair. I was up again at once.
+
+"'Margaret,' I said, 'ask no questions. Put on your bonnet, give me
+the boy, and let us away.'
+
+"I could not take my eyes off the door, and she was walking to it to
+look out when I barred the way with my arm.
+
+"'What have you seen?' she cried; and then, as I only pointed to her
+bonnet, she turned to you, and you said, 'Was it the black dog,
+father?'
+
+"Gavin, then she knew; and I stood helpless and watched my wife grow
+old. In that moment she lost the sprightliness I loved the more
+because I had none of it myself, and the bloom went from her face
+never to return.
+
+"'He has come back,' she said.
+
+"I told her what I had seen, and while I spoke she put on her bonnet,
+and I exulted, thinking--and then she took off her bonnet, and I knew
+she would not go away with me.
+
+"'Margaret,' I cried, 'I am that bairn's father.'
+
+"'Adam's my man,' she said, and at that I gave her a look for which
+God might have struck me dead. But instead of blaming me she put her
+arms round my neck.
+
+"After that we said very little. We sat at opposite sides of the fire,
+waiting for him, and you played on the floor. The harvesters trooped
+by, and there was a fiddle; and when it stopped, long stillness, and
+then a step. It was not Adam. You fell asleep, and we could hear
+nothing but the sea. There was a harvest moon.
+
+"Once a dog ran past the door, and we both rose. Margaret pressed her
+hands on her breast. Sometimes she looked furtively at me, and I knew
+her thoughts. To me it was only misery that had come, but to her it
+was shame, so that when you woke and climbed into her lap she shivered
+at your touch. I could not look at her after that, for there was a
+horror of me growing in her face.
+
+"Ten o'clock struck, and then again there was no sound but the sea
+pouring itself out on the beach. It was long after this, when to me
+there was still no other sound, that Margaret screamed, and you hid
+behind her. Then I heard it.
+
+"'Gavin,' Margaret said to me, 'be a good man all your life.'
+
+"It was louder now, and then it stopped. Above the wash of the sea we
+heard another sound--a sharp tap, tap. You said, 'I know what sound
+that is; it's a man knocking the ashes out of his pipe against his
+boot.'
+
+"Then the dog pushed the door off the latch, and Adam lurched in. He
+was not drunk, but he brought the smell of drink into the room with
+him. He was grinning like one bringing rare news, and before she could
+shrink back or I could strike him he had Margaret in his arms.
+
+"'Lord, lass,' he said, with many jovial oaths, 'to think I'm back
+again! There, she's swounded. What folks be women, to be sure.'
+
+"'We thought you were dead, Adam," she said, coming to.
+
+"'Bless your blue eyes,' he answered gleefully; 'often I says to
+myself, "Meggy will be thinking I'm with the fishes," and then I
+chuckles.'
+
+"'Where have you been all this time?' I demanded sternly.
+
+"'Gavin,' he said effusively, 'your hand. And don't look so feared,
+man; I bear no malice for what you've done. I heard all about it at
+the Cross Anchors.'
+
+"'Where have you been these five years and a half?' I repeated.
+
+"'Where have I no been, lad?' he replied.
+
+"'At Harvie,' I said.
+
+"'Right you are,' said he good-naturedly. 'Meggie, I had no intention
+of leaving you that day, though I was yawning myself to death in
+Harvie; but I sees a whaler, and I thinks, "That's a tidy boat, and
+I'm a tidy man, and if they'll take me and the dog, off we go."'
+
+"'You never wrote to me,' Margaret said.
+
+"'I meant to send you some scrapes,' he answered, 'but it wasna till I
+changed ships that I had the chance, and then I minds, "Meggy kens I'm
+no hand with the pen." But I swear I often thought of you, lass; and
+look you here, that's better than letters, and so is this and every
+penny of it is yours.'
+
+"He flung two bags of gold upon the table, and the chink brought you
+out from behind your mother.
+
+"'Hallo!' Adam cried.
+
+"'He is mine,' I said. 'Gavin, come here.' But Margaret held you
+back.
+
+"'Here's a go,' Adam muttered, and scratched his head. Then he slapped
+his thigh. 'Gavin,' he said, in his friendliest way, 'we'll toss for
+him.'
+
+"He pulled the knife that is now in my desk from his pocket, spat on
+it, and flung it up. 'Dry, the kid's ours, Meggy,' he explained; 'wet,
+he goes to Gavin.' I clinched my fist to----But what was the use? He
+caught the knife, and showed it to me.
+
+"'Dry,' he said triumphantly; 'so he is ours, Meggy. Kiddy, catch the
+knife. It is yours; and, mind, you have changed dads. And now that we
+have settled that, Gavin, there's my hand again.'
+
+"I went away and left them, and I never saw Margaret again until the
+day you brought her to Thrums. But I saw you once, a few days after
+Adam came back. I was in the school-house, packing my books, and you
+were playing on the waste ground. I asked you how your mother was, and
+you said, 'She's fleid to come to the door till you gang awa, and my
+father's buying a boat.'
+
+"'I'm your father,' I said; but you answered confidently:
+
+"'You're no a living man. You're just a man I dreamed about; and I
+promised my mother no to dream about you again.'
+
+"'I am your father,' I repeated.
+
+"'My father's awa buying a fishing-boat,' you insisted; 'and when I
+speir at my mother whaur my first father is, she says I'm havering.'
+
+"'Gavin Ogilvy is your name,' I said. 'No,' you answered, 'I have a
+new name. My mother telled me my name is aye to be Gavin Dishart now.
+She telled me, too, to fling awa this knife my father gave me, and
+I've flung it awa a lot o' times, but I aye pick it up again.'
+
+"'Give it to me,' I said, with the wicked thoughts of a fool in my
+head.
+
+"That is how your knife came into my possession. I left Harvie that
+night in the carrier's cart, but I had not the heart to return to
+college. Accident brought me here, and I thought it a fitting place in
+which to bury myself from Margaret."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Seven.
+
+SECOND JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+Here was a nauseous draught for me. Having finished my tale, I turned
+to Gavin for sympathy; and, behold, he had been listening for the
+cannon instead of to my final words. So, like an old woman at her
+hearth, we warm our hands at our sorrows and drop in faggots, and each
+thinks his own fire a sun, in presence of which all other fires should
+go out. I was soured to see Gavin prove this, and then I could have
+laughed without mirth, for had not my bitterness proved it too?
+
+"And now," I said, rising, "whether Margaret is to hold up her head
+henceforth lies no longer with me, but with you."
+
+It was not to that he replied.
+
+"You have suffered long, Mr. Ogilvy," he said. "Father," he added,
+wringing my hand. I called him son; but it was only an exchange of
+musty words that we had found too late. A father is a poor estate to
+come into at two and twenty.
+
+"I should have been told of this," he said.
+
+"Your mother did right, sir," I answered slowly, but he shook his
+head.
+
+"I think you have misjudged her," he said. "Doubtless while my fa--,
+while Adam Dishart lived, she could only think of you with pain; but
+after his death----"
+
+"After his death," I said quietly, "I was still so horrible to her
+that she left Harvie without letting a soul know whither she was
+bound. She dreaded my following her."
+
+"Stranger to me," he said, after a pause, "than even your story is her
+being able to keep it from me. I believed no thought ever crossed her
+mind that she did not let me share."
+
+"And none, I am sure, ever did," I answered, "save that, and such
+thoughts as a woman has with God only. It was my lot to bring disgrace
+on her. She thought it nothing less, and she has hidden it all these
+years for your sake, until now it is not burdensome. I suppose she
+feels that God has taken the weight off her. Now you are to put a
+heavier burden in its place."
+
+He faced me boldly, and I admire him for it now.
+
+"I cannot admit," he said, "that I did wrong in forgetting my mother
+for that fateful quarter of an hour. Babbie and I loved each other,
+and I was given the opportunity of making her mine or losing her
+forever. Have you forgotten that all this tragedy you have told me of
+only grew out of your own indecision? I took the chance that you let
+slip by."
+
+"I had not forgotten," I replied. "What else made me tell you last
+night that Babbie was in Nanny's house?"
+
+"But now you are afraid--now when the deed is done, when for me there
+can be no turning back. Whatever be the issue, I should be a cur to
+return to Thrums without my wife. Every minute I feel my strength
+returning, and before you reach Thrums I will have set out to the
+Spittal."
+
+There was nothing to say after that. He came with me in the rain as
+far as the dike, warning me against telling his people what was not
+true.
+
+"My first part," I answered, "will be to send word to your mother that
+you are in safety. After that I must see Whamond. Much depends on
+him."
+
+"You will not go to my mother?"
+
+"Not so long as she has a roof over her head," I said, "but that may
+not be for long."
+
+So, I think, we parted--each soon to forget the other in a woman.
+
+But I had not gone far when I heard something that stopped me as
+sharply as if it had been McKenzie's hand once more on my shoulder.
+For a second the noise appalled me, and then, before the echo began, I
+knew it must be the Spittal cannon. My only thought was one of
+thankfulness. Now Gavin must see the wisdom of my reasoning. I would
+wait for him until he was able to come with me to Thrums. I turned
+back, and in my haste I ran through water I had gone round before.
+
+I was too late. He was gone, and into the rain I shouted his name in
+vain. That he had started for the Spittal there could be no doubt;
+that he would ever reach it was less certain. The earl's collie was
+still crouching by the fire, and, thinking it might be a guide to him,
+I drove the brute to the door, and chased it in the direction he
+probably had taken. Not until it had run from me did I resume my own
+journey. I do not need to be told that you who read would follow Gavin
+now rather than me; but you must bear with the dominie for a little
+while yet, as I see no other way of making things clear.
+
+In some ways I was not ill-equipped for my attempt. I do not know any
+one of our hillsides as it is known to the shepherd, to whom every
+rabbit-hole and glimmer of mica is a landmark; but he, like his flock,
+has only to cross a dike to find himself in a strange land, while I
+have been everywhere in the glen.
+
+In the foreground the rain slanted, transparent till it reached the
+ground, where a mist seemed to blow it along as wind ruffles grass. In
+the distance all was a driving mist. I have been out for perhaps an
+hour in rains as wetting, and I have watched floods from my window,
+but never since have I known the fifth part of a season's rainfall in
+eighteen hours; and if there should be the like here again, we shall
+be found better prepared for it. Men have been lost in the glen in
+mists so thick that they could plunge their fingers out of sight in it
+as into a meal girnel; but this mist never came within twenty yards of
+me. I was surrounded by it, however, as if I was in a round tent; and
+out of this tent I could not walk, for it advanced with me. On the
+other side of this screen were horrible noises, at whose cause I could
+only guess, save now and again when a tongue of water was shot at my
+feet, or great stones came crashing through the canvas of mist. Then I
+ran wherever safety prompted, and thus tangled my bearings until I was
+like that one in the child's game who is blindfolded and turned round
+three times that he may not know east from west.
+
+Once I stumbled over a dead sheep and a living lamb; and in a clump of
+trees which puzzled me--for they were where I thought no trees should
+be--a wood-pigeon flew to me, but struck my breast with such force
+that I picked it up dead. I saw no other living thing, though half a
+dozen times I must have passed within cry of farmhouses. At one time I
+was in a cornfield, where I had to lift my hands to keep them out of
+water, and a dread filled me that I had wandered in a circle, and was
+still on Waster Lunny's land. I plucked some corn and held it to my
+eyes to see if it was green; but it was yellow, and so I knew that at
+last I was out of the glen.
+
+People up here will complain if I do not tell how I found the farmer
+of Green Brae's fifty pounds. It is one of the best-remembered
+incidents of the flood, and happened shortly after I got out of the
+cornfield. A house rose suddenly before me, and I was hastening to it
+when as suddenly three of its walls fell. Before my mind could give a
+meaning to what my eyes told it, the water that had brought down the
+house had lifted me off my feet and flung me among waves. That would
+have been the last of the dominie had I not struck against a chest,
+then halfway on its voyage to the sea. I think the lid gave way under
+me; but that is surmise, for from the time the house fell till I was
+on the river in a kist that was like to be my coffin, is almost a
+blank. After what may have been but a short journey, though I had time
+in it to say my prayers twice, we stopped, jammed among fallen trees;
+and seeing a bank within reach, I tried to creep up it. In this there
+would have been little difficulty had not the contents of the kist
+caught in my feet and held on to them, like living things afraid of
+being left behind. I let down my hands to disentangle my feet, but
+failed; and then, grown desperate, I succeeded in reaching firm
+ground, dragging I knew not what after me. It proved to be a
+pillow-slip. Green Brae still shudders when I tell him that my first
+impulse was to leave the pillow-slip unopened. However, I ripped it
+up, for to undo the wet strings that had ravelled round my feet would
+have wearied even a man with a needle to pick open the knots; and
+among broken gimlets, the head of a grape, and other things no beggar
+would have stolen, I found a tin canister containing fifty pounds.
+Waster Lunny says that this should have made a religious man of Green
+Brae, and it did to this extent, that he called the fall of the
+cotter's house providential. Otherwise the cotter, at whose expense it
+may be said the money was found, remains the more religious man of the
+two.
+
+At last I came to the Kelpie's brig, and I could have wept in joy (and
+might have been better employed), when, like everything I saw on that
+journey, it broke suddenly through the mist, and seemed to run at me
+like a living monster. Next moment I ran back, for as I stepped upon
+the bridge I saw that I had been about to walk into the air. What was
+left of the Kelpie's brig ended in mid-stream. Instead of thanking God
+for the light without which I should have gone abruptly to my death, I
+sat down miserable and hopeless.
+
+Presently I was up and trudging to the Loups of Malcolm. At the Loups
+the river runs narrow and deep between cliffs, and the spot is so
+called because one Malcolm jumped across it when pursued by wolves.
+Next day he returned boastfully to look at his jump, and gazing at it
+turned dizzy and fell into the river. Since that time chains have been
+hung across the Loups to reduce the distance between the farms of
+Carwhimple and Keep-What-You-Can from a mile to a hundred yards. You
+must cross the chains on your breast. They were suspended there by Rob
+Angus, who was also the first to breast them.
+
+But I never was a Rob Angus. When my pupils practise what they call
+the high jump, two small boys hold a string aloft, and the bigger ones
+run at it gallantly until they reach it, when they stop meekly and
+creep beneath. They will repeat this twenty times, and yet never, when
+they start for the string, seem to know where their courage will fail.
+Nay, they will even order the small boys to hold the string higher. I
+have smiled at this, but it was the same courage while the difficulty
+is far off that took me to the Loups. At sight of them I turned away.
+
+I prayed to God for a little of the mettle of other men, and He heard
+me, for with my eyes shut I seemed to see Margaret beckoning from
+across the abyss as if she had need of me. Then I rose calmly and
+tested the chains, and crossed them on my breast. Many have done it
+with the same danger, at which they laugh, but without that vision I
+should have held back.
+
+I was now across the river, and so had left the chance of drowning
+behind, but I was farther from Thrums than when I left the school-house,
+and this countryside was almost unknown to me. The mist had begun to
+clear, so that I no longer wandered into fields; but though I kept to the
+roads, I could not tell that they led toward Thrums, and in my
+exhaustion I had often to stand still. Then to make a new start in the
+mud was like pulling stakes out of the ground. So long as the rain
+faced me I thought I could not be straying far; but after an hour I lost
+this guide, for a wind rose that blew it in all directions.
+
+In another hour, when I should have been drawing near Thrums, I found
+myself in a wood, and here I think my distress was greatest; nor is
+this to be marvelled at, for instead of being near Thrums, I was
+listening to the monotonous roar of the sea. I was too spent to
+reason, but I knew that I must have travelled direct east, and must be
+close to the German Ocean. I remember putting my back against a tree
+and shutting my eyes, and listening to the lash of the waves against
+the beach, and hearing the faint toll of a bell, and wondering
+listlessly on what lighthouse it was ringing. Doubtless I would have
+lain down to sleep forever had I not heard another sound near at hand.
+It was the knock of a hammer on wood, and might have been a fisherman
+mending his boat. The instinct of self-preservation carried me to it,
+and presently I was at a little house. A man was standing in the rain,
+hammering new hinges to the door; and though I did not recognize him,
+I saw with bewilderment that the woman at his side was Nanny.
+
+"It's the dominie," she cried, and her brother added:
+
+"Losh, sir, you hinna the look o' a living man."
+
+"Nanny," I said, in perplexity, "what are you doing here?"
+
+"Whaur else should I be?" she asked.
+
+I pressed my hands over my eyes, crying, "Where am I?"
+
+Nanny shrank from me, but Sanders said, "Has the rain driven you gyte,
+man? You're in Thrums."
+
+"But the sea," I said, distrusting him. "I hear it. Listen!"
+
+"That's the wind in Windyghoul," Sanders answered, looking at me
+queerly. "Come awa into the house."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Eight.
+
+THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS--DEFENCE OF THE MANSE.
+
+
+Hardly had I crossed the threshold of the mudhouse when such a
+sickness came over me that I could not have looked up, though Nanny's
+voice had suddenly changed to Margaret's. Vaguely I knew that Nanny
+had put the kettle on the fire--a woman's first thought when there is
+illness in the house--and as I sat with my hands over my face I heard
+the water dripping from my clothes to the floor.
+
+"Why is that bell ringing?" I asked at last, ignoring all questions
+and speaking through my fingers. An artist, I suppose, could paint all
+expression out of a human face. The sickness was having that effect on
+my voice.
+
+"It's the Auld Licht bell," Sanders said; "and it's almost as fearsome
+to listen to as last nicht's rain. I wish I kent what they're ringing
+it for."
+
+"Wish no sic things," said Nanny nervously. "There's things it's best
+to put off kenning as lang as we can."
+
+"It's that ill-cleakit witch, Effie McBean, that makes Nanny speak so
+doleful," Sanders told me. "There was to be a prayer-meeting last
+nicht, but Mr. Dishart never came to 't, though they rang till they
+wraxed their arms; and now Effie says it'll ring on by itsel' till
+he's brocht hame a corp. The hellicat says the rain's a dispensation
+to drown him in for neglect o' duty. Sal, I would think little o' the
+Lord if He needed to create a new sea to drown one man in. Nanny, yon
+cuttie, that's no swearing; I defy you to find a single lonely oath in
+what I've said."
+
+"Never mind Effie McBean," I interposed. "What are the congregation
+saying about the minister's absence?"
+
+"We ken little except what Effie telled us," Nanny answered. "I was at
+Tilliedrum yestreen, meeting Sanders as he got out o' the gaol, and
+that awfu onding began when we was on the Bellies Braes. We focht our
+way through it, but not a soul did we meet; and wha would gang out the
+day that can bide at hame? Ay, but Effie says it's kent in Thrums that
+Mr. Dishart has run off wi'--wi' an Egyptian."
+
+"You're waur than her, Nanny," Sanders said roughly, "for you hae twa
+reasons for kenning better. In the first place, has Mr. Dishart no
+keeped you in siller a' the time I was awa? and for another, have I no
+been at the manse?"
+
+My head rose now.
+
+"He gaed to the manse," Nanny explained, "to thank Mr. Dishart for
+being so good to me. Ay, but Jean wouldna let him in. I'm thinking
+that looks gey gray."
+
+"Whatever was her reason," Sanders admitted, "Jean wouldna open the
+door; but I keeked in at the parlor window, and saw Mrs. Dishart in't
+looking very cosy-like and lauching; and do you think I would hae seen
+that if ill had come ower the minister?"
+
+"Not if Margaret knew of it," I said to myself, and wondered at
+Whamond's forbearance.
+
+"She had a skein o' worsted stretched out on her hands," Sanders
+continued, "and a young leddy was winding it. I didna see her richt,
+but she wasna a Thrums leddy."
+
+"Effie McBean says she's his intended, come to call him to account,"
+Nanny said; but I hardly listened, for I saw that I must hurry to
+Tammas Whamond's. Nanny followed me to the gate with her gown pulled
+over her head, and said excitedly:
+
+"Oh, dominie, I warrant it's true. It'll be Babbie. Sanders doesna
+suspect, because I've telled him nothing about her. Oh, what's to be
+done? They were baith so good to me."
+
+I could only tell her to keep what she knew to herself.
+
+"Has Rob Dow come back?" I called out after I had started.
+
+"Whaur frae?" she replied; and then I remembered that all these things
+had happened while Nanny was at Tilliedrum. In this life some of the
+seven ages are spread over two decades, and others pass as quickly as
+a stage play. Though a fifth of a season's rain had fallen in a night
+and a day, it had scarcely kept pace with Gavin.
+
+I hurried to the town by the Roods. That brae was as deserted as the
+country roads, except where children had escaped from their mothers to
+wade in it. Here and there dams were keeping the water away from one
+door to send it with greater volume to another, and at points the
+ground had fallen in. But this I noticed without interest. I did not
+even realize that I was holding my head painfully to the side where it
+had been blown by the wind and glued by the rain. I have never held my
+head straight since that journey.
+
+Only a few looms were going, their pedals in water. I was addressed
+from several doors and windows, once by Charles Yuill.
+
+"Dinna pretend," he said, "that you've walked in frae the school-house
+alane. The rain chased me into this house yestreen, and here it has
+keeped me, though I bide no further awa than Tillyloss."
+
+"Charles," I said in a low voice, "why is the Auld Licht bell
+ringing?"
+
+"Hae you no heard about Mr. Dishart?" he asked. "Oh, man! that's Lang
+Tammas in the kirk by himsel', tearing at the bell to bring the folk
+thegither to depose the minister."
+
+Instead of going to Whamond's house in the school wynd I hastened down
+the Banker's close to the kirk, and had almost to turn back, so choked
+was the close with floating refuse. I could see the bell swaying, but
+the kirk was locked, and I battered on the door to no purpose. Then,
+remembering that Hendry Munn lived in Coutt's trance, I set off for
+his house. He saw me crossing the square, but would not open his door
+until I was close to it.
+
+"When I open," he cried, "squeeze through quick"; but though I did his
+bidding, a rush of water darted in before me. Hendry reclosed the door
+by flinging himself against it.
+
+"When I saw you crossing the square," he said, "it was surprise enough
+to cure the hiccup."
+
+"Hendry," I replied instantly, "why is the Auld Licht bell ringing?"
+
+He put his finger to his lip. "I see," he said imperturbably, "you've
+met our folk in the glen and heard frae them about the minister."
+
+"What folk?"
+
+"Mair than half the congregation," he replied, "I started for Glen
+Quharity twa hours syne to help the farmers. You didna see them?"
+
+"No; they must have been on the other side of the river." Again that
+question forced my lips, "Why is the bell ringing?"
+
+"Canny, dominie," he said, "till we're up the stair. Mysy Moncur's
+lug's at her keyhole listening to you."
+
+"You lie, Hendry Munn," cried an invisible woman. The voice became
+more plaintive: "I ken a heap, Hendry, so you may as well tell me
+a'."
+
+"Lick away at the bone you hae," the shoemaker replied heartlessly,
+and conducted me to his room up one of the few inside stairs then in
+Thrums. Hendry's oddest furniture was five boxes, fixed to the wall
+at such a height that children could climb into them from a high
+stool. In these his bairns slept, and so space was economized. I could
+never laugh at the arrangement, as I knew that Betty had planned it on
+her deathbed for her man's sake. Five little heads bobbed up in their
+beds as I entered, but more vexing to me was Wearyworld on a stool.
+
+"In by, dominie," he said sociably. "Sal, you needna fear burning wi'
+a' that water on you. You're in mair danger o' coming a-boil."
+
+"I want to speak to you alone, Hendry," I said bluntly.
+
+"You winna put me out, Hendry?" the alarmed policeman entreated.
+"Mind, you said in sic weather you would be friendly to a brute beast.
+Ay, ay, dominie, what's your news? It's welcome, be it good or bad.
+You would meet the townsfolk in the glen, and they would tell you
+about Mr. Dishart. What, you hinna heard? Oh, sirs, he's a lost man.
+There would hae been a meeting the day to depose him if so many hadna
+gaen to the glen. But the morn'll do as weel. The very women is
+cursing him, and the laddies has begun to gather stanes. He's married
+on an Egyp----"
+
+"Hendry!" I cried, like one giving an order.
+
+"Wearyworld, step!" said Hendry sternly, and then added soft-heartedly:
+"Here's a bit news that'll open Mysy Moncur's door to you. You can
+tell her frae me that the bell's ringing just because I forgot to tie it
+up last nicht, and the wind's shaking it, and I winna gang out in the
+rain to stop it."
+
+"Ay," the policeman said, looking at me sulkily, "she may open her
+door for that, but it'll no let me in. Tell me mair. Tell me wha the
+leddy at the manse is."
+
+"Out you go," answered Hendry. "Once she opens the door, you can shove
+your foot in, and syne she's in your power." He pushed Wearyworld out,
+and came back to me, saying, "It was best to tell him the truth, to
+keep him frae making up lies."
+
+"But is it the truth? I was told Lang Tammas----"
+
+"Ay, I ken that story; but Tammas has other work on hand."
+
+"Then tie up the bell at once, Hendry," I urged.
+
+"I canna," he answered gravely. "Tammas took the keys o' the kirk fram
+me yestreen, and winna gie them up. He says the bell's being rung by
+the hand o' God."
+
+"Has he been at the manse? Does Mrs. Dishart know----?"
+
+"He's been at the manse twa or three times, but Jean barred him out.
+She'll let nobody in till the minister comes back, and so the mistress
+kens nothing. But what's the use o' keeping it frae her ony langer?"
+
+"Every use," I said.
+
+"None," answered Hendry sadly. "Dominie, the minister was married to
+the Egyptian on the hill last nicht, and Tammas was witness. Not only
+were they married, but they've run aff thegither."
+
+"You are wrong, Hendry," I assured him, telling as much as I dared. "I
+left Mr. Dishart in my house."
+
+"What! But if that is so, how did he no come back wi' you?"
+
+"Because he was nearly drowned in the flood."
+
+"She'll be wi' him?"
+
+"He was alone."
+
+Hendry's face lit up dimly with joy, and then he shook his head.
+"Tammas was witness," he said. "Can you deny the marriage?"
+
+"All I ask of you," I answered guardedly, "is to suspend judgment
+until the minister returns."
+
+"There can be nothing done, at ony rate," he said, "till the folk
+themsel's come back frae the glen; and I needna tell you how glad we
+would a' be to be as fond o' him as ever. But Tammas was witness."
+
+"Have pity on his mother, man."
+
+"We've done the best for her we could," he replied. "We prigged wi'
+Tammas no to gang to the manse till we was sure the minister was
+living. 'For if he has been drowned,' we said, 'his mother need never
+ken what we were thinking o' doing.' Ay, and we're sorry for the young
+leddy, too."
+
+"What young lady is this you all talk of?" I asked.
+
+"She's his intended. Ay, you needna start. She has come a' the road
+frae Glasgow to challenge him about the gypsy. The pitiful thing is
+that Mrs. Dishart lauched awa her fears, and now they're baith waiting
+for his return, as happy as ignorance can make them."
+
+"There is no such lady," I said.
+
+"But there is," he answered doggedly, "for she came in a machine late
+last nicht, and I was ane o' a dozen that baith heard and saw it
+through my window. It stopped at the manse near half an hour. What's
+mair, the lady hersel' was at Sam'l Farquharson's in the Tenements the
+day for twa hours."
+
+I listened in bewilderment and fear.
+
+"Sam'l's bairn's down wi' scarlet fever and like to die, and him being
+a widow-man he has gone useless. You mauna blame the wives in the
+Tenements for hauding back. They're fleid to smit their ain litlins;
+and as it happens, Sam'l's friends is a' aff to the glen. Weel, he ran
+greeting to the manse for Mr. Dishart, and the lady heard him crying
+to Jean through the door, and what does she do but gang straucht to
+the Tenements wi' Sam'l. Her goodness has naturally put the folk on
+her side against the minister."
+
+"This does not prove her his intended," I broke in.
+
+"She was heard saying to Sam'l," answered the kirk officer, "that the
+minister being awa, it was her duty to take his place. Yes, and though
+she little kent it, he was already married."
+
+"Hendry," I said, rising, "I must see this lady at once. Is she still
+at Farquharson's house?"
+
+"She may be back again by this time. Tammas set off for Sam'l's as
+soon as he heard she was there, but he just missed her. I left him
+there an hour syne. He was waiting for her, determined to tell her
+all."
+
+I set off for the Tenements at once, declining Hendry's company. The
+wind had fallen, so that the bell no longer rang, but the rain was
+falling doggedly. The streets were still deserted. I pushed open the
+precentor's door in the school wynd, but there was no one in the
+house. Tibbie Birse saw me, and shouted from her door:
+
+"Hae you heard o' Mr. Dishart? He'll never daur show face in Thrums
+again."
+
+Without giving her a word I hastened to the Tenements.
+
+"The leddy's no here," Sam'l Farquharson told me, "and Tammas is back
+at the manse again, trying to force his way in."
+
+From Sam'l, too, I turned, with no more than a groan; but he cried
+after me, "Perdition on the man that has played that leddy false."
+
+Had Margaret been at her window she must have seen me, so recklessly
+did I hurry up the minister's road, with nothing in me but a passion
+to take Whamond by the throat. He was not in the garden. The kitchen
+door was open. Jean was standing at it with her apron to her eyes.
+
+"Tammas Whamond?" I demanded, and my face completed the question.
+
+"You're ower late," she wailed. "He's wi' her. Oh, dominie, whaur's
+the minister?"
+
+"You base woman!" I cried, "why did you unbar the door?"
+
+[Illustration: "IT WAS BABBIE, THOUGH NO LONGER IN A GYPSY'S DRESS."]
+
+"It was the mistress," she answered. "She heard him shaking it, and I
+had to tell her wha it was. Dominie, it's a' my wite! He tried to get
+in last nicht, and roared threats through the door, and after he had
+gone awa she speired wha I had been speaking to. I had to tell her,
+but I said he had come to let her ken that the minister was taking
+shelter frae the rain in a farmhouse. Ay, I said he was to bide there
+till the flood gaed down, and that's how she has been easy a' day. I
+acted for the best, but I'm sair punished now; for when she heard
+Tammas at the door twa or three minutes syne, she ordered me to let
+him in, so that she could thank him for bringing the news last nicht,
+despite the rain. They're in the parlor. Oh, dominie, gang in and stop
+his mouth."
+
+This was hard. I dared not go to the parlor. Margaret might have died
+at sight of me. I turned my face from Jean.
+
+"Jean," said some one, opening the inner kitchen door, "why did
+you----?"
+
+She stopped, and that was what turned me round. As she spoke I thought
+it was the young lady; when I looked I saw it was Babbie, though no
+longer in a gypsy's dress. Then I knew that the young lady and Babbie
+were one.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Nine.
+
+HOW BABBIE SPENT THE NIGHT OF AUGUST FOURTH.
+
+
+How had the Egyptian been spirited here from the Spittal? I did not
+ask the question. To interest myself in Babbie at that dire hour of
+Margaret's life would have been as impossible to me as to sit down to
+a book. To others, however, it is only an old woman on whom the parlor
+door of the manse has closed, only a garrulous dominie that is in pain
+outside it. Your eyes are on the young wife.
+
+When Babbie was plucked off the hill, she thought as little as Gavin
+that her captor was Rob Dow. Close as he was to her, he was but a
+shadow until she screamed the second time, when he pressed her to the
+ground and tied his neckerchief over her mouth. Then, in the moment
+that power of utterance was taken from her, she saw the face that had
+startled her at Nanny's window. Half-carried, she was borne forward
+rapidly, until some one seemed to rise out of the broom and strike
+them both. They had only run against the doctor's trap; and huddling
+her into it, Dow jumped up beside her. He tied her hands together with
+a cord. For a time the horse feared the darkness in front more than
+the lash behind; but when the rains became terrific, it rushed ahead
+wildly--probably with its eyes shut.
+
+In three minutes Babbie went through all the degrees of fear. In the
+first she thought Lord Rintoul had kidnapped her; but no sooner had
+her captor resolved himself into Dow, drunk with the events of the
+day and night, than in the earl's hands would have lain safety. Next,
+Dow was forgotten in the dread of a sudden death which he must share.
+And lastly, the rain seemed to be driving all other horrors back, that
+it might have her for its own. Her perils increased to the unbearable
+as quickly as an iron in the fire passes through the various stages
+between warmth and white heat. Then she had to do something; and as
+she could not cry out, she flung herself from the dogcart. She fell
+heavily in Caddam Wood, but the rain would not let her lie there
+stunned. It beat her back to consciousness, and she sat up on her
+knees and listened breathlessly, staring in the direction the trap had
+taken, as if her eyes could help her ears.
+
+All night, I have said, the rain poured, but those charges only rode
+down the deluge at intervals, as now and again one wave greater than
+the others stalks over the sea. In the first lull it appeared to
+Babbie that the storm had swept by, leaving her to Dow. Now she heard
+the rubbing of the branches, and felt the torn leaves falling on her
+gown. She rose to feel her way out of the wood with her bound hands,
+then sank in terror, for some one had called her name. Next moment she
+was up again, for the voice was Gavin's, who was hurrying after her,
+as he thought, down Windyghoul. He was no farther away than a whisper
+might have carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him, for
+already Dow was coming back. She could not see him, but she heard the
+horse whinny and the rocking of the dogcart. Dow was now at the
+brute's head, and probably it tried to bite him, for he struck it,
+crying:
+
+"Would you? Stand still till I find her.... I heard her move this
+minute."
+
+Babbie crouched upon a big stone and sat motionless while he groped
+for her. Her breathing might have been tied now, as well as her mouth.
+She heard him feeling for her, first with his feet and then with his
+hands, and swearing when his head struck against a tree.
+
+"I ken you're within hearing," he muttered, "and I'll hae you yet. I
+have a gully-knife in my hand. Listen!"
+
+He severed a whin-stalk with the knife, and Babbie seemed to see the
+gleam of the blade.
+
+"What do I mean by wanting to kill you?" he said, as if she had asked
+the question. "Do you no ken wha said to me, 'Kill this woman?' It was
+the Lord. 'I winna kill her,' I said, 'but I'll cart her out o' the
+country.' 'Kill her,' says He; 'why encumbereth she the ground?'"
+
+He resumed his search, but with new tactics. "I see you now," he would
+cry, and rush forward perhaps within a yard of her. Then she must have
+screamed had she had the power. When he tied that neckerchief round
+her mouth he prolonged her life.
+
+Then came the second hurricane of rain, so appalling that had Babbie's
+hands been free she would have pressed them to her ears. For a full
+minute she forgot Dow's presence. A living thing touched her face. The
+horse had found her. She recoiled from it, but its frightened head
+pressed heavily on her shoulder. She rose and tried to steal away, but
+the brute followed, and as the rain suddenly exhausted itself she
+heard the dragging of the dogcart. She had to halt.
+
+Again she heard Dow's voice. Perhaps he had been speaking throughout
+the roar of the rain. If so, it must have made him deaf to his own
+words. He groped for the horse's head, and presently his hand touched
+Babbie's dress, then jumped from it, so suddenly had he found her. No
+sound escaped him, and she was beginning to think it possible that he
+had mistaken her for a bush when his hand went over her face. He was
+making sure of his discovery.
+
+"The Lord has delivered you into my hands," he said in a low voice,
+with some awe in it. Then he pulled her to the ground, and, sitting
+down beside her, rocked himself backward and forward, his hands round
+his knees. She would have bartered the world for power to speak to
+him.
+
+"He wouldna hear o' my just carting you to some other countryside," he
+said confidentially. "'The devil would just blaw her back again,' says
+He, 'therefore kill her.' 'And if I kill her,' I says, 'they'll hang
+me.' 'You can hang yoursel',' says He. 'What wi'?' I speirs. 'Wi' the
+reins o' the dogcart,' says He. 'They would break,' says I. 'Weel,
+weel,' says He, 'though they do hang you, nobody'll miss you.' 'That's
+true,' says I, 'and You are a just God.'"
+
+He stood up and confronted her.
+
+"Prisoner at the bar," he said, "hae ye onything to say why sentence
+of death shouldna be pronounced against you? She doesna answer. She
+kens death is her deserts."
+
+By this time he had forgotten probably why his victim was dumb.
+
+"Prisoner at the bar, hand back to me the soul o' Gavin Dishart. You
+winna? Did the devil, your master, summon you to him and say, 'Either
+that noble man or me maun leave Thrums?' He did. And did you, or did
+you no, drag that minister, when under your spell, to the hill, and
+there marry him ower the tongs? You did. Witnesses, Rob Dow and Tammas
+Whamond."
+
+She was moving from him on her knees, meaning when out of arm's reach
+to make a dash for life.
+
+"Sit down," he grumbled, "or how can you expect a fair trial? Prisoner
+at the bar, you have been found guilty of witchcraft."
+
+For the first time his voice faltered.
+
+"That's the difficulty, for witches canna die, except by burning or
+drowning. There's no blood in you for my knife, and your neck wouldna
+twist. Your master has brocht the rain to put out a' the fires, and
+we'll hae to wait till it runs into a pool deep enough to drown you.
+
+"I wonder at You, God. Do You believe her master'll mak' the pool for
+her? He'll rather stop his rain. Mr. Dishart said You was mair
+powerful than the devil, but it doesna look like it. If You had the
+power, how did You no stop this woman working her will on the
+minister? You kent what she was doing, for You ken a' things. Mr.
+Dishart says You ken a' things. If You do, the mair shame to You.
+Would a shepherd, that could help it, let dogs worry his sheep? Kill
+her! It's fine to cry 'Kill her,' but whaur's the bonfire, whaur's the
+pool? You that made the heaven and the earth and all that in them is,
+can You no set fire to some wet whins, or change this stane into a
+mill-dam?"
+
+He struck the stone with his fist, and then gave a cry of exultation.
+He raised the great slab in his arms and flung it from him. In
+that moment Babbie might have run away, but she fainted. Almost
+simultaneously with Dow she knew this was the stone which covered the
+Caddam well. When she came to, Dow was speaking, and his voice had
+become solemn.
+
+"You said your master was mair powerful than mine, and I said it too,
+and all the time you was sitting here wi' the very pool aneath you
+that I have been praying for. Listen!"
+
+He dropped a stone into the well, and she heard it strike the water.
+
+"What are you shaking at?" he said in reproof. "Was it no yoursel'
+that chose the spot? Lassie, say your prayers. Are you saying them?"
+
+He put his hand over her face, to feel if her lips were moving, and
+tore off the neckerchief.
+
+And then again the rain came between them. In that rain one could not
+think. Babbie did not know that she had bitten through the string that
+tied her hands. She planned no escape. But she flung herself at the
+place where Dow had been standing. He was no longer there, and she
+fell heavily, and was on her feet again in an instant and running
+recklessly. Trees intercepted her, and she thought they were Dow, and
+wrestled with them. By and by she fell into Windyghoul, and there she
+crouched until all her senses were restored to her, when she
+remembered that she had been married lately.
+
+How long Dow was in discovering that she had escaped, and whether he
+searched for her, no one knows. After a time he jumped into the
+dogcart again, and drove aimlessly through the rain. That wild journey
+probably lasted two hours, and came to an abrupt end only when a tree
+fell upon the trap. The horse galloped off, but one of Dow's legs was
+beneath the tree, and there he had to lie helpless, for though the leg
+was little injured, he could not extricate himself. A night and day
+passed, and he believed that he must die; but even in this plight he
+did not forget the man he loved. He found a piece of slate, and in the
+darkness cut these words on it with his knife:
+
+  "Me being about to die, I solemnly swear I didna see the minister
+  marrying an Egyptian on the hill this nicht. May I burn in Hell if
+  this is no true.
+
+    (Signed) "ROB DOW."
+
+This document he put in his pocket, and so preserved proof of what he
+was perjuring himself to deny.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty.
+
+BABBIE AND MARGARET--DEFENCE OF THE MANSE CONTINUED.
+
+
+The Egyptian was mournful in Windyghoul, up which she had once danced
+and sung; but you must not think that she still feared Dow. I felt
+McKenzie's clutch on my arm for hours after he left me, but she was
+far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes
+only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that
+first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was
+not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him.
+Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out
+the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at
+once, and the drooping head would have been proud again, and she would
+have gone away forever without another tear.
+
+What do I say? I am doing a wrong to the love these two bore each
+other. Babbie would not have taken so base a message from my lips. He
+would have had to say the words to her himself before she believed
+them his. What would he want her to do now? was the only question she
+asked herself. To follow him was useless, for in that rain and
+darkness two people might have searched for each other all night in a
+single field. That he would go to the Spittal, thinking her in
+Rintoul's dogcart, she did not doubt; and his distress was painful to
+her to think of. But not knowing that the burns were in flood, she
+underestimated his danger.
+
+Remembering that the mudhouse was near, she groped her way to it,
+meaning to pass the night there; but at the gate she turned away
+hastily, hearing from the door the voice of a man she did not know to
+be Nanny's brother. She wandered recklessly a short distance, until
+the rain began to threaten again, and then, falling on her knees in
+the broom, she prayed to God for guidance. When she rose she set off
+for the manse.
+
+The rain that followed the flash of lightning had brought Margaret to
+the kitchen.
+
+"Jean, did you ever hear such a rain? It is trying to break into the
+manse."
+
+"I canna hear you, ma'am; is it the rain you're feared at?"
+
+"What else could it be?"
+
+Jean did not answer.
+
+"I hope the minister won't leave the church, Jean, till this is
+over?"
+
+"Nobody would daur, ma'am. The rain'll turn the key on them all."
+
+Jean forced out these words with difficulty, for she knew that the
+church had been empty and the door locked for over an hour.
+
+"This rain has come as if in answer to the minister's prayer, Jean."
+
+"It wasna rain like this they wanted."
+
+"Jean, you would not attempt to guide the Lord's hand. The minister
+will have to reprove the people for thinking too much of him again,
+for they will say that he induced God to send the rain. To-night's
+meeting will be remembered long in Thrums."
+
+Jean shuddered, and said, "It's mair like an ordinary rain now,
+ma'am."
+
+"But it has put out your fire, and I wanted another heater. Perhaps
+the one I have is hot enough, though."
+
+Margaret returned to the parlor, and from the kitchen Jean could hear
+the heater tilted backward and forward in the box-iron--a pleasant,
+homely sound when there is happiness in the house. Soon she heard a
+step outside, however, and it was followed by a rough shaking of the
+barred door.
+
+"Is it you, Mr. Dishart?" Jean asked nervously.
+
+"It's me, Tammas Whamond," the precentor answered. "Unbar the door."
+
+"What do you want? Speak low."
+
+"I winna speak low. Let me in. I hae news for the minister's mother."
+
+"What news?" demanded Jean.
+
+"Jean Proctor, as chief elder of the kirk I order you to let me do my
+duty."
+
+"Whaur's the minister?"
+
+"He's a minister no longer. He's married a gypsy woman and run awa wi'
+her."
+
+"You lie, Tammas Whamond. I believe----"
+
+"Your belief's of no consequence. Open the door, and let me in to tell
+your mistress what I hae seen."
+
+"She'll hear it first frae his ain lips if she hears it ava. I winna
+open the door."
+
+"Then I'll burst it open."
+
+Whamond flung himself at the door, and Jean, her fingers rigid with
+fear, stood waiting for its fall. But the rain came to her rescue by
+lashing the precentor until even he was forced to run from it.
+
+"I'll be back again," he cried. "Woe to you, Jean Proctor, that hae
+denied your God this nicht."
+
+"Who was that speaking to you, Jean?" asked Margaret, re-entering the
+kitchen. Until the rain abated Jean did not attempt to answer.
+
+"I thought it was the precentor's voice," Margaret said.
+
+Jean was a poor hand at lying, and she stuttered in her answer.
+
+"There is nothing wrong, is there?" cried Margaret, in sudden fright.
+"My son----"
+
+"Nothing, nothing."
+
+The words jumped from Jean to save Margaret from falling. Now she
+could not take them back. "I winna believe it o' him," said Jean to
+herself. "Let them say what they will, I'll be true to him; and when
+he comes back he'll find her as he left her."
+
+"It was Lang Tammas," she answered her mistress; "but he just came to
+say that----"
+
+"Quick, Jean! what?"
+
+"----Mr. Dishart has been called to a sick-bed in the country,
+ma'am--to the farm o' Look-About-You; and as it's sic a rain, he's to
+bide there a' nicht."
+
+"And Whamond came through that rain to tell me this? How good of him.
+Was there any other message?"
+
+"Just that the minister hoped you would go straight to your bed,
+ma'am," said Jean, thinking to herself, "There can be no great sin in
+giving her one mair happy nicht; it may be her last."
+
+The two women talked for a short time, and then read verse about in
+the parlor from the third chapter of Mark.
+
+"This is the first night we have been left alone in the manse,"
+Margaret said, as she was retiring to her bedroom, "and we must not
+grudge the minister to those who have sore need of him. I notice that
+you have barred the doors."
+
+"Ay, they're barred. Nobody can win in the nicht."
+
+"Nobody will want in, Jean," Margaret said, smiling.
+
+"I dinna ken about that," answered Jean below her breath. "Ay, ma'am,
+may you sleep for baith o' us this nicht, for I daurna gang to my
+bed."
+
+Jean was both right and wrong, for two persons wanted in within the
+next half-hour, and she opened the door to both of them. The first to
+come was Babbie.
+
+So long as women sit up of nights listening for a footstep, will they
+flatten their faces at the window, though all without be black. Jean
+had not been back in the kitchen for two minutes before she raised
+the blind. Her eyes were close to the glass, when she saw another face
+almost meet hers, as you may touch your reflection in a mirror. But
+this face was not her own. It was white and sad. Jean suppressed a
+cry, and let the blind fall, as if shutting the lid on some uncanny
+thing.
+
+"Won't you let me in?" said a voice that might have been only the sob
+of a rain-beaten wind; "I am nearly drowned."
+
+Jean stood like death; but her suppliant would not pass on.
+
+"You are not afraid?" the voice continued. "Raise the blind again, and
+you will see that no one need fear me."
+
+At this request Jean's hands sought each other's company behind her
+back.
+
+"Wha are you?" she asked, without stirring. "Are you--the woman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Whaur's the minister?"
+
+The rain again became wild, but this time it only tore by the manse as
+if to a conflict beyond.
+
+"Are you aye there? I daurna let you in till I'm sure the mistress is
+bedded. Gang round to the front, and see if there's ony licht burning
+in the high west window."
+
+"There was a light," the voice said presently, "but it was turned out
+as I looked."
+
+"Then I'll let you in, and God kens I mean no wrang by it."
+
+Babbie entered shivering, and Jean rebarred the door. Then she looked
+long at the woman whom her master loved. Babbie was on her knees at
+the hearth, holding out her hands to the dead fire.
+
+"What a pity it's a fause face."
+
+"Do I look so false?"
+
+"Is it true? You're no married to him?"
+
+"Yes, it is true."
+
+"And yet you look as if you was fond o' him. If you cared for him, how
+could you do it?"
+
+"That was why I did it."
+
+"And him could hae had wha he liked."
+
+"I gave up Lord Rintoul for him."
+
+"What? Na, na; you're the Egyptian."
+
+"You judge me by my dress."
+
+"And soaking it is. How you're shivering--what neat fingers--what
+bonny little feet. I could near believe what you tell me. Aff wi'
+these rags, an I'll gie you on my black frock, if--if you promise me
+no to gang awa wi't."
+
+So Babbie put on some clothes of Jean's, including the black frock,
+and stockings and shoes.
+
+"Mr. Dishart cannot be back, Jean," she said, "before morning, and I
+don't want his mother to see me till he comes."
+
+"I wouldna let you near her the nicht though you gaed on your knees to
+me. But whaur is he?"
+
+Babbie explained why Gavin had set off for the Spittal; but Jean shook
+her head incredulously, saying, "I canna believe you're that grand
+leddy, and yet ilka time I look at you I could near believe it."
+
+In another minute Jean had something else to think of, for there came
+a loud rap upon the front door.
+
+"It's Tammas Whamond back again," she moaned; "and if the mistress
+hears, she'll tell me to let him in."
+
+"You shall open to me," cried a hoarse voice.
+
+"That's no Tammas' word," Jean said in bewilderment.
+
+"It is Lord Rintoul," Babbie whispered.
+
+"What? Then it's truth you telled me."
+
+The knocking continued; a door upstairs opened, and Margaret spoke
+over the banisters.
+
+"Have you gone to bed, Jean? Some one is knocking at the door, and a
+minute ago I thought I heard a carriage stop close by. Perhaps the
+farmer has driven Mr. Dishart home."
+
+"I'm putting on my things, ma'am," Jean answered; then whispered to
+Babbie, "What's to be done?"
+
+"He won't go away," Babbie answered. "You will have to let him into
+the parlor, Jean. Can she see the door from up there?"
+
+"No; but though he was in the parlor?"
+
+"I shall go to him there."
+
+"Make haste, Jean," Margaret called. "If it is any persons wanting
+shelter, we must give it them on such a night."
+
+"A minute, ma'am," Jean answered. To Babbie she whispered, "What shall
+I say to her?"
+
+"I--I don't know," answered Babbie ruefully. "Think of something,
+Jean. But open the door now. Stop, let me into the parlor first."
+
+The two women stole into the parlor.
+
+"Tell me what will be the result o' his coming here," entreated Jean.
+
+"The result," Babbie said firmly, "will be that he shall go away and
+leave me here."
+
+Margaret heard Jean open the front door and speak to some person or
+persons whom she showed into the parlor.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-One.
+
+RINTOUL AND BABBIE--BREAKDOWN OF THE DEFENCE OF THE MANSE.
+
+
+"You dare to look me in the face!"
+
+They were Rintoul's words. Yet Babbie had only ventured to look up
+because he was so long in speaking. His voice was low but harsh, like
+a wheel on which the brake is pressed sharply.
+
+"It seems to be more than the man is capable of," he added sourly.
+
+"Do you think," Babbie exclaimed, taking fire, "that he is afraid of
+you?"
+
+"So it seems; but I will drag him into the light, wherever he is
+skulking."
+
+Lord Rintoul strode to the door, and the brake was off his tongue
+already.
+
+"Go," said Babbie coldly, "and shout and stamp through the house; you
+may succeed in frightening the women, who are the only persons in
+it."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He has gone to the Spittal to see you."
+
+"He knew I was on the hill."
+
+"He lost me in the darkness, and thought you had run away with me in
+your trap."
+
+"Ha! So he is off to the Spittal to ask me to give you back to him."
+
+"To compel you," corrected Babbie.
+
+"Pooh!" said the earl nervously, "that was but mummery on the hill."
+
+"It was a marriage."
+
+"With gypsies for witnesses. Their word would count for less than
+nothing. Babbie, I am still in time to save you."
+
+"I don't want to be saved. The marriage had witnesses no court could
+discredit."
+
+"What witnesses?"
+
+"Mr. McKenzie and yourself."
+
+She heard his teeth meet. When next she looked at him, there were
+tears in his eyes as well as in her own. It was perhaps the first time
+these two had ever been in close sympathy. Both were grieving for
+Rintoul.
+
+"I am so sorry," Babbie began in a broken voice; then stopped, because
+they seemed such feeble words.
+
+"If you are sorry," the earl answered eagerly, "it is not yet too
+late. McKenzie and I saw nothing. Come away with me, Babbie, if only
+in pity for yourself."
+
+"Ah, but I don't pity myself."
+
+"Because this man has blinded you."
+
+"No, he has made me see."
+
+"This mummery on the hill----"
+
+"Why do you call it so? I believe God approved of that marriage, as He
+could never have countenanced yours and mine."
+
+"God! I never heard the word on your lips before."
+
+"I know that."
+
+"It is his teaching, doubtless?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he told you that to do to me as you have done was to be pleasing
+in God's sight?"
+
+"No; he knows that it was so evil in God's sight that I shall suffer
+for it always."
+
+"But he has done no wrong, so there is no punishment for him?"
+
+"It is true that he has done no wrong, but his punishment will be
+worse, probably, than mine."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU DARE TO LOOK ME IN THE FACE!"]
+
+"That," said the earl, scoffing, "is not just."
+
+"It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my sins by marrying
+me."
+
+"And what form is his punishment to take?"
+
+"For marrying me he will be driven from his church and dishonored in
+all men's eyes, unless--unless God is more merciful to us than we can
+expect."
+
+Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no longer meet it
+with sarcasm.
+
+"It is you I pity now," he said, looking wonderingly at her. "Do you
+not see that this man has deceived you? Where was his boasted purity
+in meeting you by stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to
+take you from me?"
+
+"If you knew him," Babbie answered, "you would not need to be told
+that he is incapable of that. He thought me an ordinary gypsy until an
+hour ago."
+
+"And you had so little regard for me that you waited until the eve of
+what was to be our marriage, and then, laughing at my shame, ran off
+to marry him."
+
+"I am not so bad as that," Babbie answered, and told him what had
+brought her to Thrums. "I had no thought but of returning to you, nor
+he of keeping me from you. We had said good-by at the mudhouse
+door--and then we heard your voice."
+
+"And my voice was so horrible to you that it drove you to this?"
+
+"I--I love him so much."
+
+What more could Babbie answer? These words told him that, if
+love commands, home, the friendships of a lifetime, kindnesses
+incalculable, are at once as naught. Nothing is so cruel as love if
+a rival challenges it to combat.
+
+"Why could you not love me, Babbie?" said the earl sadly. "I have done
+so much for you."
+
+It was little he had done for her that was not selfish. Men are
+deceived curiously in such matters. When they add a new wing to their
+house, they do not call the action virtue; but if they give to a
+fellow-creature for their own gratification, they demand of God a good
+mark for it. Babbie, however, was in no mood to make light of the
+earl's gifts, and at his question she shook her head sorrowfully.
+
+"Is it because I am too--old?"
+
+This was the only time he ever spoke of his age to her.
+
+"Oh no, it is not that," she replied hastily, "I love Mr.
+Dishart--because he loves me, I think."
+
+"Have I not loved you always?"
+
+"Never," Babbie answered simply. "If you had, perhaps then I should
+have loved you."
+
+"Babbie," he exclaimed, "if ever man loved woman, and showed it by the
+sacrifices he made for her, I----"
+
+"No," Babbie said, "you don't understand what it is. Ah! I did not
+mean to hurt you."
+
+"If I don't know what it is, what is it?" he asked, almost humbly. "I
+scarcely know you now."
+
+"That is it," said Babbie.
+
+She gave him back his ring, and then he broke down pitifully.
+Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw him only once; and with
+nothing to contrast against it, I may not now attempt to breathe life
+into the dust of his senile passion. These were the last words that
+passed between him and Babbie:
+
+"There was nothing," he said wistfully, "in this wide world that you
+could not have had by asking me for it. Was not that love?"
+
+"No," she answered. "What right have I to everything I cry for?"
+
+"You should never have had a care had you married me. That is love."
+
+"It is not. I want to share my husband's cares, as I expect him to
+share mine."
+
+"I would have humored you in everything."
+
+"You always did: as if a woman's mind were for laughing at, like a
+baby's passions."
+
+"You had your passions, too, Babbie. Yet did I ever chide you for
+them? That was love."
+
+"No, it was contempt. Oh," she cried passionately, "what have not you
+men to answer for who talk of love to a woman when her face is all you
+know of her; and her passions, her aspirations, are for kissing to
+sleep, her very soul a plaything? I tell you, Lord Rintoul, and it is
+all the message I send back to the gentlemen at the Spittal who made
+love to me behind your back, that this is a poor folly, and well
+calculated to rouse the wrath of God."
+
+Now, Jean's ear had been to the parlor keyhole for a time, but some
+message she had to take to Margaret, and what she risked saying was
+this:
+
+"It's Lord Rintoul and a party that has been catched in the rain, and
+he would be obliged to you if you could gie his bride shelter for the
+nicht."
+
+Thus the distracted servant thought to keep Margaret's mind at rest
+until Gavin came back.
+
+"Lord Rintoul!" exclaimed Margaret. "What a pity Gavin has missed him.
+Of course she can stay here. Did you say I had gone to bed? I should
+not know what to say to a lord. But ask her to come up to me after he
+has gone--and, Jean, is the parlor looking tidy?"
+
+Lord Rintoul having departed, Jean told Babbie how she had accounted
+to Margaret for his visit. "And she telled me to gie you dry claethes
+and her compliments, and would you gang up to the bedroom and see
+her?"
+
+Very slowly Babbie climbed the stairs. I suppose she is the only
+person who was ever afraid of Margaret. Her first knock on the bedroom
+door was so soft that Margaret, who was sitting up in bed, did not
+hear it. When Babbie entered the room, Margaret's first thought was
+that there could be no other so beautiful as this, and her second was
+that the stranger seemed even more timid than herself. After a few
+minutes' talk she laid aside her primness, a weapon she had drawn in
+self-defence lest this fine lady should not understand the grandeur of
+a manse, and at a "Call me Babbie, won't you?" she smiled.
+
+"That is what some other person calls you," said Margaret archly. "Do
+you know that he took twenty minutes to say good-night? My dear," she
+added hastily, misinterpreting Babbie's silence, "I should have been
+sorry had he taken one second less. Every tick of the clock was a
+gossip, telling me how he loves you."
+
+In the dim light a face that begged for pity was turned to Margaret.
+
+"He does love you, Babbie?" she asked, suddenly doubtful.
+
+Babbie turned away her face, then shook her head.
+
+"But you love him?"
+
+Again Babbie shook her head.
+
+"Oh, my dear," cried Margaret, in distress, "if this is so, are you
+not afraid to marry him?"
+
+She knew now that Babbie was crying, but she did not know why Babbie
+could not look her in the face.
+
+"There may be times," Babbie said, most woeful that she had not
+married Rintoul, "when it is best to marry a man though we do not love
+him."
+
+"You are wrong, Babbie," Margaret answered gravely; "if I know
+anything at all, it is that."
+
+"It may be best for others."
+
+"Do you mean for one other?" Margaret asked, and the girl bowed her
+head. "Ah, Babbie, you speak like a child."
+
+"You do not understand."
+
+"I do not need to be told the circumstances to know this--that if two
+people love each other, neither has any right to give the other up."
+
+Babbie turned impulsively to cast herself on the mercy of Gavin's
+mother, but no word could she say; a hot tear fell from her eyes upon
+the coverlet, and then she looked at the door, as if to run away.
+
+"But I have been too inquisitive," Margaret began; whereupon Babbie
+cried, "Oh no, no, no: you are very good. I have no one who cares
+whether I do right or wrong."
+
+"Your parents----"
+
+"I have had none since I was a child."
+
+"It is the more reason why I should be your friend," Margaret said,
+taking the girl's hand.
+
+"You do not know what you are saying. You cannot be my friend."
+
+"Yes, dear, I love you already. You have a good face, Babbie, as well
+as a beautiful one."
+
+Babbie could remain in the room no longer. She bade Margaret
+good-night and bent forward to kiss her; then drew back, like a Judas
+ashamed.
+
+"Why did you not kiss me?" Margaret asked in surprise, but poor Babbie
+walked out of the room without answering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of what occurred at the manse on the following day until I reached it,
+I need tell little more. When Babbie was tending Sam'l Farquharson's
+child in the Tenements she learned of the flood in Glen Quharity, and
+that the greater part of the congregation had set off to the
+assistance of the farmers; but fearful as this made her for Gavin's
+safety, she kept the new anxiety from his mother. Deceived by another
+story of Jean's, Margaret was the one happy person in the house.
+
+"I believe you had only a lover's quarrel with Lord Rintoul last
+night," she said to Babbie in the afternoon. "Ah, you see I can guess
+what is taking you to the window so often. You must not think him long
+in coming for you. I can assure you that the rain which keeps my son
+from me must be sufficiently severe to separate even true lovers. Take
+an old woman's example, Babbie. If I thought the minister's absence
+alarming, I should be in anguish; but as it is, my mind is so much at
+ease that, see, I can thread my needle."
+
+It was in less than an hour after Margaret spoke thus tranquilly to
+Babbie that the precentor got into the manse.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Two.
+
+MARGARET, THE PRECENTOR, AND GOD BETWEEN.
+
+
+Unless Andrew Luke, who went to Canada, be still above ground, I am
+now the only survivor of the few to whom Lang Tammas told what passed
+in the manse parlor after the door closed on him and Margaret. With
+the years the others lost the details, but before I forget them the
+man who has been struck by lightning will look at his arm without
+remembering what shrivelled it. There even came a time when the scene
+seemed more vivid to me than to the precentor, though that was only
+after he began to break up.
+
+"She was never the kind o' woman," Whamond said, "that a body need be
+nane feared at. You can see she is o' the timid sort. I couldna hae
+selected a woman easier to speak bold out to, though I had ha'en my
+pick o' them."
+
+He was a gaunt man, sour and hard, and he often paused in his story
+with a puzzled look on his forbidding face.
+
+"But, man, she was so michty windy o' him. If he had wanted to put a
+knife into her, I believe that woman would just hae telled him to take
+care no to cut his hands. Ay, and what innocent-like she was! If she
+had heard enough, afore I saw her, to make her uneasy, I could hae
+begun at once; but here she was, shaking my hand and smiling to me, so
+that aye when I tried to speak I gaed through ither. Nobody can
+despise me for it, I tell you, mair than I despise mysel'.
+
+"I thocht to mysel', 'Let her hae her smile out, Tammas Whamond; it's
+her hinmost.' Syne wi' shame at my cowardliness, I tried to yoke to my
+duty as chief elder o' the kirk, and I said to her, as thrawn as I
+could speak, 'Dinna thank me; I've done nothing for you.'
+
+"'I ken it wasna for me you did it,' she said, 'but for him; but, oh,
+Mr. Whamond, will that make me think the less o' you? He's my all,'
+she says, wi' that smile back in her face, and a look mixed up wi't
+that said as plain, 'and I need no more.' I thocht o' saying that some
+builds their house upon the sand, but--dagont, dominie, it's a solemn
+thing the pride mithers has in their laddies. I mind aince my ain
+mither--what the devil are you glowering at, Andrew Luke? Do you think
+I'm greeting?
+
+"'You'll sit down, Mr. Whamond,' she says next.
+
+"'No, I winna,' I said, angry-like. 'I didna come here to sit.'
+
+"I could see she thocht I was shy at being in the manse parlor; ay,
+and I thocht she was pleased at me looking shy. Weel, she took my hat
+out o' my hand, and she put it on the chair at the door, whaur there's
+aye an auld chair in grand houses for the servant to sit on at family
+exercise.
+
+"'You're a man, Mr. Whamond,' says she, 'that the minister delights to
+honor, and so you'll oblige me by sitting in his own armchair.'"
+
+Gavin never quite delighted to honor the precentor, of whom he was
+always a little afraid, and perhaps Margaret knew it. But you must not
+think less of her for wanting to gratify her son's chief elder. She
+thought, too, that he had just done her a service. I never yet knew a
+good woman who did not enjoy flattering men she liked.
+
+"I saw my chance at that," Whamond went on, "and I says to her
+sternly, 'In worldly position,' I says, 'I'm a common man, and it's no
+for the like o' sic to sit in a minister's chair; but it has been
+God's will,' I says, 'to wrap around me the mantle o' chief elder o'
+the kirk, and if the minister falls awa frae grace, it becomes my duty
+to take his place.'
+
+"If she had been looking at me, she maun hae grown feared at that, and
+syne I could hae gone on though my ilka word was a knockdown blow. But
+she was picking some things aff the chair to let me down on't.
+
+"'It's a pair o' mittens I'm working for the minister,' she says, and
+she handed them to me. Ay, I tried no to take them, but--Oh, lads,
+it's queer to think how saft I was.
+
+"'He's no to ken about them till they're finished,' she says, terrible
+fond-like.
+
+"The words came to my mouth, 'They'll never be finished,' and I could
+hae cursed mysel' for no saying them. I dinna ken how it was, but
+there was something pitiful in seeing her take up the mittens and
+begin working cheerily at one, and me kenning all the time that they
+would never be finished. I watched her fingers, and I said to mysel',
+'Another stitch, and that maun be your last.' I said that to mysel'
+till I thocht it was the needle that said it, and I wondered at her no
+hearing.
+
+"In the tail o' the day I says, 'You needna bother; he'll never wear
+them,' and they sounded sic words o' doom that I rose up off the
+chair. Ay, but she took me up wrang, and she said, 'I see you have
+noticed how careless o' his ain comforts he is, and that in his zeal
+he forgets to put on his mittens, though they may be in his pocket a'
+the time. Ay,' says she, confident-like, 'but he winna forget these
+mittens, Mr. Whamond, and I'll tell you the reason: it's because
+they're his mother's work.'
+
+"I stamped my foot, and she gae me an apologetic look, and she says,
+'I canna help boasting about his being so fond o' me.'
+
+"Ay, but here was me saying to mysel', 'Do your duty, Tammas Whamond;
+you sluggard, do your duty,' and without lifting my een frae her
+fingers I said sternly, 'The chances are,' I said, 'that these mittens
+will never be worn by the hands they are worked for.'
+
+"'You mean,' says she, 'that he'll gie them awa to some ill-off body,
+as he gies near a' thing he has? Ay, but there's one thing he never
+parts wi', and that's my work. There's a young lady in the manse the
+now,' says she, 'that offered to finish the mittens for me, but he
+would value them less if I let ony other body put a stitch into
+them.'
+
+"I thocht to mysel', 'Tammas Whamond, the Lord has opened a door to
+you, and you'll be disgraced forever if you dinna walk straucht in.'
+So I rose again, and I says, boldly this time, 'Whaur's that young
+leddy? I hae something to say to her that canna be kept waiting.'
+
+"'She's up the stair,' she says, surprised, 'but you canna ken her,
+Mr. Whamond, for she just came last nicht.'
+
+"'I ken mair o' her than you think,' says I; 'I ken what brocht her
+here, and ken wha she thinks she is to be married to, and I've come to
+tell her that she'll never get him.'
+
+"'How no?' she said, amazed like.
+
+"'Because,' said I, wi' my teeth thegither, 'he is already married.'
+
+"Lads, I stood waiting to see her fall, and when she didna fall I just
+waited langer, thinking she was slow in taking it a' in.
+
+"'I see you ken wha she is,' she said, looking at me, 'and yet I canna
+credit your news.'
+
+"'They're true,' I cries.
+
+"'Even if they are,' says she, considering, 'it may be the best thing
+that could happen to baith o' them.'
+
+"I sank back in the chair in fair bewilderment, for I didna ken at
+that time, as we a' ken now, that she was thinking o' the earl when I
+was thinking o' her son. Dominie, it looked to me as if the Lord had
+opened a door to me, and syne shut it in my face.
+
+"Syne wi' me sitting there in a kind o' awe o' the woman's simpleness,
+she began to tell me what the minister was like when he was a bairn,
+and I was saying a' the time to mysel', 'You're chief elder o' the
+kirk, Tammas Whamond, and you maun speak out the next time she stops
+to draw breath.' They were terrible sma', common things she telled me,
+sic as near a' mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o' holy
+way she said them drove my words down my throat, like as if I was some
+infidel man trying to break out wi' blasphemy in a kirk.
+
+"'I'll let you see something,' says she, 'that I ken will interest
+you.' She brocht it out o' a drawer, and what do you think it was? As
+sure as death it was no more than some o' his hair when he was a
+litlin, and it was tied up sic carefully in paper that you would hae
+thocht it was some valuable thing.
+
+"'Mr. Whamond,' she says solemnly, 'you've come thrice to the manse to
+keep me frae being uneasy about my son's absence, and you was the
+chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I'll gie you
+a little o' that hair.'
+
+"Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and yet to see her fondling
+it! I says to mysel', 'Mrs. Dishart,' I says to mysel', 'I was the
+chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I've come
+here to tell you that I'm to be the chief instrument under God in
+driving him out o't.' Ay, but when I focht to bring out these words,
+my mouth snecked like a box.
+
+"'Dinna gie me his hair,' was a' I could say, and I wouldna take it
+frae her; but she laid it in my hand, and--and syne what could I do?
+Ay, it's easy to speak about thae things now, and to wonder how I
+could hae so disgraced the position o' chief elder o' the kirk, but I
+tell you I was near greeting for the woman. Call me names, dominie; I
+deserve them all."
+
+I did not call Whamond names for being reluctant to break Margaret's
+heart. Here is a confession I may make. Sometimes I say my prayers at
+night in a hurry, going on my knees indeed, but with as little
+reverence as I take a drink of water before jumping into bed, and for
+the same reason, because it is my nightly habit. I am only pattering
+words I have by heart to a chair then, and should be as well employed
+writing a comic Bible. At such times I pray for the earthly well-being
+of the precentor, though he has been dead for many years. He crept
+into my prayers the day he told me this story, and was part of them
+for so long that when they are only a recitation he is part of them
+still.
+
+"She said to me," Whamond continued, "that the women o' the
+congregation would be fond to handle the hair. Could I tell her that
+the women was waur agin him than the men? I shivered to hear her.
+
+"'Syne when they're a' sitting breathless listening to his preaching,'
+she says, 'they'll be able to picture him as a bairn, just as I often
+do in the kirk mysel'.'
+
+"Andrew Luke, you're sneering at me, but I tell you if you had been
+there and had begun to say, 'He'll preach in our kirk no more,' I
+would hae struck you. And I'm chief elder o' the kirk.
+
+"She says, 'Oh, Mr. Whamond, there's times in the kirk when he is
+praying, and the glow on his face is hardly mortal, so that I fall
+a-shaking, wi' a mixture o' fear and pride, me being his mother; and
+sinful though I am to say it, I canna help thinking at sic times that
+I ken what the mother o' Jesus had in her heart when she found Him in
+the temple.'
+
+"Dominie, it's sax-and-twenty years since I was made an elder o' the
+kirk. I mind the day as if it was yestreen. Mr. Carfrae made me walk
+hame wi' him, and he took me into the manse parlor, and he set me in
+that very chair. It was the first time I was ever in the manse. Ay, he
+little thocht that day in his earnestness, and I little thocht mysel'
+in the pride o' my lusty youth, that the time was coming when I would
+swear in that reverenced parlor. I say swear, dominie, for when she
+had finished I jumped to my feet, and I cried, 'Hell!' and I lifted up
+my hat. And I was chief elder.
+
+"She fell back frae my oath," he said, "and syne she took my sleeve
+and speired, 'What has come ower you, Mr. Whamond? Hae you onything on
+your mind?'
+
+"'I've sin on it,' I roared at her. 'I have neglect o' duty on it. I
+am one o' them that cries "Lord, Lord," and yet do not the things
+which He commands. He has pointed out the way to me, and I hinna
+followed it.'
+
+"'What is it you hinna done that you should hae done?' she said. 'Oh,
+Mr. Whamond, if you want my help, it's yours.'
+
+"'Your son's a' the earth to you,' I cried, 'but my eldership's as
+muckle to me. Sax-and-twenty years hae I been an elder, and now I maun
+gie it up.'
+
+"'Wha says that?' she speirs.
+
+"'I say it,' I cried. 'I've shirked my duty. I gie up my eldership
+now. Tammas Whamond is no langer an elder o' the kirk;' ay, and I was
+chief elder.
+
+"Dominie, I think she began to say that when the minister came hame he
+wouldna accept my resignation, but I paid no heed to her. You ken what
+was the sound that keeped my ears frae her words; it was the sound o'
+a machine coming yont the Tenements. You ken what was the sicht that
+made me glare through the window instead o' looking at her; it was the
+sicht o' Mr. Dishart in the machine. I couldna speak, but I got my
+body atween her and the window, for I heard shouting, and I couldna
+doubt that it was the folk cursing him.
+
+"But she heard too, she heard too, and she squeezed by me to the
+window. I couldna look out; I just walked saft-like to the parlor
+door, but afore I reached it she cried joyously--
+
+"'It's my son come back, and see how fond o' him they are! They are
+running at the side o' the machine, and the laddies are tossing their
+bonnets in the air.'
+
+"'God help you, woman!' I said to mysel', 'it canna be bonnets--it's
+stanes and divits mair likely that they're flinging at him.' Syne I
+creeped out o' the manse. Dominie, you mind I passed you in the
+kitchen, and didna say a word?"
+
+Yes, I saw the precentor pass through the kitchen, with such a face on
+him as no man ever saw him wear again. Since Tammas Whamond died we
+have had to enlarge the Thrums cemetery twice; so it can matter not at
+all to him, and but little to me, what you who read think of him. All
+his life children ran from him. He was the dourest, the most unlovable
+man in Thrums. But may my right hand wither, and may my tongue be
+cancer-bitten, and may my mind be gone into a dry rot, before I forget
+what he did for me and mine that day!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Three.
+
+RAIN--MIST--THE JAWS.
+
+
+To this day we argue in the glen about the sound mistaken by many of
+us for the firing of the Spittal cannon, some calling it thunder and
+others the tearing of trees in the torrent. I think it must have been
+the roll of stones into the Quharity from Silver Hill, of which a
+corner has been missing since that day. Silver Hill is all stones, as
+if creation had been riddled there, and in the sun the mica on them
+shines like many pools of water.
+
+At the roar, as they thought, of the cannon, the farmers looked up
+from their struggle with the flood to say, "That's Rintoul married,"
+as clocks pause simultaneously to strike the hour. Then every one in
+the glen save Gavin and myself was done with Rintoul. Before the hills
+had answered the noise, Gavin was on his way to the Spittal. The dog
+must have been ten minutes in overtaking him, yet he maintained
+afterward that it was with him from the start. From this we see that
+the shock he had got carried him some distance before he knew that he
+had left the school-house. It also gave him a new strength, that
+happily lasted longer than his daze of mind.
+
+Gavin moved northward quicker than I came south, climbing over or
+wading through his obstacles, while I went round mine. After a time,
+too, the dog proved useful, for on discovering that it was going
+homeward it took the lead, and several times drew him to the right
+road to the Spittal by refusing to accompany him on the wrong road.
+Yet in two hours he had walked perhaps nine miles without being four
+miles nearer the Spittal. In that flood the glen milestones were three
+miles apart.
+
+For some time he had been following the dog doubtfully, for it seemed
+to be going too near the river. When they struck a cart-track,
+however, he concluded rightly that they were nearing a bridge. His
+faith in his guide was again tested before they had been many minutes
+on this sloppy road. The dog stopped, whined, looked irresolute, and
+then ran to the right, disappearing into the mist in an instant. He
+shouted to it to come back, and was surprised to hear a whistle in
+reply. This was sufficient to make him dash after the dog, and in less
+than a minute he stopped abruptly by the side of a shepherd.
+
+"Have you brocht it?" the man cried almost into Gavin's ear; yet the
+roar of the water was so tremendous that the words came faintly, as if
+from a distance. "Wae is me; is it only you, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"Is it only you!" No one in the glen would have addressed a minister
+thus except in a matter of life or death, and Gavin knew it.
+
+"He'll be ower late," the shepherd exclaimed, rubbing his hands
+together in distress. "I'm speaking o' Whinbusses' grieve. He has run
+for ropes, but he'll be ower late."
+
+"Is there some one in danger?" asked Gavin, who stood, he knew not
+where, with this man, enveloped in mist.
+
+"Is there no? Look!"
+
+"There is nothing to be seen but mist; where are we?"
+
+"We're on the high bank o' the Quharity. Take care, man; you was
+stepping ower into the roaring water. Lie down and tell me if he's
+there yet. Maybe I just think that I see him, for the sicht is painted
+on my een."
+
+Gavin lay prone and peered at the river, but the mist came up to his
+eyes. He only knew that the river was below from the sound.
+
+"Is there a man down there?" he asked, shuddering.
+
+"There was a minute syne; on a bit island."
+
+"Why does he not speak?"
+
+"He is senseless. Dinna move; the mist's clearing, and you'll see if
+he's there syne. The mist has been lifting and falling that way ilka
+minute since me and the grieve saw him."
+
+The mist did not rise. It only shook like a blanket, and then again
+remained stationary. But in that movement Gavin had seen twice, first
+incredulously, and then with conviction.
+
+"Shepherd," he said, rising, "it is Lord Rintoul."
+
+"Ay, it's him; and you saw his feet was in the water. They were dry
+when the grieve left me. Mr. Dishart, the ground he is on is being
+washed awa bit by bit. I tell you, the flood's greedy for him, and
+it'll hae him----Look, did you see him again?"
+
+"Is he living?"
+
+"We saw him move. Hst! Was that a cry?"
+
+It was only the howling of the dog, which had recognized its master
+and was peering over the bank, the body quivering to jump, but the
+legs restless with indecision.
+
+"If we were down there," Gavin said, "we could hold him secure till
+rescue comes. It is no great jump."
+
+"How far would you make it? I saw him again!"
+
+"It looked further that time."
+
+"That's it! Sometimes the ground he is on looks so near that you think
+you could almost drop on it, and the next time it's yards and yards
+awa. I've stood ready for the spring, Mr. Dishart, a dozen times, but
+I aye sickened. I daurna do it. Look at the dog; just when it's
+starting to jump, it pulls itsel' back."
+
+As if it had heard the shepherd, the dog jumped at that instant.
+
+"It sprang too far," Gavin said.
+
+"It didna spring far enough."
+
+They waited, and presently the mist thinned for a moment, as if it was
+being drawn out. They saw the earl, but there was no dog.
+
+"Poor brute," said the shepherd, and looked with awe at Gavin.
+
+"Rintoul is slipping into the water," Gavin answered. "You won't
+jump?"
+
+"No, I'm wae for him, and----"
+
+"Then I will," Gavin was about to say, but the shepherd continued,
+"And him only married twa hours syne."
+
+That kept the words in Gavin's mouth for half a minute, and then he
+spoke them.
+
+"Dinna think o't," cried the shepherd, taking him by the coat. "The
+ground he is on is slippery. I've flung a dozen stanes at it, and them
+that hit it slithered off. Though you landed in the middle o't, you
+would slide into the water."
+
+"He shook himsel' free o' me," the shepherd told afterward, "and I saw
+him bending down and measuring the distance wi' his een as cool as if
+he was calculating a drill o' tatties. Syne I saw his lips moving in
+prayer. It wasna spunk he needed to pray for, though. Next minute
+there was me, my very arms prigging wi' him to think better o't, and
+him standing ready to loup, his knees bent, and not a tremble in them.
+The mist lifted, and I----Lads, I couldna gie a look to the earl. Mr.
+Dishart jumped; I hardly saw him, but I kent, I kent, for I was on the
+bank alane. What did I do? I flung mysel' down in a sweat, and if een
+could bore mist mine would hae done it. I thocht I heard the
+minister's death-cry, and may I be struck if I dinna believe now that
+it was a skirl o' my ain. After that there was no sound but the jaw
+o' the water; and I prayed, but no to God, to the mist to rise, and
+after an awful time it rose, and I saw the minister was safe; he had
+pulled the earl into the middle o' the bit island and was rubbing him
+back to consciousness. I sweat when I think o't yet."
+
+The Little Minister's jump is always spoken of as a brave act in the
+glen, but at such times I am silent. This is not because, being timid
+myself, I am without admiration for courage. My little maid says that
+three in every four of my poems are to the praise of prowess, and she
+has not forgotten how I carried her on my shoulder once to Tilliedrum
+to see a soldier who had won the Victoria Cross, and made her shake
+hands with him, though he was very drunk. Only last year one of my
+scholars declared to me that Nelson never said "England expects every
+man this day to do his duty," for which I thrashed the boy and sent
+him to the cooling-stone. But was it brave of Gavin to jump? I have
+heard some maintain that only misery made him so bold, and others that
+he jumped because it seemed a fine thing to risk his life for an
+enemy. But these are really charges of cowardice, and my boy was never
+a coward. Of the two kinds of courage, however, he did not then show
+the nobler. I am glad that he was ready for such an act, but he should
+have remembered Margaret and Babbie. As it was, he may be said to have
+forced them to jump with him. Not to attempt a gallant deed for which
+one has the impulse, may be braver than the doing of it.
+
+"Though it seemed as lang time," the shepherd says, "as I could hae
+run up a hill in, I dinna suppose it was many minutes afore I saw
+Rintoul opening and shutting his een. The next glint I had o' them
+they were speaking to ane another; ay, and mair than speaking. They
+were quarrelling. I couldna hear their words, but there was a moment
+when I thocht they were to grapple. Lads, the memory o' that'll hing
+about my deathbed. There was twa men, edicated to the highest pitch,
+ane a lord and the other a minister, and the flood was taking awa a
+mouthful o' their footing ilka minute, and the jaws o' destruction was
+gaping for them, and yet they were near fechting. We ken now it was
+about a woman. Ay, but does that make it less awful?"
+
+No, that did not make it less awful. It was even awful that Gavin's
+first words when Rintoul opened his eyes and closed them hastily were,
+"Where is she?" The earl did not answer; indeed, for the moment the
+words had no meaning to him.
+
+"How did I come here?" he asked feebly.
+
+"You should know better than I. Where is my wife?"
+
+"I remember now," Rintoul repeated several times. "Yes, I had left the
+Spittal to look for you--you were so long in coming. How did I find
+you?"
+
+"It was I who found you," Gavin answered. "You must have been swept
+away by the flood."
+
+"And you too?"
+
+In a few words Gavin told how he came to be beside the earl.
+
+"I suppose they will say you have saved my life," was Rintoul's
+commentary.
+
+"It is not saved yet. If help does not come, we shall be dead men in
+an hour. What have you done with my wife?"
+
+Rintoul ceased to listen to him, and shouted sums of money to the
+shepherd, who shook his head and bawled an answer that neither Gavin
+nor the earl heard. Across that thundering water only Gavin's voice
+could carry, the most powerful ever heard in a Thrums pulpit, the one
+voice that could be heard all over the Commonty during the time of the
+tent-preaching. Yet he never roared, as some preachers do of whom we
+say, "Ah, if they could hear the Little Minister's word!"
+
+Gavin caught the gesticulating earl by the sleeve, and said, "Another
+man has gone for ropes. Now, listen to me; how dared you go through a
+marriage ceremony with her, knowing her already to be my wife?"
+
+Rintoul did listen this time.
+
+"How do you know I married her?" he asked sharply.
+
+"I heard the cannon."
+
+Now the earl understood, and the shadow on his face shook and lifted,
+and his teeth gleamed. His triumph might be short-lived, but he would
+enjoy it while he could.
+
+"Well," he answered, picking the pebbles for his sling with care, "you
+must know that I could not have married her against her will. The
+frolic on the hill amused her, but she feared you might think it
+serious, and so pressed me to proceed with her marriage to-day despite
+the flood."
+
+This was the point at which the shepherd saw the minister raise his
+fist. It fell, however, without striking.
+
+"Do you really think that I could doubt her?" Gavin said compassionately,
+and for the second time in twenty-four hours the earl learned that he
+did not know what love is.
+
+For a full minute they had forgotten where they were. Now, again, the
+water seemed to break loose, so that both remembered their danger
+simultaneously and looked up. The mist parted for long enough to show
+them that where had only been the shepherd was now a crowd of men,
+with here and there a woman. Before the mist again came between the
+minister had recognized many members of his congregation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his unsuccessful attempt to reach Whinbusses, the grieve had met
+the relief party from Thrums. Already the weavers had helped Waster
+Lunny to stave off ruin, and they were now on their way to Whinbusses,
+keeping together through fear of mist and water. Every few minutes
+Snecky Hobart rang his bell to bring in stragglers.
+
+"Follow me," was all the panting grieve could say at first, but his
+agitation told half his story. They went with him patiently, only
+stopping once, and then excitedly, for they come suddenly on Rob Dow.
+Rob was still lying a prisoner beneath the tree, and the grieve now
+remembered that he had fallen over this tree, and neither noticed the
+man under it nor been noticed by the man. Fifty hands released poor
+Dow, and two men were commissioned to bring him along slowly while the
+others hurried to the rescue of the earl. They were amazed to learn
+from the shepherd that Mr. Dishart also was in danger, and after "Is
+there a woman wi' him?" some cried, "He'll get off cheap wi'
+drowning," and "It's the judgment o' God."
+
+The island on which the two men stood was now little bigger than the
+round tables common in Thrums, and its centre was some feet farther
+from the bank than when Gavin jumped. A woman, looking down at it,
+sickened, and would have toppled into the water, had not John Spens
+clutched her. Others were so stricken with awe that they forgot they
+had hands.
+
+Peter Tosh, the elder, cast a rope many times, but it would not carry.
+The one end was then weighted with a heavy stone, and the other tied
+round the waists of two men. But the force of the river had been
+underestimated. The stone fell short into the torrent, which rushed
+off with it so furiously that the men were flung upon their faces and
+trailed to the verge of the precipice. A score of persons sprang to
+their rescue, and the rope snapped. There was only one other rope, and
+its fate was not dissimilar. This time the stone fell into the water
+beyond the island, and immediately rushed down stream. Gavin seized
+the rope, but it pressed against his body, and would have pushed him
+off his feet had not Tosh cut it. The trunk of the tree that had
+fallen on Rob Dow was next dragged to the bank and an endeavor made to
+form a sloping bridge of it. The island, however, was now soft and
+unstable, and, though the trunk was successfully lowered, it only
+knocked lumps off the island, and finally it had to be let go, as the
+weavers could not pull it back. It splashed into the water, and was at
+once whirled out of sight. Some of the party on the bank began hastily
+to improvise a rope of cravats and the tags of the ropes still left,
+but the mass stood helpless and hopeless.
+
+"You may wonder that we could have stood still, waiting to see the
+last o' them," Birse, the post, has said to me in the school-house,
+"but, dominie, I couldna hae moved, magre my neck. I'm a hale man, but
+if this minute we was to hear the voice o' the Almighty saying
+solemnly, 'Afore the clock strikes again, Birse, the post, will fall
+down dead of heart disease,' what do you think you would do? I'll tell
+you. You would stand whaur you are, and stare, tongue-tied, at me till
+I dropped. How do I ken? By the teaching o' that nicht. Ay, but
+there's a mair important thing I dinna ken, and that is whether I
+would be palsied wi' fear like the earl, or face death with the
+calmness o' the minister."
+
+Indeed, the contrast between Rintoul and Gavin was now impressive.
+When Tosh signed that the weavers had done their all and failed, the
+two men looked in each other's faces, and Gavin's face was firm and
+the earl's working convulsively. The people had given up attempting to
+communicate with Gavin save by signs, for though they heard his
+sonorous voice, when he pitched it at them, they saw that he caught
+few words of theirs. "He heard our skirls," Birse said, "but couldna
+grip the words ony mair than we could hear the earl. And yet we
+screamed, and the minister didna. I've heard o' Highlandmen wi' the
+same gift, so that they could be heard across a glen."
+
+"We must prepare for death," Gavin said solemnly to the earl, "and it
+is for your own sake that I again ask you to tell me the truth.
+Worldly matters are nothing to either of us now, but I implore you not
+to carry a lie into your Maker's presence."
+
+"I will not give up hope," was all Rintoul's answer, and he again
+tried to pierce the mist with offers of reward. After that he became
+doggedly silent, fixing his eyes on the ground at his feet. I have a
+notion that he had made up his mind to confess the truth about Babbie
+when the water had eaten the island as far as the point at which he
+was now looking.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Four.
+
+END OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+Out of the mist came the voice of Gavin, clear and strong--
+
+"If you hear me, hold up your hands as a sign."
+
+They heard, and none wondered at his voice crossing the chasm while
+theirs could not. When the mist cleared, they were seen to have done
+as he bade them. Many hands remained up for a time because the people
+did not remember to bring them down, so great was the awe that had
+fallen on all, as if the Lord was near.
+
+Gavin took his watch from his pocket, and he said--
+
+"I am to fling this to you. You will give it to Mr. Ogilvy, the
+schoolmaster, as a token of the love I bear him."
+
+The watch was caught by James Langlands, and handed to Peter Tosh, the
+chief elder present.
+
+"To Mr. Ogilvy," Gavin continued, "you will also give the chain. You
+will take it off my neck when you find the body.
+
+"To each of my elders, and to Hendry Munn, kirk officer, and to my
+servant Jean, I leave a book, and they will go to my study and choose
+it for themselves.
+
+"I also leave a book for Nanny Webster, and I charge you, Peter Tosh,
+to take it to her, though she be not a member of my church.
+
+"The pictorial Bible with 'To my son on his sixth birthday' on it, I
+bequeath to Rob Dow. No, my mother will want to keep that. I give to
+Rob Dow my Bible with the brass clasp.
+
+"It is my wish that every family in the congregation should have some
+little thing to remember me by. This you will tell my mother.
+
+"To my successor I leave whatsoever of my papers he may think of any
+value to him, including all my notes on Revelation, of which I meant
+to make a book. I hope he will never sing the paraphrases.
+
+"If Mr. Carfrae's health permits, you will ask him to preach the
+funeral sermon; but if he be too frail, then you will ask Mr. Trail,
+under whom I sat in Glasgow. The illustrated 'Pilgrim's Progress' on
+the drawers in my bedroom belongs to Mr. Trail, and you will return it
+to him with my affection and compliments.
+
+"I owe five shillings to Hendry Munn for mending my boots, and a
+smaller sum to Baxter, the mason. I have two pounds belonging to Rob
+Dow, who asked me to take charge of them for him. I owe no other man
+anything, and this you will bear in mind if Matthew Cargill, the
+flying stationer, again brings forward a claim for the price of
+Whiston's 'Josephus,' which I did not buy from him.
+
+"Mr. Moncur, of Aberbrothick, had agreed to assist me at the
+Sacrament, and will doubtless still lend his services. Mr. Carfrae or
+Mr. Trail will take my place if my successor is not elected by that
+time. The Sacrament cups are in the vestry press, of which you will
+find the key beneath the clock in my parlor. The tokens are in the
+topmost drawer in my bedroom.
+
+"The weekly prayer-meeting will be held as usual on Thursday at eight
+o'clock, and the elders will officiate.
+
+"It is my wish that the news of my death be broken to my mother by Mr.
+Ogilvy, the schoolmaster, and by no other. You will say to him that
+this is my solemn request, and that I bid him discharge it without
+faltering and be of good cheer.
+
+"But if Mr. Ogilvy be not now alive, the news of my death will be
+broken to my mother by my beloved wife. Last night I was married on
+the hill, over the tongs, but with the sanction of God, to her whom
+you call the Egyptian, and despite what has happened since then, of
+which you will soon have knowledge, I here solemnly declare that she
+is my wife, and you will seek for her at the Spittal or elsewhere till
+you find her, and you will tell her to go to my mother and remain with
+her always, for these are the commands of her husband."
+
+It was then that Gavin paused, for Lord Rintoul had that to say to him
+which no longer could be kept back. All the women were crying sore,
+and also some men whose eyes had been dry at the coffining of their
+children.
+
+"Now I ken," said Cruickshanks, who had been an atheist, "that it's
+only the fool wha' says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
+
+Another said, "That's a man."
+
+Another said, "That man has a religion to last him all through."
+
+A fourth said, "Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."
+
+A fifth said, "That's our minister. He's the minister o' the Auld
+Licht Kirk o' Thrums. Woe is me, we're to lose him."
+
+Many cried, "Our hearts was set hard against him. O Lord, are you
+angry wi' your servants that you're taking him frae us just when we
+ken what he is?"
+
+Gavin did not hear them, and again he spoke:
+
+"My brethren, God is good. I have just learned that my wife is with my
+dear mother at the manse. I leave them in your care and in His."
+
+No more he said of Babbie, for the island was become very small.
+
+"The Lord calls me hence. It is only for a little time I have been
+with you, and now I am going away, and you will know me no more. Too
+great has been my pride because I was your minister, but He who sent
+me to labor among you is slow to wrath; and He ever bore in mind that
+you were my first charge. My people, I must say to you, 'Farewell.'"
+
+Then, for the first time, his voice faltered, and wanting to go on he
+could not. "Let us read," he said, quickly, "in the Word of God in the
+fourteenth of Matthew, from the twenty-eighth verse."
+
+He repeated these four verses:--
+
+"'And Peter answered Him and said, Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come
+unto Thee on the water.
+
+"'And He said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he
+walked on the water, to go to Jesus.
+
+"'But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to
+sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
+
+"'And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him, and
+said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?'"
+
+After this Gavin's voice was again steady, and he said, "The
+sand-glass is almost run out. Dearly beloved, with what words shall I
+bid you good-by?"
+
+Many thought that these were to be the words, for the mist parted, and
+they saw the island tremble and half of it sink.
+
+"My people," said the voice behind the mist, "this is the text I leave
+with you: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
+and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but
+lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
+doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' That
+text I read in the flood, where the hand of God has written it. All
+the pound-notes in the world would not dam this torrent for a moment,
+so that we might pass over to you safely. Yet it is but a trickle of
+water, soon to be dried up. Verily, I say unto you, only a few hours
+ago the treasures of earth stood between you and this earl, and what
+are they now compared to this trickle of water? God only can turn
+rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into dry ground. Let
+His Word be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path; may He
+be your refuge and your strength. Amen."
+
+This amen he said quickly, thinking death was now come. He was seen to
+raise his hands, but whether to Heaven or involuntarily to protect his
+face as he fell none was sure, for the mist again filled the chasm.
+Then came a clap of stillness. No one breathed.
+
+But the two men were not yet gone, and Gavin spoke once more.
+
+"Let us sing in the twenty-third Psalm."
+
+He himself raised the tune, and so long as they heard his voice they
+sang--
+
+  "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want;
+    He makes me down to lie
+  In pastures green; He leadeth me
+    The quiet waters by.
+
+  "My soul He doth restore again;
+    And me to walk doth make
+  Within the paths of righteousness
+    Ev'n for His own name's sake.
+
+  "Yea, though I walk in Death's dark vale,
+    Yet will I fear none ill;
+  For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
+    And staff----"
+
+But some had lost the power to sing in the first verse, and others at
+"Death's dark vale," and when one man found himself singing alone he
+stopped abruptly. This was because they no longer heard the minister.
+
+"O Lord!" Peter Tosh cried, "lift the mist, for it's mair than we can
+bear."
+
+The mist rose slowly, and those who had courage to look saw Gavin
+praying with the earl. Many could not look, and some of them did not
+even see Rob Dow jump.
+
+For it was Dow, the man with the crushed leg, who saved Gavin's life,
+and flung away his own for it. Suddenly he was seen on the edge of the
+bank, holding one end of the improvised rope in his hand. As Tosh
+says--
+
+"It all happened in the opening and shutting o' an eye. It's a queer
+thing to say, but though I prayed to God to take awa the mist, when He
+did raise it I couldna look. I shut my een tight, and held my arm
+afore my face, like ane feared o' being struck. Even when I daured to
+look, my arm was shaking so that I could see Rob both above it and
+below it. He was on the edge, crouching to leap. I didna see wha had
+haud o' the other end o' the rope. I heard the minister cry, 'No, Dow,
+no!' and it gae through me as quick as a stab that if Rob jumped he
+would knock them both into the water. But he did jump, and you ken how
+it was that he didna knock them off."
+
+It was because he had no thought of saving his own life. He jumped,
+not at the island, now little bigger than the seat of a chair, but at
+the edge of it, into the foam, and with his arm outstretched. For a
+second the hand holding the rope was on the dot of land. Gavin tried
+to seize the hand; Rintoul clutched the rope. The earl and the
+minister were dragged together into safety, and both left the water
+senseless. Gavin was never again able to lift his left hand higher
+than his head. Dow's body was found next day near the school-house.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Five.
+
+TALK OF A LITTLE MAID SINCE GROWN TALL.
+
+
+My scholars have a game they call "The Little Minister," in which the
+boys allow the girls as a treat to join. Some of the characters in the
+real drama are omitted as of no importance--the dominie, for
+instance--and the two best fighters insist on being Dow and Gavin. I
+notice that the game is finished when Dow dives from a haystack, and
+Gavin and the earl are dragged to the top of it by a rope. Though
+there should be another scene, it is only a marriage, which the girls
+have, therefore, to go through without the help of the boys. This
+warns me that I have come to an end of my story for all except my
+little maid. In the days when she sat on my knee and listened it had
+no end, for after I told her how her father and mother were married a
+second time she would say, "And then I came, didn't I? Oh, tell me
+about me!" So it happened that when she was no higher than my staff
+she knew more than I could write in another book, and many a time she
+solemnly told me what I had told her, as--
+
+"Would you like me to tell you a story? Well, it's about a minister,
+and the people wanted to be bad to him, and then there was a flood,
+and a flood is lochs falling instead of rain, and so of course he was
+nearly drownded, and he preached to them till they liked him again,
+and so they let him marry her, and they like her awful too, and, just
+think! it was my father; and that's all. Now tell me about grandmother
+when father came home."
+
+I told her once again that Margaret never knew how nearly Gavin was
+driven from his kirk. For Margaret was as one who goes to bed in the
+daytime and wakes in it, and is not told that there has been a black
+night while she slept. She had seen her son leave the manse the idol
+of his people, and she saw them rejoicing as they brought him back. Of
+what occurred at the Jaws, as the spot where Dow had saved two lives
+is now called, she learned, but not that these Jaws snatched him and
+her from an ignominy more terrible than death, for she never knew that
+the people had meditated driving him from his kirk. This Thrums is
+bleak and perhaps forbidding, but there is a moment of the day when a
+setting sun dyes it pink, and the people are like their town. Thrums
+was never colder in times of snow than were his congregation to their
+minister when the Great Rain began, but his fortitude rekindled their
+hearts. He was an obstinate minister, and love had led him a dance,
+but in the hour of trial he had proved himself a man.
+
+When Gavin reached the manse, and saw not only his mother but Babbie,
+he would have kissed them both; but Babbie could only say, "She does
+not know," and then run away crying. Gavin put his arm round his
+mother, and drew her into the parlor, where he told her who Babbie
+was. Now Margaret had begun to love Babbie already, and had prayed to
+see Gavin happily married; but it was a long time before she went
+upstairs to look for his wife and kiss her and bring her down. "Why
+was it a long time?" my little maid would ask, and I had to tell her
+to wait until she was old, and had a son, when she would find out for
+herself.
+
+[Illustration: "BABBIE COULD ONLY SAY, 'SHE DOES NOT KNOW.'"]
+
+While Gavin and the earl were among the waters, two men were on
+their way to Mr. Carfrae's home, to ask him to return with them and
+preach the Auld Licht kirk of Thrums vacant; and he came, though now
+so done that he had to be wheeled about in a little coach. He
+came in sorrow, yet resolved to perform what was asked of him if
+it seemed God's will; but, instead of banishing Gavin, all he had
+to do was to remarry him and kirk him, both of which things he did,
+sitting in his coach, as many can tell. Lang Tammas spoke no more
+against Gavin, but he would not go to the marriage, and he insisted on
+resigning his eldership for a year and a day. I think he only once
+again spoke to Margaret. She was in the manse garden when he was
+passing, and she asked him if he would tell her now why he had been
+so agitated when he visited her on the day of the flood. He answered
+gruffly, "It's no business o' yours." Dr. McQueen was Gavin's best
+man. He died long ago of scarlet fever. So severe was the epidemic
+that for a week he was never in bed. He attended fifty cases
+without suffering, but as soon as he had bent over Hendry Munn's
+youngest boys, who both had it, he said, "I'm smitted," and went
+home to die. You may be sure that Gavin proved a good friend to
+Micah Dow. I have the piece of slate on which Rob proved himself a
+good friend to Gavin; it was in his pocket when we found the body.
+Lord Rintoul returned to his English estates, and never revisited
+the Spittal. The last thing I heard of him was that he had been
+offered the Lord-Lieutenantship of a county, and had accepted it in
+a long letter, in which he began by pointing out his unworthiness.
+This undid him, for the Queen, or her councillors, thinking from his
+first page that he had declined the honor, read no further, and
+appointed another man. Waster Lunny is still alive, but has gone to
+another farm. Sanders Webster, in his gratitude, wanted Nanny to
+become an Auld Licht, but she refused, saying, "Mr. Dishart is worth
+a dozen o' Mr. Duthie, and I'm terrible fond o' Mrs. Dishart, but
+Established I was born and Established I'll remain till I'm carried
+out o' this house feet foremost."
+
+"But Nanny went to Heaven for all that," my little maid told me.
+"Jean says people can go to Heaven though they are not Auld Lichts,
+but she says it takes them all their time. Would you like me to tell
+you a story about my mother putting glass on the manse dike? Well, my
+mother and my father is very fond of each other, and once they was in
+the garden, and my father kissed my mother, and there was a woman
+watching them over the dike, and she cried out--something naughty."
+
+"It was Tibbie Birse," I said, "and what she cried was, 'Mercy on us,
+that's the third time in half an hour!' So your mother, who heard her,
+was annoyed, and put glass on the wall."
+
+"But it's me that is telling you the story. You are sure you don't
+know it? Well, they asked father to take the glass away, and he
+wouldn't; but he once preached at mother for having a white feather in
+her bonnet, and another time he preached at her for being too fond of
+him. Jean told me. That's all."
+
+No one seeing Babbie going to church demurely on Gavin's arm could
+guess her history. Sometimes I wonder whether the desire to be a gypsy
+again ever comes over her for a mad hour, and whether, if so, Gavin
+takes such measures to cure her as he threatened in Caddam Wood. I
+suppose not; but here is another story:
+
+[Illustration: "THERE WAS A WOMAN WATCHING THEM OVER THE DIKE."]
+
+"When I ask mother to tell me about her once being a gypsy she says I
+am a bad 'quisitive little girl, and to put on my hat and come with
+her to the prayer-meeting; and when I asked father to let me see
+mother's gypsy frock he made me learn Psalm forty-eight by heart. But
+once I see'd it, and it was a long time ago, as long as a week ago.
+Micah Dow gave me rowans to put in my hair, and I like Micah because
+he calls me Miss, and so I woke in my bed because there was noises,
+and I ran down to the parlor, and there was my mother in her gypsy
+frock, and my rowans was in her hair, and my father was kissing
+her, and when they saw me they jumped; and that's all."
+
+"Would you like me to tell you another story? It is about a little
+girl. Well, there was once a minister and his wife, and they hadn't no
+little girls, but just little boys, and God was sorry for them, so He
+put a little girl in a cabbage in the garden, and when they found her
+they were glad. Would you like me to tell you who the little girl was?
+Well, it was me, and, ugh! I was awful cold in the cabbage. Do you
+like that story?"
+
+"Yes; I like it best of all the stories I know."
+
+"So do I like it, too. Couldn't nobody help loving me, 'cause I'm so
+nice? Why am I so fearful nice?"
+
+"Because you are like your grandmother."
+
+"It was clever of my father to know when he found me in the cabbage
+that my name was Margaret. Are you sorry grandmother is dead?"
+
+"I am glad your mother and father were so good to her and made her so
+happy."
+
+"Are you happy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But when I am happy I laugh."
+
+"I am old, you see, and you are young."
+
+"I am nearly six. Did you love grandmother? Then why did you never
+come to see her? Did grandmother know you was here? Why not? Why
+didn't I not know about you till after grandmother died?"
+
+"I'll tell you when you are big."
+
+"Shall I be big enough when I am six?"
+
+"No, not till your eighteenth birthday."
+
+"But birthdays comes so slow. Will they come quicker when I am big?"
+
+"Much quicker."
+
+On her sixth birthday Micah Dow drove my little maid to the
+school-house in the doctor's gig, and she crept beneath the table and
+whispered--
+
+"Grandfather!"
+
+"Father told me to call you that if I liked, and I like," she said
+when I had taken her upon my knee. "I know why you kissed me just now.
+It was because I looked like grandmother. Why do you kiss me when I
+look like her?"
+
+"Who told you I did that?"
+
+"Nobody didn't tell me. I just found out. I loved grandmother too. She
+told me all the stories she knew."
+
+"Did she ever tell you a story about a black dog?"
+
+"No. Did she know one?"
+
+"Yes, she knew it."
+
+"Perhaps she had forgotten it?"
+
+"No, she remembered it."
+
+"Tell it to me."
+
+"Not till you are eighteen."
+
+"But will you not be dead when I am eighteen? When you go to Heaven,
+will you see grandmother?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will she be glad to see you?"
+
+My little maid's eighteenth birthday has come, and I am still in
+Thrums, which I love, though it is beautiful to none, perhaps, save to
+the very done, who lean on their staves and look long at it, having
+nothing else to do till they die. I have lived to rejoice in the
+happiness of Gavin and Babbie; and if at times I have suddenly had to
+turn away my head after looking upon them in their home surrounded by
+their children, it was but a moment's envy that I could not help.
+Margaret never knew of the dominie in the glen. They wanted to tell
+her of me, but I would not have it. She has been long gone from this
+world; but sweet memories of her still grow, like honeysuckle, up the
+white walls of the manse, smiling in at the parlor window and
+beckoning from the door, and for some filling all the air with
+fragrance. It was not she who raised the barrier between her and me,
+but God Himself; and to those who maintain otherwise, I say they do
+not understand the purity of a woman's soul. During the years she was
+lost to me her face ever came between me and ungenerous thoughts; and
+now I can say, all that is carnal in me is my own, and all that is
+good I got from her. Only one bitterness remains. When I found Gavin
+in the rain, when I was fighting my way through the flood, when I saw
+how the hearts of the people were turned against him--above all, when
+I found Whamond in the manse--I cried to God, making promises to Him,
+if He would spare the lad for Margaret's sake, and he spared him; but
+these promises I have not kept.
+
+_The End._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Note
+
+Table of Contents added.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Greek transliterations are surrounded by ~tildes~.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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+<head>
+<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" />
+<title>The Little Minister, by J. M. Barrie, a Project Gutenberg eBook</title>
+
+<style type="text/css">
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Minister, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Minister
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Illustrator: C. Allen Gilbert
+
+Release Date: October 29, 2010 [EBook #33901]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MINISTER ***
+
+
+
+
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+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
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+
+</pre>
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<h1>The Little Minister</h1>
+<p><i>By</i></p>
+<p class='center larger'>J. M. BARRIE</p>
+<p class='padtop'><span class='smcap'>Maude Adams Edition</span></p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_1' id='linki_1'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/cover.jpg' alt='' title='' width='421' height='578' />
+<br />
+</div>
+<p class='padtop'>NEW YORK<br />
+R. H. RUSSELL: Publisher<br />
+1898</p>
+<p class='smaller padtop'>Copyright 1891 and 1895<br />
+By UNITED STATES BOOK CO.</p>
+<p class='smaller'>Copyright 1898<br />
+By ROBERT HOWARD RUSSELL</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class='chsp' style='padding-top:0'>
+<a name='CONTENTS' id='CONTENTS'></a>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+</div>
+<table border='0' cellpadding='2' cellspacing='0' summary='Contents' style='margin:1em auto;'>
+<tr>
+  <td />
+  <td>&nbsp;</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='right'><span class="smaller">PAGE</span></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>I.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Love-Light.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_ONE_THE_LOVELIGHT'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>II.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Runs Alongside the Making of a Minister.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWO_RUNS_ALONGSIDE_THE_MAKING_OF_A_MINISTER'>7</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>III.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Night-Watchers.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THREE_THE_NIGHTWATCHERS'>17</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>First Coming of the Egyptian Woman.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FOUR_FIRST_COMING_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN'>30</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>V.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>A Warlike Chapter, Culminating in the Flouting of the Minister by the Woman.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FIVE_A_WARLIKE_CHAPTER_CULMINATING_IN_THE_FLOUTING_OF_THE_MINISTER_BY_THE_WOMAN'>42</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>In Which the Soldiers Meet the Amazons of Thrums.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_SIX_IN_WHICH_THE_SOLDIERS_MEET_THE_AMAZONS_OF_THRUMS'>50</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Has the Folly of Looking into a Woman&#8217;s Eyes by way of Text.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_SEVEN_HAS_THE_FOLLY_OF_LOOKING_INTO_A_WOMANS_EYES_BY_WAY_OF_TEXT'>62</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>VIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>3 A.M.&mdash;Monstrous Audacity of the Woman.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_EIGHT_3_AMMONSTROUS_AUDACITY_OF_THE_WOMAN'>69</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>IX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Woman Considered in Absence&mdash;Adventures of a Military Cloak.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_NINE_THE_WOMAN_CONSIDERED_IN_ABSENCEADVENTURES_OF_A_MILITARY_CLOAK'>79</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>X.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>First Sermon Against Women.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TEN_FIRST_SERMON_AGAINST_WOMEN'>89</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Tells in a Whisper of Man&#8217;s Fall During the Curling Season.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_ELEVEN_TELLS_IN_A_WHISPER_OF_MANS_FALL_DURING_THE_CURLING_SEASON'>100</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Tragedy of a Mud House.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWELVE_TRAGEDY_OF_A_MUD_HOUSE'>110</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Second Coming of the Egyptian Woman.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTEEN_SECOND_COMING_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN'>117</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Minister Dances to the Woman&#8217;s Piping.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FOURTEEN_THE_MINISTER_DANCES_TO_THE_WOMANS_PIPING'>125</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Minister Bewitched&mdash;Second Sermon against Women.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FIFTEEN_THE_MINISTER_BEWITCHEDSECOND_SERMON_AGAINST_WOMEN'>135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Continued Misbehaviour of the Egyptian Woman.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_SIXTEEN_CONTINUED_MISBEHAVIOUR_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN'>143</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Intrusion of Haggart into These Pages against the Author&#8217;s Wish.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN_INTRUSION_OF_HAGGART_INTO_THESE_PAGES_AGAINST_THE_AUTHORS_WISH'>151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XVIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Caddam&mdash;Love Leading to a Rupture.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN_CADDAMLOVE_LEADING_TO_A_RUPTURE'>161</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XIX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Circumstances Leading to the First Sermon in Approval of Women.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_NINETEEN_CIRCUMSTANCES_LEADING_TO_THE_FIRST_SERMON_IN_APPROVAL_OF_WOMEN'>169</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>End of the State of Indecision.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTY_END_OF_THE_STATE_OF_INDECISION'>177</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Night&mdash;Margaret&mdash;Flashing of a Lantern.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYONE_NIGHTMARGARETFLASHING_OF_A_LANTERN'>186</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Lovers.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYTWO_LOVERS'>196</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Contains a Birth, Which is Sufficient for One Chapter.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYTHREE_CONTAINS_A_BIRTH_WHICH_IS_SUFFICIENT_FOR_ONE_CHAPTER'>205</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The New World, and the Woman Who May Not Dwell Therein.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYFOUR_THE_NEW_WORLD_AND_THE_WOMAN_WHO_MAY_NOT_DWELL_THEREIN'>211</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Beginning of the Twenty-Four Hours.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYFIVE_BEGINNING_OF_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'>217</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXVI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Scene at the Spittal.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYSIX_SCENE_AT_THE_SPITTAL'>225</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXVII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>First Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the Twenty-Four Hours.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYSEVEN_FIRST_JOURNEY_OF_THE_DOMINIE_TO_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'>232</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXVIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Hill before Darkness Fell&mdash;Scene of the Impending Catastrophe.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYEIGHT_THE_HILL_BEFORE_DARKNESS_FELLSCENE_OF_THE_IMPENDING_CATASTROPHE'>237</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXIX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Story of the Egyptian.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_TWENTYNINE_STORY_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN'>244</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Meeting for Rain.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTY_THE_MEETING_FOR_RAIN'>252</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Various Bodies Converging on the Hill.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYONE_VARIOUS_BODIES_CONVERGING_ON_THE_HILL'>259</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Leading Swiftly to the Appalling Marriage.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYTWO_LEADING_SWIFTLY_TO_THE_APPALLING_MARRIAGE'>268</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>While the Ten O&#8217;Clock Bell Was Ringing.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYTHREE_WHILE_THE_TEN_OCLOCK_BELL_WAS_RINGING'>274</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Great Rain.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYFOUR_THE_GREAT_RAIN'>281</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>The Glen at Break of Day.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYFIVE_THE_GLEN_AT_BREAK_OF_DAY'>285</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXVI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Story of the Dominie.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYSIX_STORY_OF_THE_DOMINIE'>299</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXVII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Second Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the Twenty-Four Hours.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYSEVEN_SECOND_JOURNEY_OF_THE_DOMINIE_TO_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'>308</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXVIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Thrums during the Twenty-Four Hours&mdash;Defence of the Manse.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYEIGHT_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURSDEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE'>315</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XXXIX.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>How Babbie Spent the Night of August Fourth.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_THIRTYNINE_HOW_BABBIE_SPENT_THE_NIGHT_OF_AUGUST_FOURTH'>324</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XL.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Babbie and Margaret&mdash;Defence of the Manse Continued.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FORTY_BABBIE_AND_MARGARETDEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE_CONTINUED'>330</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XLI.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Rintoul and Babbie&mdash;Breakdown of the Defence of the Manse.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FORTYONE_RINTOUL_AND_BABBIEBREAKDOWN_OF_THE_DEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE'>337</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XLII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Margaret, the Precentor, and God Between.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FORTYTWO_MARGARET_THE_PRECENTOR_AND_GOD_BETWEEN'>345</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XLIII.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Rain&mdash;Mist&mdash;The Jaws.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FORTYTHREE_RAINMISTTHE_JAWS'>353</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XLIV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>End of the Twenty-Four Hours.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FORTYFOUR_END_OF_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'>363</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td valign='top' class='chalgn'>XLV.</td>
+  <td valign='top' align='left' style='padding-right:4em;'><span class='smcap'>Talk of a Little Maid Since Grown Tall.</span></td>
+  <td valign='bottom' align='right'><a href='#CHAPTER_FORTYFIVE_TALK_OF_A_LITTLE_MAID_SINCE_GROWN_TALL'>369</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_2' id='linki_2'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus001.jpg' alt='' title='' width='469' height='700' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;I&#8217;LL GI&#8217;E YOU MY RABBIT,&#8221; MICAH SAID, &#8220;IF YOU&#8217;LL GANG AWA&#8217;.&#8221;&mdash;<span class='smcap'><a href='#page_215'>Page 215</a>.</span><br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<hr class='pb' />
+<div class='chsp' style='padding-top:0'>
+<a name='NOTE' id='NOTE'></a>
+<h2>NOTE</h2>
+</div>
+<p>The illustrations in this book have
+been made especially for this
+edition of The Little Minister
+by arrangement with Mr. Charles Frohman,
+through whose courtesy they are here reproduced.
+Many of them were drawn by
+C. Allen Gilbert, while others are from photographs
+which appear here for the first time.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<a name='CHAPTER_ONE_THE_LOVELIGHT' id='CHAPTER_ONE_THE_LOVELIGHT'></a>
+<h2>Chapter One.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE LOVE-LIGHT.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds
+never saw a king&#8217;s soldier without whistling impudently,
+&#8220;Come ower the water to Charlie,&#8221; a minister of Thrums
+was to be married, but something happened, and he remained
+a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed
+in our square the lady who was to have been his wife,
+and her hair was white, but she, too, was still unmarried.
+The meeting had only one witness, a weaver, and
+he said solemnly afterwards, &#8220;They didna speak, but
+they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light
+in their een.&#8221; No more is remembered of these
+two, no being now living ever saw them, but the poetry
+that was in the soul of a battered weaver makes them
+human to us for ever.</p>
+<p>It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those
+who know that light when they see it. I am not bidding
+good-bye to many readers, for though it is true
+that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was one, live to
+an old age without knowing love, few of us can have
+met them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.</p>
+<p>Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and
+his mother came to Thrums, light-hearted like the traveller
+who knows not what awaits him at the bend of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_2' name='page_2'></a>2</span>
+road. It was the time of year when the ground is carpeted
+beneath the firs with brown needles, when split-nuts
+patter all day from the beech, and children lay
+yellow corn on the dominie&#8217;s desk to remind him that
+now they are needed in the fields. The day was so
+silent that carts could be heard rumbling a mile away.
+All Thrums was out in its wynds and closes&mdash;a few of
+the weavers still in knee-breeches&mdash;to look at the new
+Auld Licht minister. I was there too, the dominie of
+Glen Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums; and
+heavy was my heart as I stood afar off so that Gavin&#8217;s
+mother might not have the pain of seeing me. I was
+the only one in the crowd who looked at her more than
+at her son.</p>
+<p>Eighteen years had passed since we parted. Already
+her hair had lost the brightness of its youth, and she
+seemed to me smaller and more fragile; and the face
+that I loved when I was a hobbledehoy, and loved when
+I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always shall
+love till I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old
+woman, and she was only forty-three; and I am the man
+who made her old. As Gavin put his eager boyish face
+out at the carriage window, many saw that he was holding
+her hand, but none could be glad at the sight as the
+dominie was glad, looking on at a happiness in which
+he dared not mingle. Margaret was crying because
+she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor
+sons to be proud of, good mothers, but I would not have
+you dry those tears.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_3' id='linki_3'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus008.jpg' alt='' title='' width='479' height='628' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+A STREET IN THRUMS.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>When the little minister looked out at the carriage
+window, many of the people drew back humbly, but a
+little boy in a red frock with black spots pressed forward
+and offered him a sticky parly, which Gavin accepted,
+though not without a tremor, for children were more
+terrible to him then than bearded men. The boy&#8217;s
+mother, trying not to look elated, bore him away, but
+her face said that he was made for life. With this little
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_3' name='page_3'></a>3</span>
+incident Gavin&#8217;s career in Thrums began. I remembered
+it suddenly the other day when wading across the
+wynd where it took place. Many scenes in the little
+minister&#8217;s life come back to me in this way. The first
+time I ever thought of writing his love story as an old
+man&#8217;s gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one
+night while I sat alone in the school-house; on my
+knees a fiddle that has been my only living companion
+since I sold my hens. My mind had drifted back to the
+first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together, and
+what set it wandering to that midnight meeting was
+my garden gate shaking in the wind. At a gate on the
+hill I had first encountered these two. It rattled in his
+hand, and I looked up and saw them, and neither knew
+why I had such cause to start at the sight. Then the
+gate swung to. It had just such a click as mine.</p>
+<p>These two figures on the hill are more real to me than
+things that happened yesterday, but I do not know that
+I can make them live to others. A ghost-show used to
+come yearly to Thrums on the merry Muckle Friday,
+in which the illusion was contrived by hanging a glass
+between the onlookers and the stage. I cannot deny
+that the comings and goings of the ghost were highly
+diverting, yet the farmer of T&#8217;nowhead only laughed
+because he had paid his money at the hole in the door
+like the rest of us. T&#8217;nowhead sat at the end of a form
+where he saw round the glass and so saw no ghost. I
+fear my public may be in the same predicament. I see
+the little minister as he was at one-and-twenty, and the
+little girl to whom this story is to belong sees him,
+though the things I have to tell happened before she
+came into the world. But there are reasons why she
+should see; and I do not know that I can provide the
+glass for others. If they see round it, they will neither
+laugh nor cry with Gavin and Babbie.</p>
+<p>When Gavin came to Thrums he was as I am now,
+for the pages lay before him on which he was to write
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_4' name='page_4'></a>4</span>
+his life. Yet he was not quite as I am. The life of
+every man is a diary in which he means to write one
+story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is
+when he compares the volume as it is with what he
+vowed to make it. But the biographer sees the last
+chapter while he is still at the first, and I have only to
+write over with ink what Gavin has written in pencil.</p>
+<p>How often is it a <ins title='Was phanton'>phantom</ins> woman who draws the man
+from the way he meant to go? So was man created, to
+hunger for the ideal that is above himself, until one day
+there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a girl rest upon
+him. He does not know that it is he himself who
+crowned her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love
+is the one form of idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It
+is the joining of two souls on their way to God. But if
+the woman be bad, the test of the man is when he
+wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the
+further will he have been hurried down the wrong way,
+for those who only run after little things will not go
+far. His love may now sink into passion, perhaps only
+to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.</p>
+<p>Babbie, what shall I say of you who make me write
+these things? I am not your judge. Shall we not
+laugh at the student who chafes when between him and
+his book comes the song of the thrushes, with whom, on
+the mad night you danced into Gavin&#8217;s life, you had
+more in common than with Auld Licht ministers? The
+gladness of living was in your step, your voice was
+melody, and he was wondering what love might be.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_4' id='linki_4'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus012.jpg' alt='' title='' width='472' height='507' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;BABBIE.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>You were the daughter of a summer night, born
+where all the birds are free, and the moon christened
+you with her soft light to dazzle the eyes of man. Not
+our little minister alone was stricken by you into his
+second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice that
+so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be
+young. Even those who called you a little devil, of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_5' name='page_5'></a>5</span>
+whom I have been one, admitted that in the end you
+had a soul, though not that you had been born with one.
+They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself.
+But again I say I am not your judge, and when
+I picture you as Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged
+witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in your
+black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister
+could not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows
+on my pages lift, and I cannot wonder that Gavin
+loved you.</p>
+<p>Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin&#8217;s story,
+not mine. Yet must it be mine too, in a manner, and
+of myself I shall sometimes have to speak; not willingly,
+for it is time my little tragedy had died of old
+age. I have kept it to myself so long that now I would
+stand at its grave alone. It is true that when I heard
+who was to be the new minister I hoped for a day that
+the life broken in Harvie might be mended in Thrums,
+but two minutes&#8217; talk with Gavin showed me that Margaret
+had kept from him the secret which was hers and
+mine, and so knocked the bottom out of my vain hopes.
+I did not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor
+shall any one who blames her ever be called friend by
+me; but it was bitter to look at the white manse among
+the trees and know that I must never enter it. For
+Margaret&#8217;s sake I had to keep aloof, yet this new trial
+came upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought
+that in those eighteen years my passions had burned
+like a ship till they sank, but I suffered again as on that
+awful night when Adam Dishart came back, nearly
+killing Margaret and tearing up all my ambitions by
+the root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums until I
+had looked again on Margaret, who thought me dead,
+and Gavin, who had never heard of me, and then I
+trudged back to the school-house. Something I heard
+of them from time to time during the winter&mdash;for in the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_6' name='page_6'></a>6</span>
+gossip of Thrums I was well posted&mdash;but much of what
+is to be told here I only learned afterwards from those
+who knew it best. Gavin heard of me at times as the
+dominie in the glen who had ceased to attend the Auld
+Licht kirk, and Margaret did not even hear of me. It
+was all I could do for them.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_7' name='page_7'></a>7</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWO_RUNS_ALONGSIDE_THE_MAKING_OF_A_MINISTER' id='CHAPTER_TWO_RUNS_ALONGSIDE_THE_MAKING_OF_A_MINISTER'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Two.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />RUNS ALONGSIDE THE MAKING OF A MINISTER.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a
+quarry, at the foot of cliffs that may one day fall forward,
+is a village called Harvie. So has it shrunk since
+the day when I skulked from it that I hear of a traveller&#8217;s
+asking lately at one of its doors how far he was
+from a village; yet Harvie throve once and was celebrated
+even in distant Thrums for its fish. Most of our
+weavers would have thought it as unnatural not to buy
+harvies in the square on the Muckle Friday, as to let
+Saturday night pass without laying in a sufficient stock
+of halfpennies to go round the family twice.</p>
+<p>Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early
+age that he could only recall thatched houses with nets
+drying on the roofs, and a sandy shore in which coarse
+grass grew. In the picture he could not pick out the
+house of his birth, though he might have been able to
+go to it had he ever returned to the village. Soon he
+learned that his mother did not care to speak of Harvie,
+and perhaps he thought that she had forgotten it too,
+all save one scene to which his memory still guided
+him. When his mind wandered to Harvie, Gavin saw
+the door of his home open and a fisherman enter, who
+scratched his head and then said, &#8220;Your man&#8217;s drowned,
+missis.&#8221; Gavin seemed to see many women crying,
+and his mother staring at them with a face suddenly
+painted white, and next to hear a voice that was his
+own saying, &#8220;Never mind, mother; I&#8217;ll be a man to
+you now, and I&#8217;ll need breeks for the burial.&#8221; But
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_8' name='page_8'></a>8</span>
+Adam required no funeral, for his body lay deep in the
+sea.</p>
+<p>Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his
+mother&#8217;s life, and the most memorable event of his own
+childhood. But it was neither. When Margaret, even
+after she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie, it was
+not at Adam&#8217;s death she shuddered, but at the recollection
+of me.</p>
+<p>It would ill become me to take a late revenge on
+Adam Dishart now by saying what is not true of him.
+Though he died a fisherman he was a sailor for a great
+part of his life, and doubtless his recklessness was
+washed into him on the high seas, where in his time
+men made a crony of death, and drank merrily over
+dodging it for another night. To me his roars of laughter
+without cause were as repellent as a boy&#8217;s drum;
+yet many faces that were long in my company brightened
+at his coming, and women, with whom, despite my
+yearning, I was in no wise a favorite, ran to their doors
+to listen to him as readily as to the bell-man. Children
+scurried from him if his mood was savage, but to him
+at all other times, while me they merely disregarded.
+There was always a smell of the sea about him. He
+had a rolling gait, unless he was drunk, when he walked
+very straight, and before both sexes he boasted that
+any woman would take him for his beard alone. Of
+this beard he took prodigious care, though otherwise
+thinking little of his appearance, and I now see that he
+understood women better than I did, who had nevertheless
+reflected much about them. It cannot be said that
+he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women
+strangely, that, I maintain, is a weakness common to
+all men, and so no more to be marvelled at than a stake
+in a fence. Foreign oaths were the nails with which
+he held his talk together, yet I doubt not they were a
+curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains of shells, more
+for his own pleasure than for others&#8217; pain. His friends
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_9' name='page_9'></a>9</span>
+gave them no weight, and when he wanted to talk emphatically
+he kept them back, though they were then
+as troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy
+who has to speak with his spoil in his mouth.</p>
+<p>Adam was drowned on Gavin&#8217;s fourth birthday, a
+year after I had to leave Harvie. He was blown off
+his smack in a storm, and could not reach the rope his
+partner flung him. &#8220;It&#8217;s no go, lad,&#8221; he shouted; &#8220;so
+long, Jim,&#8221; and sank.</p>
+<p>A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the
+smack, which was all Adam left her, and the furniture
+of the house was rouped. She took Gavin to Glasgow,
+where her only brother needed a housekeeper, and there
+mother and son remained until Gavin got his call to
+Thrums. During those seventeen years I lost knowledge
+of them as completely as Margaret had lost knowledge
+of me. On hearing of Adam&#8217;s death I went back
+to Harvie to try to trace her, but she had feared this,
+and so told no one where she was going.</p>
+<p>According to Margaret, Gavin&#8217;s genius showed itself
+while he was still a child. He was born with a brow
+whose nobility impressed her from the first. It was a
+minister&#8217;s brow, and though Margaret herself was no
+scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at turning
+bannocks on the girdle, she decided, when his age
+was still counted by months, that the ministry had need
+of him. In those days the first question asked of a child
+was not, &#8220;Tell me your name,&#8221; but &#8220;What are you to
+be?&#8221; and one child in every family replied, &#8220;A minister.&#8221;
+He was set apart for the Church as doggedly as
+the shilling a week for the rent, and the rule held good
+though the family consisted of only one boy. From his
+earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for
+the ministry as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret
+rejoiced and marvelled thereat, though she had
+made her own puzzle. An enthusiastic mother may
+bend her son&#8217;s mind as she chooses if she begins at
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_10' name='page_10'></a>10</span>
+once; nay, she may do stranger things. I know a
+mother in Thrums who loves &#8220;features,&#8221; and had a
+child born with no chin to speak of. The neighbors
+expected this to bring her to the dust, but it only
+showed what a mother can do. In a few months that
+child had a chin with the best of them.</p>
+<p>Margaret&#8217;s brother died, but she remained in his
+single room, and, ever with a picture of her son in a
+pulpit to repay her, contrived to keep Gavin at school.
+Everything a woman&#8217;s fingers can do Margaret&#8217;s did
+better than most, and among the wealthy people who
+employed her&mdash;would that I could have the teaching of
+the sons of such as were good to her in those hard days!&mdash;her
+gentle manner was spoken of. For though Margaret
+had no schooling, she was a lady at heart, moving
+and almost speaking as one even in Harvie, where they
+did not perhaps like her the better for it.</p>
+<p>At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to
+the Established Church, and at seven he could not lose
+himself in the Shorter Catechism. His mother expounded
+the Scriptures to him till he was eight, when
+he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
+studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically
+as ever medical student cut off a leg. From a
+front pew in the gallery Gavin watched the minister&#8217;s
+every movement, noting that the first thing to do on
+ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your
+hands, as if the exalted position affected you like a
+strong light, and the second to move the big Bible
+slightly, to show that the kirk officer, not having had a
+university education, could not be expected to know the
+very spot on which it ought to lie. Gavin saw that the
+minister joined in the singing more like one countenancing
+a seemly thing than because he needed it himself,
+and that he only sang a mouthful now and again
+after the congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor.
+It was noteworthy that the first prayer lasted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_11' name='page_11'></a>11</span>
+longer than all the others, and that to read the intimations
+about the Bible-class and the collection elsewhere
+than immediately before the last Psalm would have
+been as sacrilegious as to insert the dedication to King
+James at the end of Revelation. Sitting under a minister
+justly honoured in his day, the boy was often some
+words in advance of him, not vainglorious of his memory,
+but fervent, eager, and regarding the preacher as
+hardly less sacred than the Book. Gavin was encouraged
+by his frightened yet admiring mother to saw the
+air from their pew as the minister sawed it in the pulpit,
+and two benedictions were pronounced twice a Sabbath
+in that church, in the same words, the same manner, and
+simultaneously.</p>
+<p>There was a black year when the things of this
+world, especially its pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin
+that he said to Margaret he would rather be good at the
+high jump than the author of &#8220;The Pilgrim&#8217;s Progress.&#8221;
+That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind.
+One afternoon Margaret was at home making a glengarry
+for him out of a piece of carpet, and giving it a
+tartan edging, when the boy bounded in from school,
+crying, &#8220;Come quick, mother, and you&#8217;ll see him.&#8221;
+Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician
+flying from Gavin and his friends. &#8220;Did you take
+stock of him, mother?&#8221; the boy asked when he reappeared
+with the mark of a muddy stick on his back.
+&#8220;He&#8217;s a Papist!&mdash;a sore sight, mother, a sore sight.
+We stoned him for persecuting the noble Martyrs.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When Gavin was twelve he went to the university,
+and also got a place in a shop as errand boy. He used
+to run through the streets between his work and his
+classes. Potatoes and salt fish, which could then be got
+at two pence the pound if bought by the half-hundred
+weight, were his food. There was not always a good
+meal for two, yet when Gavin reached home at night
+there was generally something ready for him, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_12' name='page_12'></a>12</span>
+Margaret had supped &#8220;hours ago.&#8221; Gavin&#8217;s hunger
+urged him to fall to, but his love for his mother made
+him watchful.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did you have yourself, mother?&#8221; he would demand
+suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What had you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had potatoes, for one thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And dripping?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You may be sure.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mother, you&#8217;re cheating me. The dripping hasn&#8217;t
+been touched since yesterday.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna&mdash;don&#8217;t&mdash;care for dripping&mdash;no much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer
+little figure.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think I&#8217;ll stand this, mother? Will I let
+myself be pampered with dripping and every delicacy
+while you starve?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll give up my classes, and we can have
+butter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I assure you I&#8217;m no hungry. It&#8217;s different wi&#8217; a
+growing laddie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not a growing laddie,&#8221; Gavin would say, bitterly;
+&#8220;but, mother, I warn you that not another bite
+passes my throat till I see you eating too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and
+when she said &#8220;I can eat no more,&#8221; Gavin retorted
+sternly, &#8220;Nor will I, for fine I see through you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>These two were as one far more than most married
+people, and, just as Gavin in his childhood reflected
+his mother, she now reflected him. The people for
+whom she sewed thought it was contact with them that
+had rubbed the broad Scotch from her tongue, but she
+was only keeping pace with Gavin. When she was excited
+the Harvie words came back to her, as they come
+back to me. I have taught the English language all
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_13' name='page_13'></a>13</span>
+my life, and I try to write it, but everything I say in
+this book I first think to myself in the Doric. This,
+too, I notice, that in talking to myself I am broader
+than when gossiping with the farmers of the glen, who
+send their children to me to learn English, and then
+jeer at them if they say &#8220;old lights&#8221; instead of &#8220;auld
+lichts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Margaret it was happiness to sit through the long
+evenings sewing, and look over her work at Gavin as
+he read or wrote or recited to himself the learning of
+the schools. But she coughed every time the weather
+changed, and then Gavin would start.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must go to your bed, mother,&#8221; he would say,
+tearing himself from his books; or he would sit beside
+her and talk of the dream that was common to both&mdash;a
+dream of a manse where Margaret was mistress and
+Gavin was called the minister. Every night Gavin was
+at his mother&#8217;s bedside to wind her shawl round her
+feet, and while he did it Margaret smiled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mother, this is the chaff pillow you&#8217;ve taken out of
+my bed, and given me your feather one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, you needna change them. I winna have the
+feather pillow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you dare to think I&#8217;ll let you sleep on chaff?
+Put up your head. Now, is that soft?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s fine. I dinna deny but what I sleep better on
+feathers. Do you mind, Gavin, you bought this pillow
+for me the moment you got your bursary money?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The reserve that is a wall between many of the Scottish
+poor had been broken down by these two. When
+he saw his mother sleeping happily, Gavin went back to
+his work. To save the expense of a lamp, he would
+put his book almost beneath the dying fire, and, taking
+the place of the fender, read till he was shivering with
+cold.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, it is near morning, and you not in your bed
+yet! What are you thinking about so hard?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_14' name='page_14'></a>14</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, mother, I was wondering if the time would ever
+come when I would be a minister, and you would have
+an egg for your breakfast every morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So the years passed, and soon Gavin would be a minister.
+He had now sermons to prepare, and every one
+of them was first preached to Margaret. How solemn
+was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how stern were his
+admonitions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of
+God is on you. I&#8217;m ashamed you should have me for a
+mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;God grant, mother,&#8221; Gavin said, little thinking what
+was soon to happen, or he would have made this prayer
+on his knees, &#8220;that you may never be ashamed to have
+me for a son.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, mother,&#8221; he would say wistfully, &#8220;it is not a
+great sermon, but do you think I&#8217;m preaching Christ?
+That is what I try, but I&#8217;m carried away and forget to
+watch myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Lord has you by the hand, Gavin; and mind, I
+dinna say that because you&#8217;re my laddie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, you do, mother, and well I know it, and yet it
+does me good to hear you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That it did him good I, who would fain have shared
+those days with them, am very sure. The praise that
+comes of love does not make us vain, but humble rather.
+Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in our
+mother&#8217;s eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic
+thing a man has to face, but he would be a devil
+altogether if it did not burn some of the sin out of
+him.</p>
+<p>Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got
+his call, a great event took place in the little room at
+Glasgow. The student appeared for the first time before
+his mother in his ministerial clothes. He wore the
+black silk hat, that was destined to become a terror to
+evil-doers in Thrums, and I dare say he was rather
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_15' name='page_15'></a>15</span>
+puffed up about himself that day. You would probably
+have smiled at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a pity I&#8217;m so little, mother,&#8221; he said with a sigh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re no what I would call a particularly long
+man,&#8221; Margaret said, &#8220;but you&#8217;re just the height I
+like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then Gavin went out in his grandeur, and Margaret
+cried for an hour. She was thinking of me as well as
+of Gavin, and as it happens, I know that I was thinking
+at the same time of her. Gavin kept a diary in those
+days, which I have seen, and by comparing it with
+mine, I discovered that while he was showing himself
+to his mother in his black clothes, I was on my way
+back from Tilliedrum, where I had gone to buy a sand-glass
+for the school. The one I bought was so like another
+Margaret had used at Harvie that it set me
+thinking of her again all the way home. This is a
+matter hardly worth mentioning, and yet it interests
+me.</p>
+<p>Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin
+had difficulty in forcing himself to his sermons when
+there was always something more to tell his mother
+about the weaving town they were going to, or about
+the manse or the furniture that had been transferred to
+him by the retiring minister. The little room which
+had become so familiar that it seemed one of a family
+party of three had to be stripped, and many of its contents
+were sold. Among what were brought to Thrums
+was a little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried,
+unknown to Gavin, to teach herself writing and grammar,
+that she might be less unfit for a manse. He
+found it accidentally one day. It was full of &#8220;I am,
+thou art, he is,&#8221; and the like, written many times in a
+shaking hand. Gavin put his arms round his mother
+when he saw what she had been doing. The exercise
+book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid&#8217;s
+when I die.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_16' name='page_16'></a>16</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, Gavin,&#8221; Margaret said many times in those
+last days at Glasgow, &#8220;to think it has all come true!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let the last word you say in the house be a prayer
+of thankfulness,&#8221; she whispered to him when they were
+taking a final glance at the old home.</p>
+<p>In the bare room they called the house, the little
+minister and his mother went on their knees, but, as it
+chanced, their last word there was not addressed to God.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin,&#8221; Margaret whispered as he took her arm,
+&#8220;do you think this bonnet sets me?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_17' name='page_17'></a>17</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THREE_THE_NIGHTWATCHERS' id='CHAPTER_THREE_THE_NIGHTWATCHERS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Three.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE NIGHT-WATCHERS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>What first struck Margaret in Thrums was the smell
+of the caddis. The town smells of caddis no longer, but
+whiffs of it may be got even now as one passes the
+houses of the old, where the lay still swings at little
+windows like a great ghost pendulum. To me it is a
+homely smell, which I draw in with a great breath, but
+it was as strange to Margaret as the weavers themselves,
+who, in their colored nightcaps and corduroys streaked
+with threads, gazed at her and Gavin. The little minister
+was trying to look severe and old, but twenty-one
+was in his eye.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Look, mother, at that white house with the green
+roof. That is the manse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The manse stands high, with a sharp eye on all the
+town. Every back window in the Tenements has a
+glint of it, and so the back of the Tenements is always
+better behaved than the front. It was in the front that
+Jamie Don, a pitiful bachelor all his life because he
+thought the women proposed, kept his ferrets, and here,
+too, Beattie hanged himself, going straight to the
+clothes-posts for another rope when the first one broke,
+such was his determination. In the front Sanders Gilruth
+openly boasted (on Don&#8217;s potato-pit) that by having
+a seat in two churches he could lie in bed on Sabbath
+and get the credit of being at one or other. (Gavin
+made short work of him.) To the right-minded the
+Auld Licht manse was as a family Bible, ever lying
+open before them, but Beattie spoke for more than himself
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_18' name='page_18'></a>18</span>
+when he said, &#8220;Dagone that manse! I never gie a
+swear but there it is glowering at me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The manse looks down on the town from the north-east,
+and is reached from the road that leaves Thrums
+behind it in another moment by a wide, straight path,
+so rough that to carry a fraught of water to the manse
+without spilling was to be superlatively good at one
+thing. Packages in a cart it set leaping like trout in a
+fishing-creel. Opposite the opening of the garden wall
+in the manse, where for many years there had been an
+intention of putting up a gate, were two big stones a
+yard apart, standing ready for the winter, when the
+path was often a rush of yellow water, and this the only
+bridge to the glebe dyke, down which the minister
+walked to church.</p>
+<p>When Margaret entered the manse on Gavin&#8217;s arm, it
+was a whitewashed house of five rooms, with a garret
+in which the minister could sleep if he had guests, as
+during the Fast week. It stood with its garden within
+high walls, and the roof facing southward was carpeted
+with moss that shone in the sun in a dozen shades of
+green and yellow. Three firs guarded the house from
+west winds, but blasts from the north often tore
+down the steep fields and skirled through the manse,
+banging all its doors at once. A beech, growing on
+the east side, leant over the roof as if to gossip with
+the well in the courtyard. The garden was to the
+south, and was over full of gooseberry and currant
+bushes. It contained a summer seat, where strange
+things were soon to happen.</p>
+<p>Margaret would not even take off her bonnet until she
+had seen through the manse and opened all the presses.
+The parlour and kitchen were downstairs, and of the
+three rooms above, the study was so small that Gavin&#8217;s
+predecessor could touch each of its walls without shifting
+his position. Every room save Margaret&#8217;s had long-lidded
+beds, which close as if with shutters, but hers
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_19' name='page_19'></a>19</span>
+was coff-fronted, or comparatively open, with carving
+on the wood like the ornamentation of coffins. Where
+there were children in a house they liked to slope the
+boards of the closed-in bed against the dresser, and play
+at sliding down mountains on them.</p>
+<p>But for many years there had been no children in the
+manse. He in whose ways Gavin was to attempt the
+heavy task of walking had been a widower three months
+after his marriage, a man narrow when he came to
+Thrums, but so large-hearted when he left it that I,
+who know there is good in all the world because of the
+lovable souls I have met in this corner of it, yet cannot
+hope that many are as near to God as he. The most
+gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very
+low; the saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom
+rise high. Of those who stand perceptibly above their
+fellows I have known very few; only Mr. Carfrae and
+two or three women.</p>
+<p>Gavin only saw a very frail old minister who shook
+as he walked, as if his feet were striking against stones.
+He was to depart on the morrow to the place of his
+birth, but he came to the manse to wish his successor
+God-speed. Strangers were so formidable to Margaret
+that she only saw him from her window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;May you never lose sight of God, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; the
+old man said in the parlour. Then he added, as if he
+had asked too much, &#8220;May you never turn from Him
+as I often did when I was a lad like you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As this aged minister, with the beautiful face that
+God gives to all who love Him and follow His commandments,
+spoke of his youth, he looked wistfully
+around the faded parlour.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is like a dream,&#8221; he said. &#8220;The first time I entered
+this room the thought passed through me that I
+would cut down that cherry-tree, because it kept out the
+light, but, you see, it outlives me. I grew old while
+looking for the axe. Only yesterday I was the young
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_20' name='page_20'></a>20</span>
+minister, Mr. Dishart, and to-morrow you will be the
+old one, bidding good-bye to your successor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His eyes came back to Gavin&#8217;s eager face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are very young, Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nearly twenty-one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Twenty-one! Ah, my dear sir, you do not know
+how pathetic that sounds to me. Twenty-one! We are
+children for the second time at twenty-one, and again
+when we are grey and put all our burden on the Lord.
+The young talk generously of relieving the old of their
+burdens, but the anxious heart is to the old when they
+see a load on the back of the young. Let me tell you,
+Mr. Dishart, that I would condone many things in one-and-twenty
+now that I dealt hardly with at middle age.
+God Himself, I think, is very willing to give one-and-twenty
+a second chance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am afraid,&#8221; Gavin said anxiously, &#8220;that I look
+even younger.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think,&#8221; Mr. Carfrae answered, smiling, &#8220;that your
+heart is as fresh as your face; and that is well. The
+useless men are those who never change with the years.
+Many views that I held to in my youth and long afterwards
+are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away
+from Thrums memories of errors into which I fell at
+every stage of my ministry. When you are older you
+will know that life is a long lesson in humility.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He paused.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope,&#8221; he said nervously, &#8220;that you don&#8217;t sing the
+Paraphrases?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Carfrae had not grown out of all his prejudices,
+you see; indeed, if Gavin had been less bigoted than
+he on this question they might have parted stiffly. The
+old minister would rather have remained to die in his
+pulpit than surrender it to one who read his sermons.
+Others may blame him for this, but I must say here
+plainly that I never hear a minister reading without
+wishing to send him back to college.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_21' name='page_21'></a>21</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot deny,&#8221; Mr. Carfrae said, &#8220;that I broke
+down more than once to-day. This forenoon I was in
+Tillyloss, for the last time, and it so happens that there
+is scarcely a house in it in which I have not had a marriage
+or prayed over a coffin. Ah, sir, these are the
+scenes that make the minister more than all his sermons.
+You must join the family, Mr. Dishart, or you
+are only a minister once a week. And remember this,
+if your call is from above, it is a call to stay. Many such
+partings in a lifetime as I have had to-day would be too
+heartrending.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet,&#8221; Gavin said, hesitatingly, &#8220;they told me
+in Glasgow that I had received a call from the mouth of
+hell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Those were cruel words, but they only mean that
+people who are seldom more than a day&#8217;s work in advance
+of want sometimes rise in arms for food. Our
+weavers are passionately religious, and so independent
+that they dare any one to help them, but if their wages
+were lessened they could not live. And so at talk of
+reduction they catch fire. Change of any kind alarms
+them, and though they call themselves Whigs, they
+rose a few years ago over the paving of the streets and
+stoned the workmen, who were strangers, out of the
+town.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And though you may have thought the place quiet
+to-day, Mr. Dishart, there was an ugly outbreak only
+two months ago, when the weavers turned on the manufacturers
+for reducing the price of the web, made a
+bonfire of some of their doors, and terrified one of them
+into leaving Thrums. Under the command of some
+Chartists, the people next paraded the streets to the
+music of fife and drum, and six policemen who drove
+up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were sent back tied
+to the seats.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No one has been punished?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not yet, but nearly two years ago there was a similar
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_22' name='page_22'></a>22</span>
+riot, and the sheriff took no action for months.
+Then one night the square suddenly filled with soldiers,
+and the ringleaders were seized in their beds. Mr. Dishart,
+the people are determined not to be caught in that
+way again, and ever since the rising a watch has been
+kept by night on every road that leads to Thrums. The
+signal that the soldiers are coming is to be the blowing
+of a horn. If you ever hear that horn, I implore you
+to hasten to the square.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The weavers would not fight?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You do not know how the Chartists have fired this
+part of the country. One misty day, a week ago, I was
+on the hill; I thought I had it to myself, when suddenly
+I heard a voice cry sharply, &#8216;Shoulder arms.&#8217; I could
+see no one, and after a moment I put it down to a freak
+of the wind. Then all at once the mist before me
+blackened, and a body of men seemed to grow out of it.
+They were not shadows; they were Thrums weavers
+drilling, with pikes in their hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They broke up,&#8221; Mr. Carfrae continued, after a
+pause, &#8220;at my entreaty, but they have met again since
+then.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And there were Auld Lichts among them?&#8221; Gavin
+asked. &#8220;I should have thought they would be frightened
+at our precentor, Lang Tammas, who seems to
+watch for backsliding in the congregation as if he had
+pleasure in discovering it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin spoke with feeling, for the precentor had
+already put him through his catechism, and it was a
+stiff ordeal.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The precentor!&#8221; said Mr. Carfrae. &#8220;Why, he was
+one of them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old minister, once so brave a figure, tottered as
+he rose to go, and reeled in a dizziness until he had
+walked a few paces. Gavin went with him to the foot
+of the manse road; without his hat, as all Thrums knew
+before bedtime.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_23' name='page_23'></a>23</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I begin,&#8221; Gavin said, as they were parting, &#8220;where
+you leave off, and my prayer is that I may walk in your
+ways.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; the white-haired minister said,
+with a sigh, &#8220;the world does not progress so quickly as
+a man grows old. You only begin where I began.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He left Gavin, and then, as if the little minister&#8217;s
+last words had hurt him, turned and solemnly pointed
+his staff upward. Such men are the strong nails that
+keep the world together.</p>
+<p>The twenty-one-years-old minister returned to the
+manse somewhat sadly, but when he saw his mother at
+the window of her bedroom, his heart leapt at the
+thought that she was with him and he had eighty pounds
+a year. Gaily he waved both his hands to her, and she
+answered with a smile, and then, in his boyishness, he
+jumped over a gooseberry bush. Immediately afterwards
+he reddened and tried to look venerable, for
+while in the air he had caught sight of two women and
+a man watching him from the dyke. He walked
+severely to the door, and, again forgetting himself, was
+bounding upstairs to Margaret, when Jean, the servant,
+stood scandalised in his way.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t think she caught me,&#8221; was Gavin&#8217;s reflection,
+and &#8220;The Lord preserve&#8217;s!&#8221; was Jean&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>Gavin found his mother wondering how one should
+set about getting a cup of tea in a house that had a
+servant in it. He boldly rang the bell, and the willing
+Jean answered it so promptly (in a rush and jump) that
+Margaret was as much startled as Aladdin the first time
+he rubbed his lamp.</p>
+<p>Manse servants of the most admired kind move softly,
+as if constant contact with a minister were goloshes to
+them; but Jean was new and raw, only having got her
+place because her father might be an elder any day.
+She had already conceived a romantic affection for her
+master; but to say &#8220;sir&#8221; to him&mdash;as she thirsted to do&mdash;would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_24' name='page_24'></a>24</span>
+have been as difficult to her as to swallow
+oysters. So anxious was she to please that when Gavin
+rang she fired herself at the bedroom, but bells were
+novelties to her as well as to Margaret, and she cried,
+excitedly, &#8220;What is &#8217;t?&#8221; thinking the house must be on
+fire.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a curran folk at the back door,&#8221; Jean announced
+later, &#8220;and their respects to you, and would
+you gie them some water out o&#8217; the well? It has been
+a drouth this aucht days, and the pumps is locked.
+Na,&#8221; she said, as Gavin made a too liberal offer, &#8220;that
+would toom the well, and there&#8217;s jimply enough for
+oursels. I should tell you, too, that three o&#8217; them is no
+Auld Lichts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let that make no difference,&#8221; Gavin said grandly,
+but Jean changed his message to: &#8220;A bowlful apiece to
+Auld Lichts; all other denominations one cupful.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, ay,&#8221; said Snecky Hobart, letting down the
+bucket, &#8220;and we&#8217;ll include atheists among other denominations.&#8221;
+The conversation came to Gavin and
+Margaret through the kitchen doorway.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna class Jo Cruickshanks wi&#8217; me,&#8221; said Sam&#8217;l
+Langlands the U. P.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, na,&#8221; said Cruickshanks the atheist, &#8220;I&#8217;m ower
+independent to be religious. I dinna gang to the kirk
+to cry, &#8216;Oh, Lord, gie, gie, gie.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take tent o&#8217; yoursel&#8217;, my man,&#8221; said Lang Tammas
+sternly, &#8220;or you&#8217;ll soon be whaur you would neifer
+the warld for a cup o&#8217; that cauld water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe you&#8217;ve ower keen an interest in the devil,
+Tammas,&#8221; retorted the atheist; &#8220;but, ony way, if it&#8217;s
+heaven for climate, it&#8217;s hell for company.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lads,&#8221; said Snecky, sitting down on the bucket,
+&#8220;we&#8217;ll send Mr. Dishart to Jo. He&#8217;ll make another
+Rob Dow o&#8217; him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Speak mair reverently o&#8217; your minister,&#8221; said the
+precentor. &#8220;He has the gift.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_25' name='page_25'></a>25</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I hinna naturally your solemn rasping word, Tammas,
+but in the heart I speak in all reverence. Lads,
+the minister has a word! I tell you he prays near like
+one giving orders.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;At first,&#8221; Snecky continued, &#8220;I thocht yon lang
+candidate was the earnestest o&#8217; them a&#8217;, and I dinna
+deny but when I saw him wi&#8217; his head bowed-like in
+prayer during the singing I says to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Thou art
+the man.&#8217; Ay, but Betsy wraxed up her head, and he
+wasna praying. He was combing his hair wi&#8217; his fingers
+on the sly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You ken fine, Sneck,&#8221; said Cruickshanks, &#8220;that you
+said, &#8216;Thou art the man&#8217; to ilka ane o&#8217; them, and just
+voted for Mr. Dishart because he preached hinmost.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I didna say it to Mr. Urquhart, the ane that preached
+second,&#8221; Sneck said. &#8220;That was the lad that gaed
+through ither.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Susy Tibbits, nicknamed by Haggart
+&#8220;the Timidest Woman&#8221; because she once said she was
+too young to marry, &#8220;but I was fell sorry for him, just
+being over anxious. He began bonny, flinging himself,
+like ane inspired, at the pulpit door, but after Hendry
+Munn pointed at it and cried out, &#8216;Be cautious, the
+sneck&#8217;s loose,&#8217; he a&#8217; gaed to bits. What a coolness
+Hendry has, though I suppose it was his duty, him
+being kirk-officer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We didna want a man,&#8221; Lang Tammas said, &#8220;that
+could be put out by sic a sma&#8217; thing as that. Mr.
+Urquhart was in sic a ravel after it that when he gies
+out the first line o&#8217; the hunder and nineteenth psalm for
+singing, says he, &#8216;And so on to the end.&#8217; Ay, that finished
+his chance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The noblest o&#8217; them to look at,&#8221; said Tibbie Birse,
+&#8220;was that ane frae Aberdeen, him that had sic a saft
+side to Jacob.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Snecky, &#8220;and I speired at Dr. McQueen
+if I should vote for him. &#8216;Looks like a genius, does
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_26' name='page_26'></a>26</span>
+he?&#8217; says the Doctor. &#8216;Weel, then,&#8217; says he, &#8216;dinna
+vote for him, for my experience is that there&#8217;s no folk
+sic idiots as them that looks like geniuses.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sal,&#8221; Susy said, &#8220;it&#8217;s a guid thing we&#8217;ve settled,
+for I enjoyed sitting like a judge upon them so muckle
+that I sair doubt it was a kind o&#8217; sport to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was no sport to them, Susy, I&#8217;se uphaud, but it is
+a blessing we&#8217;ve settled, and ondoubtedly we&#8217;ve got the
+pick o&#8217; them. The only thing Mr. Dishart did that
+made me oneasy was his saying the word Cæsar as if it
+began wi&#8217; a <i>k</i>.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll startle you mair afore you&#8217;re done wi&#8217; him,&#8221;
+the atheist said maliciously. &#8220;I ken the ways o&#8217; thae
+ministers preaching for kirks. Oh, they&#8217;re cunning.
+You was a&#8217; pleased that Mr. Dishart spoke about looms
+and webs, but, lathies, it was a trick. Ilka ane o&#8217; thae
+young ministers has a sermon about looms for weaving
+congregations, and a second about beating swords into
+ploughshares for country places, and another on the
+great catch of fishes for fishing villages. That&#8217;s their
+stock-in-trade; and just you wait and see if you dinna
+get the ploughshares and the fishes afore the month&#8217;s
+out. A minister preaching for a kirk is one thing,
+but a minister placed in&#8217;t may be a very different
+berry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Joseph Cruickshanks,&#8221; cried the precentor, passionately,
+&#8220;none o&#8217; your d&mdash;&mdash;d blasphemy!&#8221;</p>
+<p>They all looked at Whamond, and he dug his teeth
+into his lips in shame.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha&#8217;s swearing now?&#8221; said the atheist.</p>
+<p>But Whamond was quick.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Matthew, twelve and thirty-one,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dagont, Tammas,&#8221; exclaimed the baffled Cruickshanks,
+&#8220;you&#8217;re aye quoting Scripture. How do you
+no quote Feargus O&#8217;Connor?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lads,&#8221; said Snecky, &#8220;Jo hasna heard Mr. Dishart&#8217;s
+sermons. Ay, we get it scalding when he comes to the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_27' name='page_27'></a>27</span>
+sermon. I canna thole a minister that preaches as if
+heaven was round the corner.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re hitting at our minister, Snecky,&#8221; said
+James Cochrane, &#8220;let me tell you he&#8217;s a better man
+than yours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A better curler, I dare say.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A better prayer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, he can pray for a black frost as if it was ane o&#8217;
+the Royal Family. I ken his prayers, &#8216;O Lord, let it
+haud for anither day, and keep the snaw awa&#8217;.&#8217; Will
+you pretend, Jeames, that Mr. Duthie could make onything
+o&#8217; Rob Dow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I admit that Rob&#8217;s awakening was an extraordinary
+thing, and sufficient to gie Mr. Dishart a name. But
+Mr. Carfrae was baffled wi&#8217; Rob too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jeames, if you had been in our kirk that day Mr.
+Dishart preached for&#8217;t you would be wearying the now
+for Sabbath, to be back in&#8217;t again. As you ken, that
+wicked man there, Jo Cruickshanks, got Rob Dow,
+drucken, cursing, poaching Rob Dow, to come to the
+kirk to annoy the minister. Ay, he hadna been at that
+work for ten minutes when Mr. Dishart stopped in his
+first prayer and ga&#8217;e Rob a look. I couldna see the
+look, being in the precentor&#8217;s box, but as sure as death
+I felt it boring through me. Rob is hard wood, though,
+and soon he was at his tricks again. Weel, the minister
+stopped a second time in the sermon, and so awful
+was the silence that a heap o&#8217; the congregation couldna
+keep their seats. I heard Rob breathing quick and
+strong. Mr. Dishart had his arm pointed at him a&#8217; this
+time, and at last he says sternly, &#8216;Come forward.&#8217; Listen,
+Joseph Cruickshanks, and tremble. Rob gripped
+the board to keep himsel&#8217; frae obeying, and again Mr.
+Dishart says, &#8216;Come forward,&#8217; and syne Rob rose shaking,
+and tottered to the pulpit stair like a man suddenly
+shot into the Day of Judgment. &#8216;You hulking man of
+sin,&#8217; cries Mr. Dishart, not a tick fleid, though Rob&#8217;s as
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_28' name='page_28'></a>28</span>
+big as three o&#8217; him, &#8216;sit down on the stair and attend to
+me, or I&#8217;ll step doun frae the pulpit and run you out of
+the house of God.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And since that day,&#8221; said Hobart, &#8220;Rob has worshipped
+Mr. Dishart as a man that has stepped out o&#8217;
+the Bible. When the carriage passed this day we was
+discussing the minister, and Sam&#8217;l Dickie wasna sure
+but what Mr. Dishart wore his hat rather far back on
+his head. You should have seen Rob. &#8216;My certie,&#8217;
+he roars, &#8216;there&#8217;s the shine frae Heaven on that little
+minister&#8217;s face, and them as says there&#8217;s no has me to
+fecht.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, weel,&#8221; said the U. P., rising, &#8220;we&#8217;ll see how
+Rob wears&mdash;and how your minister wears too. I
+wouldna like to sit in a kirk whaur they daurna sing a
+paraphrase.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Psalms of David,&#8221; retorted Whamond, &#8220;mount
+straight to heaven, but your paraphrases sticks to the
+ceiling o&#8217; the kirk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a bigoted set, Tammas Whamond, but I
+tell you this, and it&#8217;s my last words to you the nicht,
+the day&#8217;ll come when you&#8217;ll hae Mr. Duthie, ay, and
+even the U. P. minister, preaching in the Auld Licht
+kirk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And let this be my last words to you,&#8221; replied the
+precentor, furiously; &#8220;that rather than see a U. P.
+preaching in the Auld Licht kirk I would burn in hell
+fire for ever!&#8221;</p>
+<p>This gossip increased Gavin&#8217;s knowledge of the grim
+men with whom he had now to deal. But as he sat beside
+Margaret after she had gone to bed, their talk was
+pleasant.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You remember, mother,&#8221; Gavin said, &#8220;how I almost
+prayed for the manse that was to give you an egg every
+morning. I have been telling Jean never to forget the
+egg.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Gavin, things have come about so much as we
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_29' name='page_29'></a>29</span>
+wanted that I&#8217;m a kind o&#8217; troubled. It&#8217;s hardly natural,
+and I hope nothing terrible is to happen now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin arranged her pillows as she liked them, and
+when he next stole into the room in his stocking soles
+to look at her, he thought she was asleep. But she was
+not. I dare say she saw at that moment Gavin in his
+first frock, and Gavin in knickerbockers, and Gavin as
+he used to walk into the Glasgow room from college, all
+still as real to her as the Gavin who had a kirk.</p>
+<p>The little minister took away the lamp to his own
+room, shaking his fist at himself for allowing his
+mother&#8217;s door to creak. He pulled up his blind. The
+town lay as still as salt. But a steady light showed in
+the south, and on pressing his face against the window
+he saw another in the west. Mr. Carfrae&#8217;s words about
+the night-watch came back to him. Perhaps it had
+been on such a silent night as this that the soldiers
+marched into Thrums. Would they come again?</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_30' name='page_30'></a>30</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FOUR_FIRST_COMING_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN' id='CHAPTER_FOUR_FIRST_COMING_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Four.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />FIRST COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>A learned man says in a book, otherwise beautiful
+with truth, that villages are family groups. To him
+Thrums would only be a village, though town is the
+word we have ever used, and this is not true of it.
+Doubtless we have interests in common, from which a
+place so near (but the road is heavy) as Tilliedrum is
+shut out, and we have an individuality of our own too,
+as if, like our red houses, we came from a quarry that
+supplies no other place. But we are not one family.
+In the old days, those of us who were of the Tenements
+seldom wandered to the Croft head, and if we did go
+there we saw men to whom we could not always give a
+name. To flit from the Tanage brae to Haggart&#8217;s road
+was to change one&#8217;s friends. A kirk-wynd weaver
+might kill his swine and Tillyloss not know of it until
+boys ran westward hitting each other with the bladders.
+Only the voice of the dulsemen could be heard all over
+Thrums at once. Thus even in a small place but a few
+outstanding persons are known to everybody.</p>
+<p>In eight days Gavin&#8217;s figure was more familiar in
+Thrums than many that had grown bent in it. He had
+already been twice to the cemetery, for a minister only
+reaches his new charge in time to attend a funeral.
+Though short of stature he cast a great shadow. He
+was so full of his duties, Jean said, that though he pulled
+to the door as he left the manse, he had passed the currant
+bushes before it snecked. He darted through
+courts, and invented ways into awkward houses. If
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_31' name='page_31'></a>31</span>
+you did not look up quickly he was round the corner.
+His visiting exhausted him only less than his zeal in the
+pulpit, from which, according to report, he staggered
+damp with perspiration to the vestry, where Hendry
+Munn wrung him like a wet cloth. A deaf lady, celebrated
+for giving out her washing, compelled him to
+hold her trumpet until she had peered into all his crannies,
+with the Shorter Catechism for a lantern. Janet
+Dundas told him, in answer to his knock, that she could
+not abide him, but she changed her mind when he said
+her garden was quite a show. The wives who expected
+a visit scrubbed their floors for him, cleaned out their
+presses for him, put diamond socks on their bairns for
+him, rubbed their hearthstones blue for him, and even
+tidied up the garret for him, and triumphed over the
+neighbours whose houses he passed by. For Gavin
+blundered occasionally by inadvertence, as when he
+gave dear old Betty Davie occasion to say bitterly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ou ay, you can sail by my door and gang to Easie&#8217;s,
+but I&#8217;m thinking you would stop at mine too if I had a
+brass handle on&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So passed the first four weeks, and then came the
+fateful night of the seventeenth of October, and with it
+the strange woman. Family worship at the manse was
+over and Gavin was talking to his mother, who never
+crossed the threshold save to go to church (though her
+activity at home was among the marvels Jean sometimes
+slipped down to the Tenements to announce),
+when Wearyworld the policeman came to the door
+&#8220;with Rob Dow&#8217;s compliments, and if you&#8217;re no wi&#8217;
+me by ten o&#8217;clock I&#8217;m to break out again.&#8221; Gavin
+knew what this meant, and at once set off for Rob&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll let me gang a bit wi&#8217; you,&#8221; the policeman
+entreated, &#8220;for till Rob sent me on this errand not a
+soul has spoken to me the day; ay, mony a ane hae I
+spoken to, but not a man, woman, nor bairn would fling
+me a word.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_32' name='page_32'></a>32</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I often meant to ask you,&#8221; Gavin said as they went
+along the Tenements, which smelled at that hour of
+roasted potatoes, &#8220;why you are so unpopular.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s because I&#8217;m police. I&#8217;m the first ane that has
+ever been in Thrums, and the very folk that appointed
+me at a crown a week looks upon me as a disgraced man
+for accepting. It&#8217;s Gospel that my ain wife is short wi&#8217;
+me when I&#8217;ve on my uniform, though weel she kens
+that I would rather hae stuck to the loom if I hadna
+ha&#8217;en sic a queer richt leg. Nobody feels the shame o&#8217;
+my position as I do mysel&#8217;, but this is a town without
+pity.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It should be a consolation to you that you are discharging
+useful duties.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I&#8217;m no. I&#8217;m doing harm. There&#8217;s Charles
+Dickson says that the very sicht o&#8217; my uniform rouses
+his dander so muckle that it makes him break windows,
+though a peaceably-disposed man till I was appointed.
+And what&#8217;s the use o&#8217; their haeing a policeman when
+they winna come to the lock-up after I lay hands on
+them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do they say they won&#8217;t come?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say? Catch them saying onything! They just gie
+me a wap into the gutters. If they would speak I
+wouldna complain, for I&#8217;m nat&#8217;rally the sociablest man in
+Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob, however, had spoken to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because he had need o&#8217; me. That was ay Rob&#8217;s way,
+converted or no converted. When he was blind drunk
+he would order me to see him safe hame, but would he
+crack wi&#8217; me? Na, na.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Wearyworld, who was so called because of his forlorn
+way of muttering, &#8220;It&#8217;s a weary warld, and nobody
+bides in&#8217;t,&#8221; as he went his melancholy rounds, sighed
+like one about to cry, and Gavin changed the subject.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is the watch for the soldiers still kept up?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is, but the watchers winna let me in aside them.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_33' name='page_33'></a>33</span>
+I&#8217;ll let you see that for yoursel&#8217; at the head o&#8217; the
+Roods, for they watch there in the auld windmill.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Most of the Thrums lights were already out, and that
+in the windmill disappeared as footsteps were heard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re desperate characters,&#8221; the policeman cried,
+but got no answer. He changed his tactics.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A fine nicht for the time o&#8217; year,&#8221; he cried. No
+answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I wouldna wonder,&#8221; he shouted, &#8220;though we
+had rain afore morning.&#8221; No answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Surely you could gie me a word frae ahint the door.
+You&#8217;re doing an onlawful thing, but I dinna ken wha
+you are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll swear to that?&#8221; some one asked gruffly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I swear to it, Peter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Wearyworld tried another six remarks in vain.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; he said to the minister, &#8220;that&#8217;s what it is to
+be an onpopular man. And now I&#8217;ll hae to turn back,
+for the very anes that winna let me join them would be
+the first to complain if I gaed out o&#8217; bounds.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin found Dow at New Zealand, a hamlet of mud
+houses, whose tenants could be seen on any Sabbath
+morning washing themselves in the burn that trickled
+hard by. Rob&#8217;s son, Micah, was asleep at the door, but
+he brightened when he saw who was shaking him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My father put me out,&#8221; he explained, &#8220;because
+he&#8217;s daft for the drink, and was fleid he would curse
+me. He hasna cursed me,&#8221; Micah added, proudly, &#8220;for
+an aught days come Sabbath. Hearken to him at his
+loom. He daurna take his feet off the treadles for fear
+o&#8217; running straucht to the drink.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin went in. The loom, and two stools, the one
+four-footed and the other a buffet, were Rob&#8217;s most
+conspicuous furniture. A shaving-strap hung on the
+wall. The fire was out, but the trunk of a tree, charred
+at one end, showed how he heated his house. He made
+a fire of peat, and on it placed one end of a tree trunk
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_34' name='page_34'></a>34</span>
+that might be six feet long. As the tree burned away
+it was pushed further into the fireplace, and a roaring
+fire could always be got by kicking pieces of the smouldering
+wood and blowing them into flame with the bellows.
+When Rob saw the minister he groaned relief
+and left his loom. He had been weaving, his teeth
+clenched, his eyes on fire, for seven hours.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wasna fleid,&#8221; little Micah said to the neighbours
+afterwards, &#8220;to gang in wi&#8217; the minister. He&#8217;s a fine
+man that. He didna ca&#8217; my father names. Na, he
+said, &#8216;You&#8217;re a brave fellow, Rob,&#8217; and he took my
+father&#8217;s hand, he did. My father was shaking after his
+fecht wi&#8217; the drink, and, says he, &#8216;Mr. Dishart,&#8217; he
+says, &#8216;if you&#8217;ll let me break out nows and nans, I could
+bide straucht atween times, but I canna keep sober if I
+hinna a drink to look forrit to.&#8217; Ay, my father prigged
+sair to get one fou day in the month, and he said, &#8216;Syne
+if I die sudden, there&#8217;s thirty chances to one that I gang
+to heaven, so it&#8217;s worth risking.&#8217; But Mr. Dishart
+wouldna hear o&#8217;t, and he cries, &#8216;No, by God,&#8217; he cries,
+&#8216;we&#8217;ll wrestle wi&#8217; the devil till we throttle him,&#8217; and
+down him and my father gaed on their knees.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The minister prayed a lang time till my father said
+his hunger for the drink was gone, &#8216;but&#8217;, he says, &#8216;it
+swells up in me o&#8217; a sudden aye, and it may be back
+afore you&#8217;re hame.&#8217; &#8216;Then come to me at once,&#8217; says
+Mr. Dishart; but my father says, &#8216;Na, for it would
+haul me into the public-house as if it had me at the end
+o&#8217; a rope, but I&#8217;ll send the laddie.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You saw my father crying the minister back? It
+was to gie him twa pound, and, says my father, &#8216;God
+helping me,&#8217; he says, &#8216;I&#8217;ll droon mysel in the dam
+rather than let the drink master me, but in case it
+should get haud o&#8217; me and I should die drunk, it would
+be a michty gratification to me to ken that you had the
+siller to bury me respectable without ony help frae the
+poor&#8217;s rates.&#8217; The minister wasna for taking it at first,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_35' name='page_35'></a>35</span>
+but he took it when he saw how earnest my father was.
+Ay, he&#8217;s a noble man. After he gaed awa my father
+made me learn the names o&#8217; the apostles frae Luke
+sixth, and he says to me, &#8216;Miss out Bartholomew,&#8217; he
+says, &#8216;for he did little, and put Gavin Dishart in his
+place.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Feeling as old as he sometimes tried to look, Gavin
+turned homeward. Margaret was already listening for
+him. You may be sure she knew his step. I think
+our steps vary as much as the human face. My bookshelves
+were made by a blind man who could identify
+by their steps nearly all who passed his window. Yet
+he has admitted to me that he could not tell wherein my
+steps differed from others; and this I believe, though
+rejecting his boast that he could distinguish a minister&#8217;s
+step from a doctor&#8217;s, and even tell to which denomination
+the minister belonged.</p>
+<p>I have sometimes asked myself what would have been
+Gavin&#8217;s future had he gone straight home that night
+from Dow&#8217;s. He would doubtless have seen the Egyptian
+before morning broke, but she would not have come
+upon him like a witch. There are, I dare say, many
+lovers who would never have been drawn to each other
+had they met for the first time, as, say, they met the
+second time. But such dreaming is to no purpose.
+Gavin met Sanders Webster, the mole-catcher, and was
+persuaded by him to go home by Caddam Wood.</p>
+<p>Gavin took the path to Caddam, because Sanders told
+him the Wild Lindsays were there, a gypsy family that
+threatened the farmers by day and danced devilishly,
+it was said, at night. The little minister knew them
+by repute as a race of giants, and that not many persons
+would have cared to face them alone at midnight; but
+he was feeling as one wound up to heavy duties, and
+meant to admonish them severely.</p>
+<p>Sanders, an old man who lived with his sister Nanny
+on the edge of the wood, went with him, and for a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_36' name='page_36'></a>36</span>
+time both were silent. But Sanders had something to
+say.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was you ever at the Spittal, Mr. Dishart?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lord Rintoul&#8217;s house at the top of Glen Quharity?
+No.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hae you ever looked on a lord?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or on an auld lord&#8217;s young leddyship? I have.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You surely ken that Rintoul&#8217;s auld, and is to be
+married on a young leddyship. She&#8217;s no&#8217; a leddyship
+yet, but they&#8217;re to be married soon, so I may say I&#8217;ve
+seen a leddyship. Ay, an impressive sicht. It was
+yestreen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is there a great difference in their ages?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;As muckle as atween auld Peter Spens and his wife,
+wha was saxteen when he was saxty, and she was playing
+at dumps in the street when her man was waiting
+for her to make his porridge. Ay, sic a differ doesna
+suit wi&#8217; common folk, but of course earls can please
+themsels. Rintoul&#8217;s so fond o&#8217; the leddyship &#8217;at is to
+be, that when she was at the school in Edinbury he
+wrote to her ilka day. Kaytherine Crummie telled me
+that, and she says aince you&#8217;re used to it, writing letters
+is as easy as skinning moles. I dinna ken what
+they can write sic a heap about, but I daur say he gies
+her his views on the Chartist agitation and the potato
+disease, and she&#8217;ll write back about the romantic sichts
+o&#8217; Edinbury and the sermons o&#8217; the grand preachers she
+hears. Sal, though, thae grand folk has no religion to
+speak o&#8217;, for they&#8217;re a&#8217; English kirk. You&#8217;re no&#8217; speiring
+what her leddyship said to me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did she say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, you see, there was a dancing ball on, and
+Kaytherine Crummie took me to a window whaur I
+could stand on a flower-pot and watch the critturs whirling
+round in the ball like teetotums. What&#8217;s mair, she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_37' name='page_37'></a>37</span>
+pointed out the leddyship that&#8217;s to be to me, and I just
+glowered at her, for thinks I, &#8216;Take your fill, Sanders,
+and whaur there&#8217;s lords and leddyships, dinna waste a
+minute on colonels and honourable misses and sic like
+dirt.&#8217; Ay, but what wi&#8217; my een blinking at the blaze
+o&#8217; candles, I lost sicht o&#8217; her till all at aince somebody
+says at my lug, &#8216;Well, my man, and who is the prettiest
+lady in the room?&#8217; Mr. Dishart, it was her leddyship.
+She looked like a star.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what did you do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The first thing I did was to fall aff the flower-pot;
+but syne I came to, and says I, wi&#8217; a polite smirk, &#8216;I&#8217;m
+thinking your leddyship,&#8217; says I, &#8216;as you&#8217;re the bonniest
+yourself.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see you are a cute man, Sanders.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, but that&#8217;s no&#8217; a&#8217;. She lauched in a pleased way
+and tapped me wi&#8217; her fan, and says she, &#8216;Why do you
+think me the prettiest?&#8217; I dinna deny but what that
+staggered me, but I thocht a minute, and took a look
+at the other dancers again, and syne I says, michty
+sly like, &#8216;The other leddies,&#8217; I says, &#8216;has sic sma&#8217;
+feet.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Sanders stopped here and looked doubtingly at Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I canna make up my mind,&#8221; he said, &#8220;whether she
+liked that, for she rapped my knuckles wi&#8217; her fan fell
+sair, and aff she gaed. Ay, I consulted Tammas Haggart
+about it, and he says, &#8216;The flirty crittur,&#8217; he says.
+What would you say, Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin managed to escape without giving an answer,
+for here their roads separated. He did not find the
+Wild Lindsays, however. Children of whim, of prodigious
+strength while in the open, but destined to
+wither quickly in the hot air of towns, they had gone
+from Caddam, leaving nothing of themselves behind
+but a black mark burned by their fires into the ground.
+Thus they branded the earth through many counties
+until some hour when the spirit of wandering again fell
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_38' name='page_38'></a>38</span>
+on them, and they forsook their hearths with as little
+compunction as the bird leaves its nest.</p>
+<p>Gavin had walked quickly, and he now stood silently
+in the wood, his hat in his hand. In the moonlight
+the grass seemed tipped with hoar frost. Most of the
+beeches were already bare, but the shoots, clustering
+round them, like children at their mother&#8217;s skirts, still
+retained their leaves red and brown. Among the pines
+these leaves were as incongruous as a wedding-dress at a
+funeral. Gavin was standing on grass, but there were
+patches of heather within sight, and broom, and the
+leaf of the blaeberry. Where the beeches had drawn
+up the earth with them as they grew, their roots ran
+this way and that, slippery to the feet and looking like
+disinterred bones. A squirrel appeared suddenly on
+the charred ground, looked doubtfully at Gavin to see
+if he was growing there, and then glided up a tree,
+where it sat eyeing him, and forgetting to conceal its
+shadow. Caddam was very still. At long intervals
+came from far away the whack of an axe on wood.
+Gavin was in a world by himself, and this might be
+some one breaking into it.</p>
+<p>The mystery of woods by moonlight thrilled the little
+minister. His eyes rested on the shining roots, and he
+remembered what had been told him of the legend of
+Caddam, how once on a time it was a mighty wood, and
+a maiden most beautiful stood on its confines, panting
+and afraid, for a wicked man pursued her; how he drew
+near, and she ran a little way into the wood, and he followed
+her, and she still ran, and still he followed, until
+both were for ever lost, and the bones of her pursuer
+lie beneath a beech, but the lady may still be heard
+singing in the woods if the night be fine, for then she
+is a glad spirit, but weeping when there is wild wind,
+for then she is but a mortal seeking a way out of the
+wood.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_5' id='linki_5'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus048.jpg' alt='' title='' width='468' height='653' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+IN CADDAM WOOD.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>The squirrel slid down the fir and was gone. The
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_39' name='page_39'></a>39</span>
+axe&#8217;s blows ceased. Nothing that moved was in sight.
+The wind that has its nest in trees was circling around
+with many voices, that never rose above a whisper, and
+were often but the echo of a sigh.</p>
+<p>Gavin was in the Caddam of past days, where the
+beautiful maiden wanders ever, waiting for him who is
+so pure that he may find her. He will wander over the
+tree-tops looking for her, with the moon for his lamp,
+and some night he will hear her singing. The little
+minister drew a deep breath, and his foot snapped a
+brittle twig. Then he remembered who and where he
+was, and stooped to pick up his staff. But he did not
+pick it up, for as his fingers were closing on it the lady
+began to sing.</p>
+<p>For perhaps a minute Gavin stood stock still, like
+an intruder. Then he ran towards the singing, which
+seemed to come from Windyghoul, a straight road
+through Caddam that farmers use in summer, but leave
+in the back end of the year to leaves and pools. In
+Windyghoul there is either no wind or so much that it
+rushes down the sieve like an army, entering with a
+shriek of terror, and escaping with a derisive howl.
+The moon was crossing the avenue. But Gavin only
+saw the singer.</p>
+<p>She was still fifty yards away, sometimes singing
+gleefully, and again letting her body sway lightly as she
+came dancing up Windyghoul. Soon she was within a
+few feet of the little minister, to whom singing, except
+when out of tune, was a suspicious thing, and dancing
+a device of the devil. His arm went out wrathfully,
+and his intention was to pronounce sentence on this
+woman.</p>
+<p>But she passed, unconscious of his presence, and he
+had not moved nor spoken. Though really of the average
+height, she was a little thing to the eyes of Gavin,
+who always felt tall and stout except when he looked
+down. The grace of her swaying figure was a new
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_40' name='page_40'></a>40</span>
+thing in the world to him. Only while she passed did
+he see her as a gleam of colour, a gypsy elf poorly clad,
+her bare feet flashing beneath a short green skirt, a
+twig of rowan berries stuck carelessly into her black
+hair. Her face was pale. She had an angel&#8217;s loveliness.
+Gavin shook.</p>
+<p>Still she danced onwards, but she was very human,
+for when she came to muddy water she let her feet linger
+in it, and flung up her arms, dancing more wantonly
+than before. A diamond on her finger shot a thread of
+fire over the pool. Undoubtedly she was the devil.</p>
+<p>Gavin leaped into the avenue, and she heard him and
+looked behind. He tried to cry &#8220;Woman!&#8221; sternly,
+but lost the word, for now she saw him, and laughed
+with her shoulders, and beckoned to him, so that he
+shook his fist at her. She tripped on, but often turning
+her head beckoned and mocked him, and he forgot
+his dignity and his pulpit and all other things, and ran
+after her. Up Windyghoul did he pursue her, and it
+was well that the precentor was not there to see. She
+reached the mouth of the avenue, and kissing her hand
+to Gavin, so that the ring gleamed again, was gone.</p>
+<p>The minister&#8217;s one thought was to find her, but he
+searched in vain. She might be crossing the hill on
+her way to Thrums, or perhaps she was still laughing
+at him from behind a tree. After a longer time than
+he was aware of, Gavin realised that his boots were
+chirping and his trousers streaked with mud. Then he
+abandoned the search and hastened homewards in a
+rage.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_6' id='linki_6'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus052.jpg' alt='' title='' width='700' height='469' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+IN WINDYGHOUL.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>From the hill to the manse the nearest way is down
+two fields, and the little minister descended them
+rapidly. Thrums, which is red in daylight, was grey
+and still as the cemetery. He had glimpses of several
+of its deserted streets. To the south the watch-light
+showed brightly, but no other was visible. So it seemed
+to Gavin, and then&mdash;suddenly&mdash;he lost the power to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_41' name='page_41'></a>41</span>
+move. He had heard the horn. Thrice it sounded,
+and thrice it struck him to the heart. He looked again
+and saw a shadow stealing along the Tenements, then
+another, then half-a-dozen. He remembered Mr. Carfrae&#8217;s
+words, &#8220;If you ever hear that horn, I implore you
+to hasten to the square,&#8221; and in another minute he had
+reached the Tenements.</p>
+<p>Now again he saw the gypsy. She ran past him,
+half-a-score of men, armed with staves and pikes, at
+her heels. At first he thought they were chasing her,
+but they were following her as a leader. Her eyes
+sparkled as she waved them to the square with her arms.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The soldiers, the soldiers!&#8221; was the universal cry.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who is that woman?&#8221; demanded Gavin, catching
+hold of a frightened old man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Curse the Egyptian limmer,&#8221; the man answered,
+&#8220;she&#8217;s egging my laddie on to fecht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bless her rather,&#8221; the son cried, &#8220;for warning us
+that the sojers is coming. Put your ear to the ground,
+Mr. Dishart, and you&#8217;ll hear the dirl o&#8217; their feet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The young man rushed away to the square, flinging
+his father from him. Gavin followed. As he turned
+into the school wynd, the town drum began to beat,
+windows were thrown open, and sullen men ran out of
+closes where women were screaming and trying to hold
+them back. At the foot of the wynd Gavin passed
+Sanders Webster.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart,&#8221; the mole-catcher cried, &#8220;hae you seen
+that Egyptian? May I be struck dead if it&#8217;s no&#8217; her
+little leddyship.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Gavin did not hear him.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_42' name='page_42'></a>42</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FIVE_A_WARLIKE_CHAPTER_CULMINATING_IN_THE_FLOUTING_OF_THE_MINISTER_BY_THE_WOMAN' id='CHAPTER_FIVE_A_WARLIKE_CHAPTER_CULMINATING_IN_THE_FLOUTING_OF_THE_MINISTER_BY_THE_WOMAN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Five.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />A WARLIKE CHAPTER, CULMINATING IN THE FLOUTING OF THE MINISTER BY THE WOMAN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jean had clutched at Gavin in Bank Street. Her
+hair was streaming, and her wrapper but half buttoned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Mr. Dishart, look at the mistress! I couldna
+keep her in the manse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin saw his mother beside him, bare-headed,
+trembling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How could I sit still, Gavin, and the town full o&#8217;
+the skirls of women and bairns? Oh, Gavin, what can I
+do for them? They will suffer most this night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As Gavin took her hand he knew that Margaret felt
+for the people more than he.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you must go home, mother,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and
+leave me to do my duty. I will take you myself if you
+will not go with Jean. Be careful of her, Jean.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, will I,&#8221; Jean answered, then burst into tears.
+&#8220;Mr. Dishart,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;if they take my father they&#8217;d
+best take my mither too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The two women went back to the manse, where Jean
+relit the fire, having nothing else to do, and boiled the
+kettle, while Margaret wandered in anguish from room
+to room.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_7' id='linki_7'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus056.jpg' alt='' title='' width='469' height='670' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+THE WARNING.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>Men nearly naked ran past Gavin, seeking to escape
+from Thrums by the fields he had descended. When
+he shouted to them they only ran faster. A Tillyloss
+weaver whom he tried to stop struck him savagely and
+sped past to the square. In Bank Street, which was full
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_43' name='page_43'></a>43</span>
+of people at one moment and empty the next, the minister
+stumbled over old Charles Yuill.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take me and welcome,&#8221; Yuill cried, mistaking
+Gavin for the enemy. He had only one arm through
+the sleeve of his jacket, and his feet were bare.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am Mr. Dishart. Are the soldiers already in the
+square, Yuill?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;ll be there in a minute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The man was so weak that Gavin had to hold
+him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Be a man, Charles. You have nothing to fear. It
+is not such as you the soldiers have come for. If need
+be, I can swear that you had not the strength, even if
+you had the will, to join in the weavers&#8217; riot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For Godsake, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; Yuill cried, his hands
+chattering on Gavin&#8217;s coat, &#8220;dinna swear that. My
+laddie was in the thick o&#8217; the riot; and if he&#8217;s ta&#8217;en
+there&#8217;s the poor&#8217;s-house gaping for Kitty and me, for I
+couldna weave half a web a week. If there&#8217;s a warrant
+agin onybody o&#8217; the name of Yuill, swear it&#8217;s me;
+swear I&#8217;m a desperate character, swear I&#8217;m michty
+strong for all I look palsied; and if when they take me,
+my courage breaks down, swear the mair, swear I confessed
+my guilt to you on the Book.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As Yuill spoke the quick rub-a-dub of a drum was
+heard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The soldiers!&#8221; Gavin let go his hold of the old man,
+who hastened away to give himself up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s no the sojers,&#8221; said a woman; &#8220;it&#8217;s the folk
+gathering in the square. This&#8217;ll be a watery Sabbath
+in Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob Dow,&#8221; shouted Gavin, as Dow flung past with
+a scythe in his hand, &#8220;lay down that scythe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To hell wi&#8217; religion!&#8221; Rob retorted, fiercely; &#8220;it
+spoils a&#8217; thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lay down that scythe; I command you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rob stopped undecidedly, then cast the scythe from
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_44' name='page_44'></a>44</span>
+him, but its rattle on the stones was more than he could
+bear.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I winna,&#8221; he cried, and, picking it up, ran to the
+square.</p>
+<p>An upper window in Bank Street opened, and Dr.
+McQueen put out his head. He was smoking as usual.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you will return home at
+once if you are a wise man; or, better still, come in
+here. You can do nothing with these people to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can stop their fighting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will only make black blood between them and
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna heed him, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; cried some women.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You had better heed him,&#8221; cried a man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will not desert my people,&#8221; Gavin said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen, then, to my prescription,&#8221; the doctor replied.
+&#8220;Drive that gypsy lassie out of the town before
+the soldiers reach it. She is firing the men to a red-heat
+through sheer devilry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She brocht the news, or we would have been nipped
+in our beds,&#8221; some people cried.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does any one know who she is?&#8221; Gavin demanded,
+but all shook their heads. The Egyptian, as they
+called her, had never been seen in these parts before.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has any other person seen the soldiers?&#8221; he asked.
+&#8220;Perhaps this is a false alarm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Several have seen them within the last few minutes,&#8221;
+the doctor answered. &#8220;They came from Tilliedrum,
+and were advancing on us from the south, but
+when they heard that we had got the alarm they stopped
+at the top of the brae, near T&#8217;nowhead&#8217;s farm. Man,
+you would take these things more coolly if you smoked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Show me this woman,&#8221; Gavin said sternly to those
+who had been listening. Then a stream of people
+carried him into the square.</p>
+<p>The square has altered little, even in these days of
+enterprise, when Tillyloss has become Newton Bank,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_45' name='page_45'></a>45</span>
+and the Craft Head Croft Terrace, with enamelled
+labels on them for the guidance of slow people, who
+forget their address and have to run to the end of the
+street and look up every time they write a letter. The
+stones on which the butter-wives sat have disappeared,
+and with them the clay walls and the outside stairs.
+Gone, too, is the stair of the town-house, from the top
+of which the drummer roared the gossip of the week on
+Sabbaths to country folk, to the scandal of all who knew
+that the proper thing on that day is to keep your blinds
+down; but the town-house itself, round and red, still
+makes exit to the south troublesome. Wherever streets
+meet the square there is a house in the centre of them,
+and thus the heart of Thrums is a box, in which the
+stranger finds himself suddenly, wondering at first how
+he is to get out, and presently how he got in.</p>
+<p>To Gavin, who never before had seen a score of people
+in the square at once, here was a sight strange and
+terrible. Andrew Struthers, an old soldier, stood on
+the outside stair of the town-house, shouting words of
+command to some fifty weavers, many of them scantily
+clad, but all armed with pikes and poles. Most were
+known to the little minister, but they wore faces that
+were new to him. Newcomers joined the body every
+moment. If the drill was clumsy the men were fierce.
+Hundreds of people gathered around, some screaming,
+some shaking their fists at the old soldier, many trying
+to pluck their relatives out of danger. Gavin could not
+see the Egyptian. Women and old men, fighting for
+the possession of his ear, implored him to disperse the
+armed band. He ran up the town-house stair, and in a
+moment it had become a pulpit.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna dare to interfere, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; Struthers
+said savagely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Andrew Struthers,&#8221; said Gavin solemnly, &#8220;in the
+name of God I order you to leave me alone. If you don&#8217;t,&#8221;
+he added ferociously, &#8220;I&#8217;ll fling you over the stair.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_46' name='page_46'></a>46</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna heed him, Andrew,&#8221; some one shouted, and
+another cried, &#8220;He canna understand our sufferings;
+he has dinner ilka day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Struthers faltered, however, and Gavin cast his eye
+over the armed men.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob Dow,&#8221; he said, &#8220;William Carmichael, Thomas
+Whamond, William Munn, Alexander Hobart, Henders
+Haggart, step forward.&#8221;</p>
+<p>These were Auld Lichts, and when they found that
+the minister would not take his eyes off them, they
+obeyed, all save Rob Dow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never mind him, Rob,&#8221; said the atheist, Cruickshanks,
+&#8220;it&#8217;s better playing cards in hell than singing
+psalms in heaven.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Joseph Cruickshanks,&#8221; responded Gavin grimly,
+&#8220;you will find no cards down there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then Rob also came to the foot of the stair. There
+was some angry muttering from the crowd, and young
+Charles Yuill exclaimed, &#8220;Curse you, would you lord
+it ower us on week-days as weel as on Sabbaths?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lay down your weapons,&#8221; Gavin said to the six men.</p>
+<p>They looked at each other. Hobart slipped his pike
+behind his back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hae no weapon,&#8221; he said slily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let me hae my fling this nicht,&#8221; Dow entreated,
+&#8220;and I&#8217;ll promise to bide sober for a twelvemonth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Rob, Rob!&#8221; the minister said bitterly, &#8220;are
+you the man I prayed with a few hours ago?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The scythe fell from Rob&#8217;s hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Down wi&#8217; your pikes,&#8221; he roared to his companions,
+&#8220;or I&#8217;ll brain you wi&#8217; them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, lay them down,&#8221; the precentor whispered, &#8220;but
+keep your feet on them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then the minister, who was shaking with excitement,
+though he did not know it, stretched forth his arms for
+silence, and it came so suddenly as to frighten the people
+in the neighboring streets.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_47' name='page_47'></a>47</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;If he prays we&#8217;re done for,&#8221; cried young Charles
+Yuill, but even in that hour many of the people were
+unbonneted.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Thou who art the Lord of hosts,&#8221; Gavin prayed,
+&#8220;we are in Thy hands this night. These are Thy people,
+and they have sinned; but Thou art a merciful God,
+and they were sore tried, and knew not what they did.
+To Thee, our God, we turn for deliverance, for without
+Thee we are lost.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The little minister&#8217;s prayer was heard all round the
+square, and many weapons were dropped as an Amen
+to it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you fight,&#8221; cried Gavin, brightening as he heard
+the clatter of the iron on the stones, &#8220;your wives and
+children may be shot in the streets. These soldiers
+have come for a dozen of you; will you be benefited if
+they take away a hundred?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, hearken to him,&#8221; cried many women.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I winna,&#8221; answered a man, &#8220;for I&#8217;m ane o&#8217; the
+dozen. Whaur&#8217;s the Egyptian?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin saw the crowd open, and the woman of Windyghoul
+come out of it, and, while he should have denounced
+her, he only blinked, for once more her
+loveliness struck him full in the eyes. She was beside
+him on the stair before he became a minister again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How dare you, woman?&#8221; he cried; but she flung a
+rowan berry at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I were a man,&#8221; she exclaimed, addressing the
+people, &#8220;I wouldna let myself be catched like a mouse
+in a trap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We winna,&#8221; some answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What kind o&#8217; women are you,&#8221; cried the Egyptian,
+her face gleaming as she turned to her own sex, &#8220;that
+bid your men folk gang to gaol when a bold front would
+lead them to safety? Do you want to be husbandless
+and hameless?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_48' name='page_48'></a>48</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Disperse, I command you!&#8221; cried Gavin. &#8220;This
+abandoned woman is inciting you to riot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna heed this little man,&#8221; the Egyptian retorted.</p>
+<p>It is curious to know that even at that anxious moment
+Gavin winced because she called him little.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She has the face of a mischief-maker,&#8221; he shouted,
+&#8220;and her words are evil.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You men and women o&#8217; Thrums,&#8221; she responded,
+&#8220;ken that I wish you weel by the service I hae done
+you this nicht. Wha telled you the sojers was coming?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was you; it was you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, and mony a mile I ran to bring the news.
+Listen, and I&#8217;ll tell you mair.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She has a false tongue,&#8221; Gavin cried; &#8220;listen not
+to the brazen woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I have to tell,&#8221; she said, &#8220;is as true as what
+I&#8217;ve telled already, and how true that is you a&#8217; ken.
+You&#8217;re wondering how the sojers has come to a stop at
+the tap o&#8217; the brae instead o&#8217; marching on the town.
+Here&#8217;s the reason. They agreed to march straucht to
+the square if the alarm wasna given, but if it was they
+were to break into small bodies and surround the town
+so that you couldna get out. That&#8217;s what they&#8217;re doing
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At this the screams were redoubled, and many men
+lifted the weapons they had dropped.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Believe her not,&#8221; cried Gavin. &#8220;How could a wandering
+gypsy know all this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, how can you ken?&#8221; some demanded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s enough that I do ken,&#8221; the Egyptian answered.
+&#8220;And this mair I ken, that the captain of the soldiers is
+confident he&#8217;ll nab every one o&#8217; you that&#8217;s wanted unless
+you do one thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is &#8217;t?&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_8' id='linki_8'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus064.jpg' alt='' title='' width='452' height='663' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+THE SOLDIERS.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;If you a&#8217; run different ways you&#8217;re lost, but if you
+keep thegither you&#8217;ll be able to force a road into the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_49' name='page_49'></a>49</span>
+country, whaur you can scatter. That&#8217;s what he&#8217;s fleid
+you&#8217;ll do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then it&#8217;s what we will do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is what you will not do,&#8221; Gavin said passionately.
+&#8220;The truth is not in this wicked woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But scarcely had he spoken when he knew that startling
+news had reached the square. A murmur arose
+on the skirts of the mob, and swept with the roar of the
+sea towards the town-house. A detachment of the soldiers
+were marching down the Roods from the north.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s some coming frae the east-town end,&#8221; was
+the next intelligence; &#8220;and they&#8217;ve gripped Sanders
+Webster, and auld Charles Yuill has given himsel&#8217; up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see, you see,&#8221; the gypsy said, flashing triumph
+at Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lay down your weapons,&#8221; Gavin cried, but his
+power over the people had gone.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Egyptian spoke true,&#8221; they shouted; &#8220;dinna
+heed the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin tried to seize the gypsy by the shoulders, but
+she slipped past him down the stair, and crying &#8220;Follow
+me!&#8221; ran round the town-house and down the brae.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Woman!&#8221; he shouted after her, but she only waved
+her arms scornfully. The people followed her, many
+of the men still grasping their weapons, but all in disorder.
+Within a minute after Gavin saw the gleam of the
+ring on her finger, as she waved her hands, he and Dow
+were alone in the square.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s an awfu&#8217; woman that,&#8221; Rob said. &#8220;I saw her
+lauching.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin ground his teeth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob Dow,&#8221; he said, slowly, &#8220;if I had not found
+Christ I would have throttled that woman. You saw
+how she flouted me?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_50' name='page_50'></a>50</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_SIX_IN_WHICH_THE_SOLDIERS_MEET_THE_AMAZONS_OF_THRUMS' id='CHAPTER_SIX_IN_WHICH_THE_SOLDIERS_MEET_THE_AMAZONS_OF_THRUMS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Six.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />IN WHICH THE SOLDIERS MEET THE AMAZONS OF THRUMS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Dow looked shamefacedly at the minister, and then
+set off up the square.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are you going, Rob?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To gie myself up. I maun do something to let you
+see there&#8217;s one man in Thrums that has mair faith in
+you than in a fliskmahoy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And only one, Rob. But I don&#8217;t know that they
+want to arrest you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, I had a hand in tying the polissman to the&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to hear nothing about that,&#8221; Gavin said,
+quickly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will I hide, then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dare not advise you to do that. It would be wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Half a score of fugitives tore past the town-house,
+and were out of sight without a cry. There was a tread
+of heavier feet, and a dozen soldiers, with several
+policemen and two prisoners, appeared suddenly on the
+north side of the square.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob,&#8221; cried the minister in desperation, &#8220;run!&#8221;</p>
+<p>When the soldiers reached the town-house, where
+they locked up their prisoners, Dow was skulking eastward,
+and Gavin running down the brae.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They&#8217;re fechting,&#8221; he was told, &#8220;they&#8217;re fechting
+on the brae, the sojers is firing, a man&#8217;s killed!&#8221;</p>
+<p>But this was an exaggeration.</p>
+<p>The brae, though short, is very steep. There is a
+hedge on one side of it, from which the land falls away,
+and on the other side a hillock. Gavin reached the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_51' name='page_51'></a>51</span>
+scene to see the soldiers marching down the brae,
+guarding a small body of policemen. The armed
+weavers were retreating before them. A hundred
+women or more were on the hillock, shrieking and
+gesticulating. Gavin joined them, calling on them not
+to fling the stones they had begun to gather.</p>
+<p>The armed men broke into a rabble, flung down their
+weapons, and fled back towards the town-house. Here
+they almost ran against the soldiers in the square, who
+again forced them into the brae. Finding themselves
+about to be wedged between the two forces, some
+crawled through the hedge, where they were instantly
+seized by policemen. Others sought to climb up the
+hillock and then escape into the country. The policemen
+clambered after them. The men were too frightened
+to fight, but a woman seized a policeman by the
+waist and flung him head foremost among the soldiers.
+One of these shouted &#8220;Fire!&#8221; but the captain cried
+&#8220;No.&#8221; Then came showers of missiles from the women.
+They stood their ground and defended the retreat of the
+scared men.</p>
+<p>Who flung the first stone is not known, but it is believed
+to have been the Egyptian. The policemen
+were recalled, and the whole body ordered to advance
+down the brae. Thus the weavers who had not escaped
+at once were driven before them, and soon hemmed in
+between the two bodies of soldiers, when they were
+easily captured. But for two minutes there was a thick
+shower of stones and clods of earth.</p>
+<p>It was ever afterwards painful to Gavin to recall this
+scene, but less on account of the shower of stones than
+because of the flight of one divit in it. He had been
+watching the handsome young captain, Halliwell, riding
+with his men; admiring him, too, for his coolness.
+This coolness exasperated the gypsy, who twice flung
+at Halliwell and missed him. He rode on smiling
+contemptuously.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_52' name='page_52'></a>52</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, if I could only fling straight!&#8221; the Egyptian
+moaned.</p>
+<p>Then she saw the minister by her side, and in the
+tick of a clock something happened that can never be
+explained. For the moment Gavin was so lost in misery
+over the probable effect of the night&#8217;s rioting that
+he had forgotten where he was. Suddenly the Egyptian&#8217;s
+beautiful face was close to his, and she pressed a
+divit into his hand, at the same time pointing at the
+officer, and whispering &#8220;Hit him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin flung the clod of earth, and hit Halliwell on
+the head.</p>
+<p>I say I cannot explain this. I tell what happened,
+and add with thankfulness that only the Egyptian witnessed
+the deed. Gavin, I suppose, had flung the divit
+before he could stay his hand. Then he shrank in
+horror.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Woman!&#8221; he cried again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are a dear,&#8221; she said, and vanished.</p>
+<p>By the time Gavin was breathing freely again the
+lock-up was crammed with prisoners, and the Riot Act
+had been read from the town-house stair. It is still
+remembered that the baron-bailie, to whom this duty
+fell, had got no further than, &#8220;Victoria, by the Grace
+of God,&#8221; when the paper was struck out of his hands.</p>
+<p>When a stirring event occurs up here we smack our
+lips over it for months, and so I could still write a history
+of that memorable night in Thrums. I could tell
+how the doctor, a man whose shoulders often looked as
+if they had been caught in a shower of tobacco ash,
+brought me the news to the school-house, and now,
+when I crossed the fields to dumfounder Waster Lunny
+with it, I found Birse, the post, reeling off the story to
+him as fast as a fisher could let out line. I know who
+was the first woman on the Marywell brae to hear the
+horn, and how she woke her husband, and who heard it
+first at the Denhead and the Tenements, with what they
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_53' name='page_53'></a>53</span>
+immediately said and did. I had from Dite Deuchar&#8217;s
+own lips the curious story of his sleeping placidly
+throughout the whole disturbance, and on wakening in
+the morning yoking to his loom as usual; and also his
+statement that such ill-luck was enough to shake a
+man&#8217;s faith in religion. The police had knowledge
+that enabled them to go straight to the houses of the
+weavers wanted, but they sometimes brought away the
+wrong man, for such of the people as did not escape
+from the town had swopped houses for the night&mdash;a
+trick that served them better than all their drilling on
+the hill. Old Yuill&#8217;s son escaped by burying himself
+in a peat-rick, and Snecky Hobart by pretending that
+he was a sack of potatoes. Less fortunate was Sanders
+Webster, the mole-catcher already mentioned. Sanders
+was really an innocent man. He had not even been in
+Thrums on the night of the rising against the manufacturers,
+but thinking that the outbreak was to be left
+unpunished, he wanted his share in the glory of it. So
+he had boasted of being a ringleader until many believed
+him, including the authorities. His braggadocio
+undid him. He was run to earth in a pig-sty,
+and got nine months. With the other arrests I need
+not concern myself, for they have no part in the story
+of the little minister.</p>
+<p>While Gavin was with the families whose breadwinners
+were now in the lock-up, a cell that was usually
+crammed on fair nights and empty for the rest of the
+year, the sheriff and Halliwell were in the round-room
+of the town-house, not in a good temper. They spoke
+loudly, and some of their words sank into the cell
+below.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The whole thing has been a fiasco,&#8221; the sheriff was
+heard saying, &#8220;owing to our failing to take them by
+surprise. Why, three-fourths of those taken will have
+to be liberated, and we have let the worst offenders slip
+through our hands.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_54' name='page_54'></a>54</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; answered Halliwell, who was wearing a
+heavy cloak, &#8220;I have brought your policemen into the
+place, and that is all I undertook to do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You brought them, but at the expense of alarming
+the countryside. I wish we had come without you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense! My men advanced like ghosts. Could
+your police have come down that brae alone to-night?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, because it would have been deserted. Your
+soldiers, I tell you, have done the mischief. This
+woman, who, so many of our prisoners admit, brought
+the news of our coming, must either have got it from
+one of your men or have seen them on the march.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The men did not know their destination. True,
+she might have seen us despite our precautions, but you
+forget that she told them how we were to act in the
+event of our being seen. That is what perplexes me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and me too, for it was a close secret between
+you and me and Lord Rintoul and not half-a-dozen
+others.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, find the woman, and we shall get the explanation.
+If she is still in the town she cannot escape, for
+my men are everywhere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was seen ten minutes ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then she is ours. I say, Riach, if I were you I
+would set all my prisoners free and take away a cart-load
+of their wives instead. I have only seen the backs
+of the men of Thrums, but, on my word, I very nearly
+ran away from the women. Hallo! I believe one of
+your police has caught our virago single-handed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So Halliwell exclaimed, hearing some one shout,
+&#8220;This is the rascal!&#8221; But it was not the Egyptian who
+was then thrust into the round-room. It was John
+Dunwoodie, looking very sly. Probably there was not,
+even in Thrums, a cannier man than Dunwoodie. His
+religious views were those of Cruickshanks, but he went
+regularly to church &#8220;on the off-chance of there being a
+God after all; so I&#8217;m safe, whatever side may be wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_55' name='page_55'></a>55</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;This is the man,&#8221; explained a policeman, &#8220;who
+brought the alarm. He admits himself having been in
+Tilliedrum just before we started.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your name, my man?&#8221; the sheriff demanded.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It micht be John Dunwoodie,&#8221; the tinsmith answered
+cautiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But is it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna say it&#8217;s no.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You were in Tilliedrum this evening?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I micht hae been.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Were you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll swear to nothing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because I&#8217;m a canny man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Into the cell with him,&#8221; Halliwell cried, losing
+patience.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leave him to me,&#8221; said the sheriff. &#8220;I understand
+the sort of man. Now, Dunwoodie, what were you
+doing in Tilliedrum?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was taking my laddie down to be prenticed to a
+writer there,&#8221; answered Dunwoodie, falling into the
+sheriff&#8217;s net.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you yourself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I micht be a tinsmith to trade.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you, a mere tinsmith, dare to tell me that a
+lawyer was willing to take your son into his office? Be
+cautious, Dunwoodie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, then, the laddie&#8217;s highly edicated and I hae
+siller, and that&#8217;s how the writer was to take him and
+make a gentleman o&#8217; him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I learn from the neighbours,&#8221; the policeman explained,
+&#8220;that this is partly true, but what makes us
+suspect him is this. He left the laddie at Tilliedrum,
+and yet when he came home the first person he sees at
+the fireside is the laddie himself. The laddie had run
+home, and the reason plainly was that he had heard of
+our preparations and wanted to alarm the town.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_56' name='page_56'></a>56</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;There seems something in this, Dunwoodie,&#8221; the
+sheriff said, &#8220;and if you cannot explain it I must keep
+you in custody.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll make a clean breast o&#8217;t,&#8221; Dunwoodie replied,
+seeing that in this matter truth was best. &#8220;The
+laddie was terrible against being made a gentleman,
+and when he saw the kind o&#8217; life he would hae to
+lead, clean hands, clean dickies, and no gutters on his
+breeks, his heart took mair scunner at genteelity than
+ever, and he ran hame. Ay, I was mad when I saw
+him at the fireside, but he says to me, &#8216;How would you
+like to be a gentleman yoursel&#8217;, father?&#8217; he says,
+and that so affected me &#8217;at I&#8217;m to gie him his ain
+way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Another prisoner, Dave Langlands, was confronted
+with Dunwoodie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;John Dunwoodie&#8217;s as innocent as I am mysel,&#8221; Dave
+said, &#8220;and I&#8217;m most michty innocent. It wasna John
+but the Egyptian that gave the alarm. I tell you what,
+sheriff, if it&#8217;ll make me innocenter-like I&#8217;ll picture the
+Egyptian to you just as I saw her, and syne you&#8217;ll be
+able to catch her easier.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are an honest fellow,&#8221; said the sheriff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only wish I had the whipping of him,&#8221; growled
+Halliwell, who was of a generous nature.</p>
+<p>&#8220;For what business had she,&#8221; continued Dave righteously,
+&#8220;to meddle in other folks&#8217; business? She&#8217;s no
+a Thrums lassie, and so I say, &#8216;Let the law take its
+course on her.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you listen to such a cur, Riach?&#8221; asked Halliwell.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly. Speak out, Langlands.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, then, I was in the windmill the nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You were a watcher?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I happened to be in the windmill wi&#8217; another man,&#8221;
+Dave went on, avoiding the officer&#8217;s question.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What was his name?&#8221; demanded Halliwell.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_57' name='page_57'></a>57</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It was the Egyptian I was to tell you about,&#8221; Dave
+said, looking to the sheriff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, yes, you only tell tales about women,&#8221; said
+Halliwell.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Strange women,&#8221; corrected Dave. &#8220;Weel, we was
+there, and it would maybe be twal o&#8217;clock, and we was
+speaking (but about lawful things) when we heard some
+ane running yont the road. I keeked through a hole in
+the door, and I saw it was an Egyptian lassie &#8217;at I had
+never clapped een on afore. She saw the licht in the
+window, and she cried, &#8216;Hie, you billies in the windmill,
+the sojers is coming!&#8217; I fell in a fricht, but the
+other man opened the door, and again she cries, &#8216;The
+sojers is coming; quick, or you&#8217;ll be ta&#8217;en.&#8217; At that
+the other man up wi&#8217; his bonnet and ran, but I didna
+make off so smart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You had to pick yourself up first,&#8221; suggested the
+officer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sal, it was the lassie picked me up; ay, and she
+picked up a horn at the same time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Blaw on that,&#8217; she cried, &#8216;and alarm the town.&#8217;
+But, sheriff, I didna do&#8217;t. Na, I had ower muckle respect
+for the law.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In other words,&#8221; said Halliwell, &#8220;you also bolted,
+and left the gypsy to blow the horn herself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna deny but what I made my feet my friend,
+but it wasna her that blew the horn. I ken that, for I
+looked back and saw her trying to do&#8217;t, but she couldna,
+she didna ken the way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then who did blow it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The first man she met, I suppose. We a&#8217; kent that
+the horn was to be the signal except Wearywarld. He&#8217;s
+police, so we kept it frae him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is all you saw of the woman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, for I ran straucht to my garret, and there your
+men took me. Can I gae hame now, sheriff?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you cannot. Describe the woman&#8217;s appearance.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_58' name='page_58'></a>58</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;She had a heap o&#8217; rowan berries stuck in her hair,
+and, I think, she had on a green wrapper and a red
+shawl. She had a most extraordinary face. I canna
+exact describe it, for she would be lauchin&#8217; one second
+and syne solemn the next. I tell you her face changed
+as quick as you could turn the pages o&#8217; a book. Ay,
+here comes Wearywarld to speak up for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Wearyworld entered cheerfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the local policeman,&#8221; a Tilliedrum officer
+said; &#8220;we have been searching for him everywhere,
+and only found him now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where have you been?&#8221; asked the sheriff, wrathfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur maist honest men is at this hour,&#8221; replied
+Wearyworld; &#8220;in my bed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How dared you ignore your duty at such a time?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a long story,&#8221; the policeman answered, pleasantly,
+in anticipation of a talk at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Answer me in a word.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In a word!&#8221; cried the policeman, quite crestfallen.
+&#8220;It canna be done. You&#8217;ll need to cross-examine me,
+too. It&#8217;s my lawful richt.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll take you to the Tilliedrum gaol for your share
+in this night&#8217;s work if you do not speak to the purpose.
+Why did you not hasten to our assistance?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;As sure as death I never kent you was here. I was
+up the Roods on my rounds when I heard an awfu&#8217; din
+down in the square, and thinks I, there&#8217;s rough characters
+about, and the place for honest folk is their bed.
+So to my bed I gaed, and I was in&#8217;t when your men
+gripped me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must see into this before we leave. In the
+meantime you will act as a guide to my searchers.
+Stop! Do you know anything of this Egyptian?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What Egyptian? Is&#8217;t a lassie wi&#8217; rowans in her
+hair?&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_9' id='linki_9'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus076.jpg' alt='' title='' width='468' height='366' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+THE EGYPTIAN.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;The same. Have you seen her?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_59' name='page_59'></a>59</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;That I have. There&#8217;s nothing agin her, is there?
+Whatever it is, I&#8217;ll uphaud she didna do&#8217;t, for a simpler,
+franker-spoken crittur couldna be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never mind what I want her for. When did you
+see her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be about twal o&#8217;clock,&#8221; began Wearyworld
+unctuously, &#8220;when I was in the Roods, ay, no lang
+afore I heard the disturbance in the square. I was
+standing in the middle o&#8217; the road, wondering how the
+door o&#8217; the windmill was swinging open, when she
+came up to me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;A fine nicht for the time o&#8217; year,&#8217; I says to her, for
+nobody but the minister had spoken to me a&#8217; day.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;A very fine nicht,&#8217; says she, very frank, though she
+was breathing quick like as if she had been running.
+&#8216;You&#8217;ll be police?&#8217; says she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I am,&#8217; says I, &#8216;and wha be you?&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;m just a puir gypsy lassie,&#8217; she says.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;And what&#8217;s that in your hand?&#8217; says I.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s a horn I found in the wood,&#8217; says she, &#8216;but it&#8217;s
+rusty and winna blaw.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I laughed at her ignorance, and says I, &#8216;I warrant I
+could blaw it.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I dinna believe you,&#8217; says she.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Gie me haud o&#8217;t,&#8217; says I, and she gae it to me, and I
+blew some bonny blasts on&#8217;t. Ay, you see she didna ken
+the way o&#8217;t. &#8216;Thank you kindly,&#8217; says she, and she ran
+awa without even minding to take the horn back again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You incredible idiot!&#8221; cried the sheriff. &#8220;Then it
+was you who gave the alarm?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What hae I done to madden you?&#8221; honest Wearyworld
+asked in perplexity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Get out of my sight, sir!&#8221; roared the sheriff.</p>
+<p>But the captain laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I like your doughty policeman, Riach,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;Hie, obliging friend, let us hear how this gypsy struck
+you. How was she dressed?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_60' name='page_60'></a>60</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;She was snod, but no unca snod,&#8221; replied Wearyworld,
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t understand you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean she was couthie, but no sair in order.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What on earth is that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, a tasty stocky, but gey orra put on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What language are you speaking, you enigma?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m saying she was naturally a bonny bit kimmer
+rather than happit up to the nines.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, go away,&#8221; cried Halliwell; whereupon Wearyworld
+descended the stair haughtily, declaring that the
+sheriff was an unreasonable man, and that he was a
+queer captain who did not understand the English
+language.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can I gae hame now, sheriff?&#8221; asked Langlands,
+hopefully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take this fellow back to his cell,&#8221; Riach directed
+shortly, &#8220;and whatever else you do, see that you capture
+this woman. Halliwell, I am going out to look
+for her myself. Confound it, what are you laughing
+at?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;At the way this vixen has slipped through your
+fingers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not quite that, sir, not quite that. She is in
+Thrums still, and I swear I&#8217;ll have her before day
+breaks. See to it, Halliwell, that if she is brought
+here in my absence she does not slip through your
+fingers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If she is brought here,&#8221; said Halliwell, mocking
+him, &#8220;you must return and protect me. It would be
+cruelty to leave a poor soldier in the hands of a woman
+of Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is not a Thrums woman. You have been told
+so a dozen times.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I am not afraid.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the round-room (which is oblong) there is a throne
+on which the bailie sits when he dispenses justice. It
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_61' name='page_61'></a>61</span>
+is swathed in red cloths that give it the appearance of a
+pulpit. Left to himself, Halliwell flung off his cloak
+and taking a chair near this dais rested his legs on the
+bare wooden table, one on each side of the lamp. He
+was still in this position when the door opened, and two
+policemen thrust the Egyptian into the room.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_62' name='page_62'></a>62</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_SEVEN_HAS_THE_FOLLY_OF_LOOKING_INTO_A_WOMANS_EYES_BY_WAY_OF_TEXT' id='CHAPTER_SEVEN_HAS_THE_FOLLY_OF_LOOKING_INTO_A_WOMANS_EYES_BY_WAY_OF_TEXT'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Seven.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />HAS THE FOLLY OF LOOKING INTO A WOMAN&#8217;S EYES BY WAY OF TEXT.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;This is the woman, captain,&#8221; one of the policemen
+said in triumph; &#8220;and, begging your pardon, will you
+keep a grip of her till the sheriff comes back?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Halliwell did not turn his head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can leave her here,&#8221; he said carelessly.
+&#8220;Three of us are not needed to guard a woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But she&#8217;s a slippery customer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can go,&#8221; said Halliwell; and the policemen
+withdrew slowly, eyeing their prisoner doubtfully until
+the door closed. Then the officer wheeled round languidly,
+expecting to find the Egyptian gaunt and
+muscular.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now then,&#8221; he drawled, &#8220;why&mdash;&mdash;By Jove!&#8221;</p>
+<p>The gallant soldier was as much taken aback as if he
+had turned to find a pistol at his ear. He took his feet
+off the table. Yet he only saw the gypsy&#8217;s girlish figure
+in its red and green, for she had covered her face
+with her hands. She was looking at him intently between
+her fingers, but he did not know this. All he
+did want to know just then was what was behind the
+hands.</p>
+<p>Before he spoke again she had perhaps made up her
+mind about him, for she began to sob bitterly. At the
+same time she slipped a finger over her ring.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why don&#8217;t you look at me?&#8221; asked Halliwell,
+selfishly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I daurna.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_63' name='page_63'></a>63</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Am I so fearsome?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a sojer, and you would shoot me like a
+craw.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Halliwell laughed, and taking her wrists in his hands,
+uncovered her face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, by Jove!&#8221; he said again, but this time to
+himself.</p>
+<p>As for the Egyptian, she slid the ring into her pocket,
+and fell back before the officer&#8217;s magnificence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;is all sojers like you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was such admiration in her eyes that it would
+have been self-contempt to doubt her. Yet having
+smiled complacently, Halliwell became uneasy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who on earth are you?&#8221; he asked, finding it wise
+not to look her in the face. &#8220;Why do you not answer
+me more quickly?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna be angry at that, captain,&#8221; the Egyptian implored.
+&#8220;I promised my mither aye to count twenty
+afore I spoke, because she thocht I was ower glib.
+Captain, how is&#8217;t that you&#8217;re so fleid to look at me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Thus put on his mettle, Halliwell again faced her,
+with the result that his question changed to &#8220;Where
+did you get those eyes?&#8221; Then was he indignant with
+himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What I want to know,&#8221; he explained severely, &#8220;is
+how you were able to acquaint the Thrums people with
+our movements? That you must tell me at once, for
+the sheriff blames my soldiers. Come now, no counting
+twenty!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was pacing the room now, and she had her face
+to herself. It said several things, among them that the
+officer evidently did not like this charge against his
+men.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does the shirra blame the sojers?&#8221; exclaimed this
+quick-witted Egyptian. &#8220;Weel, that cows, for he has
+nane to blame but himsel&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What!&#8221; cried Halliwell, delighted. &#8220;It was the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_64' name='page_64'></a>64</span>
+sheriff who told tales? Answer me. You are counting
+a hundred this time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Perhaps the gypsy had two reasons for withholding
+her answer. If so, one of them was that as the sheriff
+had told nothing, she had a story to make up. The
+other was that she wanted to strike a bargain with the
+officer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I tell you,&#8221; she said eagerly, &#8220;will you set me
+free?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I may ask the sheriff to do so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he mauna see me,&#8221; the Egyptian said in distress.
+&#8220;There&#8217;s reasons, captain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, surely you have not been before him on other
+occasions,&#8221; said Halliwell, surprised.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No in the way you mean,&#8221; muttered the gypsy, and
+for the moment her eyes twinkled. But the light in
+them went out when she remembered that the sheriff
+was near, and she looked desperately at the window as
+if ready to fling herself from it. She had very good
+reasons for not wishing to be seen by Riach, though
+fear that he would put her in gaol was not one of them.</p>
+<p>Halliwell thought it was the one cause of her woe,
+and great was his desire to turn the tables on the sheriff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me the truth,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and I promise to befriend
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, then,&#8221; the gypsy said, hoping still to soften
+his heart, and making up her story as she told it, &#8220;yestreen
+I met the shirra, and he telled me a&#8217; I hae telled
+the Thrums folk this nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can scarcely expect me to believe that. Where
+did you meet him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In Glen Quharity. He was riding on a horse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I allow he was there yesterday, and on horseback.
+He was on his way back to Tilliedrum from
+Lord Rintoul&#8217;s place. But don&#8217;t tell me that he took
+a gypsy girl into his confidence.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, he did, without kenning. He was gieing his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_65' name='page_65'></a>65</span>
+horse a drink when I met him, and he let me tell him
+his fortune. He said he would gaol me for an impostor
+if I didna tell him true, so I gaed about it cautiously,
+and after a minute or twa I telled him he was coming
+to Thrums the nicht to nab the rioters.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are trifling with me,&#8221; interposed the indignant
+soldier. &#8220;You promised to tell me not what you said to
+the sheriff, but how he disclosed our movements to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And that&#8217;s just what I am telling you, only you
+hinna the rumelgumption to see it. How do you think
+fortunes is telled? First we get out o&#8217; the man, without
+his seeing what we&#8217;re after, a&#8217; about himsel&#8217;, and
+syne we repeat it to him. That&#8217;s what I did wi&#8217; the
+shirra.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You drew the whole thing out of him without his
+knowing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Deed I did, and he rode awa&#8217; saying I was a witch.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The soldier heard with the delight of a schoolboy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now if the sheriff does not liberate you at my request,&#8221;
+he said, &#8220;I will never let him hear the end of
+this story. He was right; you are a witch. You deceived
+the sheriff; yes, undoubtedly you are a witch.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked at her with fun in his face, but the fun
+disappeared, and a wondering admiration took its place.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By Jove!&#8221; he said, &#8220;I don&#8217;t wonder you bewitched
+the sheriff. I must take care or you will bewitch the
+captain, too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At this notion he smiled, but he also ceased looking
+at her. Suddenly the Egyptian again began to cry.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re angry wi&#8217; me,&#8221; she sobbed. &#8220;I wish I had
+never set een on you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you wish that?&#8221; Halliwell asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fine you ken,&#8221; she answered, and again covered her
+face with her hands.</p>
+<p>He looked at her undecidedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am not angry with you,&#8221; he said, gently. &#8220;You
+are an extraordinary girl.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_66' name='page_66'></a>66</span></div>
+<p>Had he really made a conquest of this beautiful creature?
+Her words said so, but had he? The captain
+could not make up his mind. He gnawed his moustache
+in doubt.</p>
+<p>There was silence, save for the Egyptian&#8217;s sobs.
+Halliwell&#8217;s heart was touched, and he drew nearer her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My poor girl&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stopped. Was she crying? Was she not laughing
+at him rather? He became red.</p>
+<p>The gypsy peeped at him between her fingers, and
+saw that he was of two minds. She let her hands fall
+from her face, and undoubtedly there were tears on her
+cheeks.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you&#8217;re no angry wi&#8217; me,&#8221; she said, sadly, &#8220;how
+will you no look at me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am looking at you now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was very close to her, and staring into her wonderful
+eyes. I am older than the Captain, and those
+eyes have dazzled me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Captain dear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She put her hand in his. His chest rose. He knew
+she was seeking to beguile him, but he could not take
+his eyes off hers. He was in a worse plight than a
+woman listening to the first whisper of love.</p>
+<p>Now she was further from him, but the spell held.
+She reached the door, without taking her eyes from his
+face. For several seconds he had been as a man mesmerised.</p>
+<p>Just in time he came to. It was when she turned
+from him to find the handle of the door. She was turning
+it when his hand fell on hers so suddenly that she
+screamed. He twisted her round.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_10' id='linki_10'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus086.jpg' alt='' title='' width='301' height='690' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+CAPTAIN HALLIWELL.<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Sit down there,&#8221; he said hoarsely, pointing to the
+chair upon which he had flung his cloak. She dared
+not disobey. Then he leant against the door, his back
+to her, for just then he wanted no one to see his face.
+The gypsy sat very still and a little frightened.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_67' name='page_67'></a>67</span></div>
+<p>Halliwell opened the door presently, and called to
+the soldier on duty below.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Davidson, see if you can find the sheriff. I want
+him. And Davidson&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The captain paused.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he muttered, and the old soldier marvelled at
+his words, &#8220;it is better. Davidson, lock this door on
+the outside.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Davidson did as he was ordered, and again the Egyptian
+was left alone with Halliwell.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Afraid of a woman!&#8221; she said, contemptuously,
+though her heart sank when she heard the key turn in
+the lock.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I admit it,&#8221; he answered, calmly.</p>
+<p>He walked up and down the room, and she sat silently
+watching him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That story of yours about the sheriff was not true,&#8221;
+he said at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suspect it wasna,&#8221; answered the Egyptian coolly.
+&#8220;Hae you been thinking about it a&#8217; this time? Captain,
+I could tell you what you&#8217;re thinking now. You&#8217;re
+wishing it had been true, so that the ane o&#8217; you couldna
+lauch at the other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Silence!&#8221; said the captain, and not another word
+would he speak until he heard the sheriff coming up
+the stair. The Egyptian trembled at his step, and rose
+in desperation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why is the door locked?&#8221; cried the sheriff, shaking
+it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All right,&#8221; answered Halliwell; &#8220;the key is on your
+side.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that moment the Egyptian knocked the lamp off
+the table, and the room was at once in darkness. The
+officer sprang at her, and, catching her by the skirt,
+held on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why are you in darkness?&#8221; asked the sheriff, as he
+entered.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_68' name='page_68'></a>68</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Shut the door,&#8221; cried Halliwell. &#8220;Put your back
+to it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t tell me the woman has escaped?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have her, I have her! She capsized the lamp, the
+little jade. Shut the door.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Still keeping firm hold of her, as he thought, the
+captain relit the lamp with his other hand. It showed
+an extraordinary scene. The door was shut, and the
+sheriff was guarding it. Halliwell was clutching the
+cloth of the bailie&#8217;s seat. There was no Egyptian.</p>
+<p>A moment passed before either man found his tongue.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Open the door. After her!&#8221; cried Halliwell.</p>
+<p>But the door would not open. The Egyptian had fled
+and locked it behind her.</p>
+<p>What the two men said to each other, it would not be
+fitting to tell. When Davidson, who had been gossiping
+at the corner of the town-house, released his captain
+and the sheriff, the gypsy had been gone for some
+minutes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But she shan&#8217;t escape us,&#8221; Riach cried, and hastened
+out to assist in the pursuit.</p>
+<p>Halliwell was in such a furious temper that he called
+up Davidson and admonished him for neglect of duty.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_69' name='page_69'></a>69</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_EIGHT_3_AMMONSTROUS_AUDACITY_OF_THE_WOMAN' id='CHAPTER_EIGHT_3_AMMONSTROUS_AUDACITY_OF_THE_WOMAN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Eight.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />3 A.M.&mdash;MONSTROUS AUDACITY OF THE WOMAN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Not till the stroke of three did Gavin turn homeward,
+with the legs of a ploughman, and eyes rebelling against
+over-work. Seeking to comfort his dejected people,
+whose courage lay spilt on the brae, he had been in as
+many houses as the policemen. The soldiers marching
+through the wynds came frequently upon him, and
+found it hard to believe that he was always the same
+one. They told afterwards that Thrums was remarkable
+for the ferocity of its women, and the number of
+its little ministers. The morning was nipping cold,
+and the streets were deserted, for the people had been
+ordered within doors. As he crossed the Roods, Gavin
+saw a gleam of red-coats. In the back wynd he heard
+a bugle blown. A stir in the Banker&#8217;s close spoke of
+another seizure. At the top of the school wynd two
+policeman, of whom one was Wearyworld, stopped the
+minister with the flash of a lantern.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We dauredna let you pass, sir,&#8221; the Tilliedrum man
+said, &#8220;without a good look at you. That&#8217;s the orders.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hereby swear,&#8221; said Wearyworld, authoritatively,
+&#8220;that this is no the Egyptian. Signed, Peter Spens,
+policeman, called by the vulgar, Wearyworld. Mr.
+Dishart, you can pass, unless you&#8217;ll bide a wee and gie
+us your crack.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have not found the gypsy, then?&#8221; Gavin asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; the other policeman said, &#8220;but we ken she&#8217;s
+within cry o&#8217; this very spot, and escape she canna.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What mortal man can do,&#8221; Wearyworld said, &#8220;we&#8217;re
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_70' name='page_70'></a>70</span>
+doing: ay, and mair, but she&#8217;s auld wecht, and may
+find bilbie in queer places. Mr. Dishart, my official
+opinion is that this Egyptian is fearsomely like my
+snuff-spoon. I&#8217;ve kent me drap that spoon on the fender,
+and be beat to find it in an hour. And yet, a&#8217; the
+time I was sure it was there. This is a gey mysterious
+world, and women&#8217;s the uncanniest things in&#8217;t. It&#8217;s
+hardly mous to think how uncanny they are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This one deserves to be punished,&#8221; Gavin said,
+firmly; &#8220;she incited the people to riot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She did,&#8221; agreed Wearyworld, who was supping
+ravenously on sociability; &#8220;ay, she even tried her tricks
+on me, so that them that kens no better thinks she
+fooled me. But she&#8217;s cracky. To gie her her due,
+she&#8217;s cracky, and as for her being a cuttie, you&#8217;ve said
+yoursel, Mr. Dishart, that we&#8217;re all desperately wicked.
+But we&#8217;re sair tried. Has it ever struck you that the
+trouts bites best on the Sabbath? God&#8217;s critturs tempting
+decent men.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come alang,&#8221; cried the Tilliedrum man, impatiently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m coming, but I maun give Mr. Dishart permission
+to pass first. Hae you heard, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; Wearyworld
+whispered, &#8220;that the Egyptian diddled baith the
+captain and the shirra? It&#8217;s my official opinion that
+she&#8217;s no better than a roasted onion, the which, if you
+grip it firm, jumps out o&#8217; sicht, leaving its coat in
+your fingers. Mr. Dishart, you can pass.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The policeman turned down the school wynd, and
+Gavin, who had already heard exaggerated accounts of
+the strange woman&#8217;s escape from the town-house, proceeded
+along the Tenements. He walked in the black
+shadows of the houses, though across the way there was
+the morning light.</p>
+<p>In talking of the gypsy, the little minister had, as it
+were, put on the black cap; but now, even though he
+shook his head angrily with every thought of her, the
+scene in Windyghoul glimmered before his eyes.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_71' name='page_71'></a>71</span>
+Sometimes when he meant to frown he only sighed,
+and then having sighed he shook himself. He was
+unpleasantly conscious of his right hand, which had
+flung the divit. Ah, she was shameless, and it would
+be a bright day for Thrums that saw the last of her.
+He hoped the policemen would succeed in&mdash;&mdash;. It was
+the gladsomeness of innocence that he had seen dancing
+in the moonlight. A mere woman could not be like
+that. How soft&mdash;&mdash;. And she had derided him; he,
+the Auld Licht minister of Thrums, had been flouted
+before his people by a hussy. She was without reverence,
+she knew no difference between an Auld Licht
+minister, whose duty it was to speak and hers to listen,
+and herself. This woman deserved to be&mdash;&mdash;. And
+the look she cast behind her as she danced and sang!
+It was sweet, so wistful; the presence of purity had
+silenced him. Purity! Who had made him fling that
+divit? He would think no more of her. Let it suffice
+that he knew what she was. He would put her from
+his thoughts. Was it a ring on her finger?</p>
+<p>Fifty yards in front of him Gavin saw the road end in
+a wall of soldiers. They were between him and the
+manse, and he was still in darkness. No sound reached
+him, save the echo of his own feet. But was it an echo?
+He stopped, and turned round sharply. Now he heard
+nothing, he saw nothing. Yet was not that a human
+figure standing motionless in the shadow behind?</p>
+<p>He walked on, and again heard the sound. Again he
+looked behind, but this time without stopping. The
+figure was following him. He stopped. So did it.
+He turned back, but it did not move. It was the
+Egyptian!</p>
+<p>Gavin knew her, despite the lane of darkness, despite
+the long cloak that now concealed even her feet, despite
+the hood over her head. She was looking quite respectable,
+but he knew her.</p>
+<p>He neither advanced to her nor retreated. Could
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_72' name='page_72'></a>72</span>
+the unhappy girl not see that she was walking into the
+arms of the soldiers? But doubtless she had been driven
+from all her hiding-places. For a moment Gavin had
+it in his heart to warn her. But it was only for a
+moment. The next a sudden horror shot through him.
+She was stealing toward him, so softly that he had not
+seen her start. The woman had designs on him!
+Gavin turned from her. He walked so quickly that
+judges would have said he ran.</p>
+<p>The soldiers, I have said, stood in the dim light.
+Gavin had almost reached them, when a little hand
+touched his arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stop,&#8221; cried the sergeant, hearing some one approaching,
+and then Gavin stepped out of the darkness
+with the gypsy on his arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is you, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; said the sergeant, &#8220;and
+your lady?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;&mdash;,&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<p>His lady pinched his arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; she answered, in an elegant English voice
+that made Gavin stare at her, &#8220;but, indeed, I am sorry
+I ventured into the streets to-night. I thought I might
+be able to comfort some of these unhappy people, captain,
+but I could do little, sadly little.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is no scene for a lady, ma&#8217;am, but your husband
+has&mdash;&mdash;. Did you speak, Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I must inf&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My dear,&#8221; said the Egyptian, &#8220;I quite agree with
+you, so we need not detain the captain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m only a sergeant, ma&#8217;am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Indeed!&#8221; said the Egyptian, raising her pretty eyebrows,
+&#8220;and how long are you to remain in Thrums,
+sergeant?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only for a few hours, Mrs. Dishart. If this gypsy
+lassie had not given us so much trouble, we might have
+been gone by now.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_11' id='linki_11'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus094.jpg' alt='' title='' width='469' height='667' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;I HOPE YOU WILL CATCH HER, SERGEANT.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, yes, I hope you will catch her, sergeant.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_73' name='page_73'></a>73</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Sergeant,&#8221; said Gavin, firmly, &#8220;I must&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must, indeed, dear,&#8221; said the Egyptian, &#8220;for
+you are sadly tired. Good-night, sergeant.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your servant, Mrs. Dishart. Your servant, sir.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But&mdash;&mdash;,&#8221; cried Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come, love,&#8221; said the Egyptian, and she walked the
+distracted minister through the soldiers and up the
+manse road.</p>
+<p>The soldiers left behind, Gavin flung her arm from
+him, and, standing still, shook his fist in her face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;you&mdash;woman!&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>This, I think, was the last time he called her a woman.</p>
+<p>But she was clapping her hands merrily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was beautiful!&#8221; she exclaimed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was iniquitous!&#8221; he answered. &#8220;And I a
+minister!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t help that,&#8221; said the Egyptian, who pitied
+all ministers heartily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; Gavin said, misunderstanding her, &#8220;I could
+not help it. No blame attaches to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I meant that you could not help being a minister.
+You could have helped saving me, and I thank you so
+much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do not dare to thank me. I forbid you to say that
+I saved you. I did my best to hand you over to the
+authorities.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then why did you not hand me over?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin groaned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All you had to say,&#8221; continued the merciless Egyptian,
+&#8220;was, &#8216;This is the person you are in search of.&#8217; I
+did not have my hand over your mouth. Why did you
+not say it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Forbear!&#8221; said Gavin, woefully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It must have been,&#8221; the gypsy said, &#8220;because you
+really wanted to help me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then it was against my better judgment,&#8221; said
+Gavin.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_74' name='page_74'></a>74</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I am glad of that,&#8221; said the gypsy. &#8220;Mr. Dishart,
+I do believe you like me all the time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can a man like a woman against his will?&#8221; Gavin
+blurted out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course he can,&#8221; said the Egyptian, speaking as
+one who knew. &#8220;That is the very nicest way to be liked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Seeing how agitated Gavin was, remorse filled her,
+and she said in a wheedling voice&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is all over, and no one will know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Passion sat on the minister&#8217;s brow, but he said nothing,
+for the gypsy&#8217;s face had changed with her voice,
+and the audacious woman was become a child.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am very sorry,&#8221; she said, as if he had caught her
+stealing jam. The hood had fallen back, and she looked
+pleadingly at him. She had the appearance of one who
+was entirely in his hands.</p>
+<p>There was a torrent of words in Gavin, but only these
+trickled forth&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t understand you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are not angry any more?&#8221; pleaded the Egyptian.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Angry!&#8221; he cried, with the righteous rage of one
+who when his leg is being sawn off is asked gently if it
+hurts him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know you are,&#8221; she sighed, and the sigh meant
+that men are strange.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you no respect for law and order?&#8221; demanded
+Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not much,&#8221; she answered, honestly.</p>
+<p>He looked down the road to where the red-coats were
+still visible, and his face became hard. She read his
+thoughts.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said, becoming a woman again, &#8220;It is not
+yet too late. Why don&#8217;t you shout to them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was holding herself like a queen, but there was
+no stiffness in her. They might have been a pair of
+lovers, and she the wronged one. Again she looked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_75' name='page_75'></a>75</span>
+timidly at him, and became beautiful in a new way.
+Her eyes said that he was very cruel, and she was only
+keeping back her tears till he had gone. More dangerous
+than her face was her manner, which gave Gavin
+the privilege of making her unhappy; it permitted him
+to argue with her; it never implied that though he
+raged at her he must stand afar off; it called him a
+bully, but did not end the conversation.</p>
+<p>Now (but perhaps I should not tell this) unless she is
+his wife a man is shot with a thrill of exultation every
+time a pretty woman allows him to upbraid her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do not understand you,&#8221; Gavin repeated weakly,
+and the gypsy bent her head under this terrible charge.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only a few hours ago,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;you were a
+gypsy girl in a fantastic dress, barefooted&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian&#8217;s bare foot at once peeped out mischievously
+from beneath the cloak, then again retired
+into hiding.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You spoke as broadly,&#8221; complained the minister,
+somewhat taken aback by this apparition, &#8220;as any
+woman in Thrums, and now you fling a cloak over your
+shoulders, and immediately become a fine lady. Who
+are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; answered the Egyptian, &#8220;it is the cloak
+that has bewitched me.&#8221; She slipped out of it. &#8220;Ay,
+ay, ou losh!&#8221; she said, as if surprised, &#8220;it was just the
+cloak that did it, for now I&#8217;m a puir ignorant bit lassie
+again. My, certie, but claithes does make a differ to a
+woman!&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was sheer levity, and Gavin walked scornfully
+away from it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yet, if you will not tell me who you are,&#8221; he said,
+looking over his shoulder, &#8220;tell me where you got the
+cloak.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na faags,&#8221; replied the gypsy out of the cloak.
+&#8220;Really, Mr. Dishart, you had better not ask,&#8221; she
+added, replacing it over her.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_76' name='page_76'></a>76</span></div>
+<p>She followed him, meaning to gain the open by the
+fields to the north of the manse.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; she said, holding out her hand, &#8220;if you
+are not to give me up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am not a policeman,&#8221; replied Gavin, but he would
+not take her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Surely, we part friends, then?&#8221; said the Egyptian,
+sweetly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; Gavin answered. &#8220;I hope never to see your
+face again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot help,&#8221; the Egyptian said, with dignity,
+&#8220;your not liking my face.&#8221; Then, with less dignity,
+she added, &#8220;There is a splotch of mud on your own, little
+minister; it came off the divit you flung at the
+captain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With this parting shot she tripped past him, and
+Gavin would not let his eyes follow her. It was not
+the mud on his face that distressed him, nor even the
+hand that had flung the divit. It was the word &#8220;little.&#8221;
+Though even Margaret was not aware of it, Gavin&#8217;s
+shortness had grieved him all his life. There had been
+times when he tried to keep the secret from himself.
+In his boyhood he had sought a remedy by getting his
+larger comrades to stretch him. In the company of tall
+men he was always self-conscious. In the pulpit he
+looked darkly at his congregation when he asked them
+who, by taking thought, could add a cubit to his stature.
+When standing on a hearthrug his heels were frequently
+on the fender. In his bedroom he has stood on a footstool
+and surveyed himself in the mirror. Once he
+fastened high heels to his boots, being ashamed to ask
+Hendry Munn to do it for him; but this dishonesty
+shamed him, and he tore them off. So the Egyptian
+had put a needle into his pride, and he walked to the
+manse gloomily.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_12' id='linki_12'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus100.jpg' alt='' title='' width='469' height='700' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;SURELY, WE PART FRIENDS, THEN?&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>Margaret was at her window, looking for him, and he
+saw her though she did not see him. He was stepping
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_77' name='page_77'></a>77</span>
+into the middle of the road to wave his hand to her,
+when some sudden weakness made him look towards
+the fields instead. The Egyptian saw him and nodded
+thanks for his interest in her, but he scowled and pretended
+to be studying the sky. Next moment he saw
+her running back to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are soldiers at the top of the field,&#8221; she cried.
+&#8220;I cannot escape that way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is no other way,&#8221; Gavin answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you not help me again?&#8221; she entreated.</p>
+<p>She should not have said &#8220;again.&#8221; Gavin shook his
+head, but pulled her closer to the manse dyke, for his
+mother was still in sight.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you do that?&#8221; the girl asked, quickly, looking
+round to see if she were pursued. &#8220;Oh, I see,&#8221; she
+said, as her eyes fell on the figure at the window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is my mother,&#8221; Gavin said, though he need not
+have explained, unless he wanted the gypsy to know
+that he was a bachelor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only your mother?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only! Let me tell you she may suffer more than
+you for your behaviour to-night!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you are caught, will it not be discovered that I
+helped you to escape?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you said you did not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I helped you,&#8221; Gavin admitted. &#8220;My God!
+what would my congregation say if they knew I had let
+you pass yourself off as&mdash;as my wife?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He struck his brow, and the Egyptian had the propriety
+to blush.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is not the punishment from men I am afraid of,&#8221;
+Gavin said, bitterly, &#8220;but from my conscience. No,
+that is not true. I do fear exposure, but for my
+mother&#8217;s sake. Look at her; she is happy, because
+she thinks me good and true; she has had such trials
+as you cannot know of, and now, when at last I seemed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_78' name='page_78'></a>78</span>
+able to do something for her, you destroy her happiness.
+You have her life in your hands.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of
+her feet tapped angrily on the dry ground. Then,
+child of impulse as she always was, she flashed an indignant
+glance at him, and walked quickly down the
+road.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are you going?&#8221; he cried.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To give myself up. You need not be alarmed; I
+will clear you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke
+without looking back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stop!&#8221; Gavin called, but she would not, until his
+hand touched her shoulder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why&mdash;&#8221; whispered Gavin, giddily, &#8220;why&mdash;why do
+you not hide in the manse garden?&mdash;No one will look
+for you there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There were genuine tears in the gypsy&#8217;s eyes now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are a good man,&#8221; she said; &#8220;I like you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t say that,&#8221; Gavin cried in horror. &#8220;There is
+a summer-seat in the garden.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_13' id='linki_13'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus104.jpg' alt='' title='' width='486' height='688' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;&#8216;WHAT DO YOU WANT?&#8217; SHE ASKED.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>Then he hurried from her, and without looking to
+see if she took his advice, hastened to the manse. Once
+inside, he snibbed the door.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_79' name='page_79'></a>79</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_NINE_THE_WOMAN_CONSIDERED_IN_ABSENCEADVENTURES_OF_A_MILITARY_CLOAK' id='CHAPTER_NINE_THE_WOMAN_CONSIDERED_IN_ABSENCEADVENTURES_OF_A_MILITARY_CLOAK'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Nine.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE WOMAN CONSIDERED IN ABSENCE&mdash;ADVENTURES OF A MILITARY CLOAK.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>About six o&#8217;clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed,
+with the conviction that she had slept in. To her this
+was to ravel the day: a dire thing. The last time it
+happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had condensed
+morning worship into a sentence that she might make
+up on the clock.</p>
+<p>Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and
+so rouse Jean, for Margaret had given Gavin a promise
+to breakfast in bed, and remain there till her fire was
+lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to early rising,
+her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered
+her vow, and then it was but a step to the window
+to survey the morning. To Margaret, who seldom
+went out, the weather was not of great moment, while
+it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought of
+it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide
+whether his companion should be an umbrella or a
+staff.</p>
+<p>On this morning Margaret only noticed that there
+had been rain since Gavin came in. Forgetting that
+the water obscuring the outlook was on the other side
+of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her fist.
+It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They might
+have been awaiting her appearance at the window as
+their signal to depart, for hardly had she raised the
+blind when they began their march out of Thrums.
+From the manse she could not see them, but she heard
+them, and she saw some people at the Tenements run
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_80' name='page_80'></a>80</span>
+to their houses at sound of the drum. Other persons,
+less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway
+to Tilliedrum. Margaret, the only person, as it
+happened, then awake in the manse, stood listening for
+some time. In the summer-seat of the garden, however,
+there was another listener protected from her
+sight by thin spars.</p>
+<p>Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too
+soft-hearted to rouse Jean, who had lain down in her
+clothes, trembling for her father. She went instead
+into Gavin&#8217;s room to look admiringly at him as he slept.
+Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped
+in to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer
+for a clean collar, or of pouring the water into the basin
+with his own hand. Sometimes he caught her in the
+act of putting thick socks in the place of thin ones, and
+it must be admitted that her passion for keeping his
+belongings in boxes, and the boxes in secret places, and
+the secret places at the back of drawers, occasionally
+led to their being lost when wanted. &#8220;They are safe,
+at any rate, for I put them away some gait,&#8221; was then
+Margaret&#8217;s comfort, but less soothing to Gavin. Yet if
+he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his
+temper the next instant, and to feel its effects more than
+she, temper being a weapon that we hold by the blade.
+When he awoke and saw her in his room he would pretend,
+unless he felt called upon to rage at her for self-neglect,
+to be still asleep, and then be filled with
+tenderness for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of
+the shock it would be to a mother to know her boy as
+he really is, but I think she often knows him better
+than he is known to cynical friends. We should be
+slower to think that the man at his worst is the real
+man, and certain that the better we are ourselves the
+less likely is he to be at his worst in our company.
+Every time he talks away his own character before us
+he is signifying contempt for ours.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_81' name='page_81'></a>81</span></div>
+<p>On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin&#8217;s door
+to stand and look, for she was fearful of awakening him
+after his heavy night. Even before she saw that he
+still slept she noticed with surprise that, for the first
+time since he came to Thrums, he had put on his shutters.
+She concluded that he had done this lest the light
+should rouse him. He was not sleeping pleasantly, for
+now he put his open hand before his face, as if to guard
+himself, and again he frowned and seemed to draw back
+from something. He pointed his finger sternly to the
+north, ordering the weavers, his mother thought, to return
+to their homes, and then he muttered to himself so
+that she heard the words, &#8220;And if thy right hand offend
+thee cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it is profitable
+for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
+that thy whole body should be cast into hell.&#8221; Then
+suddenly he bent forward, his eyes open and fixed on
+the window. Thus he sat, for the space of half a minute,
+like one listening with painful intentness. When
+he lay back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was
+living the night over again, but not of the divit his
+right hand had cast, nor of the woman in the garden.</p>
+<p>Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices
+from Margaret&#8217;s room, where Jean, who had now gathered
+much news, was giving it to her mistress. Jean&#8217;s
+cheerfulness would have told him that her father was
+safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian.
+I suppose he was at the window in an instant, unsnibbing
+the shutters and looking out as cautiously as a
+burglar might have looked in. The Egyptian was gone
+from the summer-seat. He drew a great breath.</p>
+<p>But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted
+his ewer of water when these words from the kitchen
+capsized it:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, an Egyptian. That&#8217;s what the auld folk call a
+gypsy. Weel, Mrs. Dishart, she led police and sojers
+sic a dance through Thrums as would baffle description,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_82' name='page_82'></a>82</span>
+though I kent the fits and fors o&#8217;t as I dinna. Ay, but
+they gripped her in the end, and the queer thing is&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down.
+The queer thing, of course, was that she had been
+caught in his garden. Yes, and doubtless queerer
+things about this hussy and her &#8220;husband&#8221; were being
+bawled from door to door. To the girl&#8217;s probable
+sufferings he gave no heed. What kind of man had he
+been a few hours ago to yield to the machinations of
+a woman who was so obviously the devil? Now he saw
+his folly in the face.</p>
+<p>The tray in Jean&#8217;s hands clattered against the dresser,
+and Gavin sprang from his chair. He thought it was
+his elders at the front door.</p>
+<p>In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those
+whose mates had been torn from them, and Jean with a
+face flushed by talk. On ordinary occasions the majesty
+of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she could only
+gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then
+because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking
+a glance at sideways and then going away comforted,
+as a respectable woman may once or twice in a
+day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a means
+of helping her with her work. But with such a to-do
+in Thrums, and she the possessor of exclusive information,
+Jean&#8217;s reverence for Gavin only took her to-day
+as far as the door, where she lingered half in the parlour
+and half in the lobby, her eyes turned politely
+from the minister, but her ears his entirely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought I heard Jean telling you about the capture
+of the&mdash;of an Egyptian woman,&#8221; Gavin said to his
+mother, nervously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you cry to me?&#8221; Jean asked, turning round
+longingly. &#8220;But maybe the mistress will tell you about
+the Egyptian hersel.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has she been taken to Tilliedrum?&#8221; Gavin asked in
+a hollow voice.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_83' name='page_83'></a>83</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Sup up your porridge, Gavin,&#8221; Margaret said. &#8220;I&#8217;ll
+have no speaking about this terrible night till you&#8217;ve
+eaten something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have no appetite,&#8221; the minister replied, pushing
+his plate from him. &#8220;Jean, answer me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Deed, then,&#8221; said Jean willingly, &#8220;they hinna ta&#8217;en
+her to Tilliedrum.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For what reason?&#8221; asked Gavin, his dread increasing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;For the reason that they couldna catch her,&#8221; Jean
+answered. &#8220;She spirited hersel awa&#8217;, the magerful
+crittur.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What! But I heard you say&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, they had her aince, but they couldna keep her.
+It&#8217;s like a witch story. They had her safe in the town-house,
+and baith shirra and captain guarding her, and
+syne in a clink she wasna there. A&#8217; nicht they looked
+for her, but she hadna left so muckle as a foot-print
+ahint her, and in the tail of the day they had to up wi&#8217;
+their tap in their lap and march awa without her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin&#8217;s appetite returned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has she been seen since the soldiers went away?&#8221;
+he asked, laying down his spoon with a new fear.
+&#8220;Where is she now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No human eye has seen her,&#8221; Jean answered impressively.
+&#8220;Whaur is she now? Whaur does the flies
+vanish to in winter? We ken they&#8217;re some gait, but
+whaur?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what are the people saying about her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Daft things,&#8221; said Jean. &#8220;Old Charles Yuill gangs
+the length o&#8217; hinting that she&#8217;s dead and buried.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She could not have buried herself, Jean,&#8221; Margaret
+said, mildly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna ken. Charles says she&#8217;s even capable o&#8217;
+that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then Jean retired reluctantly (but leaving the door
+ajar) and Gavin fell to on his porridge. He was now
+so cheerful that Margaret wondered.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_84' name='page_84'></a>84</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;If half the stories about this gypsy be true,&#8221; she
+said, &#8220;she must be more than a mere woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Less, you mean, mother,&#8221; Gavin said, with conviction.
+&#8220;She is a woman, and a sinful one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you see her, Gavin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw her. Mother, she flouted me!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The daring tawpie!&#8221; exclaimed Margaret.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is all that,&#8221; said the minister.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was she dressed just like an ordinary gypsy body?
+But you don&#8217;t notice clothes much, Gavin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I noticed hers,&#8221; Gavin said, slowly, &#8220;she was in a
+green and red, I think, and barefooted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; shouted Jean from the kitchen, startling both
+of them; &#8220;but she had a lang grey-like cloak too. She
+was seen jouking up closes in&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin rose, considerably annoyed, and shut the parlour
+door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was she as bonny as folks say?&#8221; asked Margaret.
+&#8220;Jean says they speak of her beauty as unearthly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Beauty of her kind,&#8221; Gavin explained learnedly,
+&#8220;is neither earthly nor heavenly.&#8221; He was seeing
+things as they are very clearly now. &#8220;What,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;is mere physical beauty? Pooh!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet,&#8221; said Margaret, &#8220;the soul surely does
+speak through the face to some extent.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you really think so, mother?&#8221; Gavin asked, a
+little uneasily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have always noticed it,&#8221; Margaret said, and then
+her son sighed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I would let no face influence me a jot,&#8221; he said,
+recovering.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Gavin, I&#8217;m thinking I&#8217;m the reason you pay so
+little regard to women&#8217;s faces. It&#8217;s no natural.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ve spoilt me, you see, mother, for ever caring
+for another woman. I would compare her to you, and
+then where would she be?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_85' name='page_85'></a>85</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Sometime,&#8221; Margaret said, &#8220;you&#8217;ll think differently.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never,&#8221; answered Gavin, with a violence that ended
+the conversation.</p>
+<p>Soon afterwards he set off for the town, and in passing
+down the garden walk cast a guilty glance at the
+summer-seat. Something black was lying in one corner
+of it. He stopped irresolutely, for his mother was
+nodding to him from her window. Then he disappeared
+into the little arbour. What had caught his eye was a
+Bible. On the previous day, as he now remembered,
+he had been called away while studying in the garden,
+and had left his Bible on the summer-seat, a pencil between
+its pages. Not often probably had the Egyptian
+passed a night in such company.</p>
+<p>But what was this? Gavin had not to ask himself
+the question. The gypsy&#8217;s cloak was lying neatly
+folded at the other end of the seat. Why had the
+woman not taken it with her? Hardly had he put this
+question when another stood in front of it. What was
+to be done with the cloak? He dared not leave it there
+for Jean to discover. He could not take it into the
+manse in daylight. Beneath the seat was a tool-chest
+without a lid, and into this he crammed the cloak.
+Then, having turned the box face downwards, he went
+about his duties. But many a time during the day he
+shivered to the marrow, reflecting suddenly that at this
+very moment Jean might be carrying the accursed thing
+(at arms&#8217; length, like a dog in disgrace) to his mother.</p>
+<p>Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid
+toll for taking the road with the Egyptian, follow the
+adventures of the cloak. Shortly after gloaming fell
+that night Jean encountered her master in the lobby of
+the manse. He was carrying something, and when he
+saw her he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed
+her openly she would have suspected nothing, but this
+made her look at him.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_86' name='page_86'></a>86</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you stare so, Jean?&#8221; Gavin asked, conscience-stricken,
+and he stood with his back to the wall
+until she had retired in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have noticed her watching me sharply all day,&#8221;
+he said to himself, though it was only he who had been
+watching her.</p>
+<p>Gavin carried the cloak to his bedroom, thinking to
+lock it away in his chest, but it looked so wicked
+lying there that he seemed to see it after the lid was
+shut.</p>
+<p>The garret was the best place for it. He took it out
+of the chest and was opening his door gently, when
+there was Jean again. She had been employed very
+innocently in his mother&#8217;s room, but he said tartly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean, I really cannot have this,&#8221; which sent Jean to
+the kitchen with her apron at her eyes.</p>
+<p>Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and
+an hour afterwards was engaged on his sermon, when
+he distinctly heard some one in the garret. He ran up
+the ladder with a terrible brow for Jean, but it was not
+Jean; it was Margaret.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mother,&#8221; he said in alarm, &#8220;what are you doing
+here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but&mdash;it is too cold for you. Did Jean&mdash;did
+Jean ask you to come up here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean? She knows her place better.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his
+confidence in the garret had gone. He stole up the
+ladder again, dragged the cloak from its lurking place,
+and took it into the garden. He very nearly met Jean
+in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she fled
+precipitately, which he thought very suspicious.</p>
+<p>In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the
+cloak, but even now he was not done with it. He was
+wakened early by a noise of scraping in the garden, and
+his first thought was &#8220;Jean!&#8221; But peering from the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_87' name='page_87'></a>87</span>
+window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog,
+which already had its teeth in the cloak.</p>
+<p>That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously
+carrying a brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the
+hill, and having dropped the parcel there, retired hurriedly.
+On his way home, nevertheless, he was over-taken
+by D. Fittis, who had been cutting down whins.
+Fittis had seen the parcel fall, and running after Gavin,
+returned it to him. Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then
+sat down gloomily on the cemetery dyke. Half an
+hour afterwards he flung the parcel into a Tillyloss
+garden.</p>
+<p>In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from
+Jean.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you remember, Gavin, that the Egyptian every
+one is still speaking of, wore a long cloak? Well,
+would you believe it, the cloak was Captain Halliwell&#8217;s,
+and she took it from the town-house when she escaped.
+She is supposed to have worn it inside out. He did
+not discover that it was gone until he was leaving
+Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mother, is this possible?&#8221; Gavin said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The policeman, Wearyworld, has told it. He was
+ordered, it seems, to look for the cloak quietly, and to
+take any one into custody in whose possession it was
+found.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has it been found?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The minister walked out of the parlour, for he could
+not trust his face. What was to be done now? The
+cloak was lying in mason Baxter&#8217;s garden, and Baxter
+was therefore, in all probability, within four-and-twenty
+hours of the Tilliedrum gaol.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does Mr. Dishart ever wear a cap at nichts?&#8221;
+Femie Wilkie asked Sam&#8217;l Fairweather three hours
+later.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, na, he has ower muckle respect for his lum
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_88' name='page_88'></a>88</span>
+hat,&#8221; answered Sam&#8217;l; &#8220;and richtly, for it&#8217;s the crowning
+stone o&#8217; the edifice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then it couldna hae been him I met at the back o&#8217;
+Tillyloss the now,&#8221; said Femie, &#8220;though like him it
+was. He joukit back when he saw me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>While Femie was telling her story in the Tenements,
+mason Baxter, standing at the window which looked
+into his garden, was shouting, &#8220;Wha&#8217;s that in my
+yard?&#8221; There was no answer, and Baxter closed his
+window, under the impression that he had been speaking
+to a cat. The man in the cap then emerged from
+the corner where he had been crouching, and stealthily
+felt for something among the cabbages and pea sticks.
+It was no longer there, however, and by-and-by he retired
+empty-handed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Egyptian&#8217;s cloak has been found,&#8221; Margaret
+was able to tell Gavin next day. &#8220;Mason Baxter found
+it yesterday afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In his garden?&#8221; Gavin asked hurriedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; in the quarry, he says, but according to Jean
+he is known not to have been at the quarry to-day.
+Some seem to think that the gypsy gave him the cloak
+for helping her to escape, and that he has delivered it
+up lest he should get into difficulties.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whom has he given it to, mother?&#8221; Gavin asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To the policeman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And has Wearyworld sent it back to Halliwell?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes. He told Jean he sent it off at once, with the
+information that the masons had found it in the quarry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to
+be told, awaited Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing
+to do with the cloak, of which I may here record the
+end. Wearyworld had not forwarded it to its owner;
+Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It made its reappearance
+in Thrums, several months after the riot, as two
+pairs of Sabbath breeks for her sons, James and Andrew.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_89' name='page_89'></a>89</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TEN_FIRST_SERMON_AGAINST_WOMEN' id='CHAPTER_TEN_FIRST_SERMON_AGAINST_WOMEN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Ten.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />FIRST SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have
+said, something strange happened in the Auld Licht
+pulpit. The congregation, despite their troubles,
+turned it over and peered at it for days, but had they
+seen into the inside of it they would have weaved few
+webs until the session had sat on the minister. The
+affair baffled me at the time, and for the Egyptian&#8217;s
+sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it not one
+of Gavin&#8217;s milestones. It includes the first of his
+memorable sermons against Woman.</p>
+<p>I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I
+heard of the sermon before night, and this, I think, is
+as good an opportunity as another for showing how the
+gossip about Gavin reached me up here in the Glen
+school-house. Since Margaret and her son came to the
+manse I had kept the vow made to myself and avoided
+Thrums. Only once had I ventured to the kirk, and
+then, instead of taking my old seat, the fourth from the
+pulpit, I sat down near the plate, where I could look at
+Margaret without her seeing me. To spare her that
+agony I even stole away as the last word of the benediction
+was pronounced, and my haste scandalised
+many, for with Auld Lichts it is not customary to retire
+quickly from the church after the manner of the godless
+U. P.&#8217;s (and the Free Kirk is little better), who have
+their hats in their hand when they rise for the benediction,
+so that they may at once pour out like a burst
+dam. We resume our seats, look straight before us,
+clear our throats and stretch out our hands for our
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_90' name='page_90'></a>90</span>
+womenfolk to put our hats into them. In time we do
+get out, but I am never sure how.</p>
+<p>One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in
+a town, without losing his character, and I used to await
+the return of my neighbour, the farmer of Waster
+Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the Glen Quharity post, at
+the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny was a
+man whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from
+his wife his great pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on
+the other hand, he told outright what he thought of it,
+praising it to its face and blackguarding it as it deserved,
+and I have seen him when completely baffled by the
+brute, sit down before it on a stone and thus harangue:
+&#8220;You think you&#8217;re clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you&#8217;re
+mista&#8217;en. You&#8217;re a thrawn limmer, that&#8217;s what you
+are. You think you have blood in you. You hae
+blood! Gae away, and dinna blether. I tell you what,
+Catlaw, I met a man yestreen that kent your mither,
+and he says she was a feikie fushionless besom. What
+do you say to that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>As for the post, I will say no more of him than that
+his bitter topic was the unreasonableness of humanity,
+which treated him graciously when he had a letter for
+it, but scowled at him when he had none, &#8220;aye implying
+that I hae a letter, but keep it back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the
+usual place awaiting my friends, and saw before they
+reached me that they had something untoward to tell.
+The farmer, his wife and three children, holding each
+other&#8217;s hands, stretched across the road. Birse was a
+little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by
+shouting. All were walking the Sabbath pace, and the
+family having started half a minute in advance, the
+post had not yet made up on them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s sitting to snaw,&#8221; Waster Lunny said, drawing
+near, and just as I was to reply, &#8220;It is so,&#8221; Silva slipped
+in the words before me.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_91' name='page_91'></a>91</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You wasna at the kirk,&#8221; was Elspeth&#8217;s salutation.
+I had been at the Glen church, but did not contradict
+her, for it is Established, and so neither here nor there.
+I was anxious, too, to know what their long faces
+meant, and so asked at once&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no,&#8221; replied Waster
+Lunny, walking round his wife to get nearer me.
+&#8220;Dominie, a queery thing happened in the kirk this
+day, sic as&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Waster Lunny,&#8221; interrupted Elspeth sharply; &#8220;have
+you on your Sabbath shoon or have you no on your
+Sabbath shoon?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Guid care you took I should hae the dagont oncanny
+things on,&#8221; retorted the farmer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep out o&#8217; the gutter, then,&#8221; said Elspeth, &#8220;on the
+Lord&#8217;s day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Him,&#8221; said her man, &#8220;that is forced by a foolish
+woman to wear genteel &#8217;lastic-sided boots canna forget
+them till he takes them aff. Whaur&#8217;s the extra reverence
+in wearing shoon twa sizes ower sma?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It mayna be mair reverent,&#8221; suggested Birse, to
+whom Elspeth&#8217;s kitchen was a pleasant place, &#8220;but it&#8217;s
+grand, and you canna expect to be baith grand and
+comfortable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I reminded them that they were speaking of Mr.
+Dishart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We was saying,&#8221; began the post briskly, &#8220;that&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was me that was saying it,&#8221; said Waster Lunny.
+&#8220;So, dominie&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Haud your gabs, baith o&#8217; you,&#8221; interrupted Elspeth.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ve been roaring the story to ane another till
+you&#8217;re hoarse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In the forenoon,&#8221; Waster Lunny went on determinedly,
+&#8220;Mr. Dishart preached on the riot, and fine he
+was. Oh, dominie, you should hae heard him ladling
+it on to Lang Tammas, no by name but in sic a way
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_92' name='page_92'></a>92</span>
+that there was no mistaking wha he was preaching at,
+Sal! oh losh! Tammas got it strong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he&#8217;s dull in the uptake,&#8221; broke in the post, &#8220;by
+what I expected. I spoke to him after the sermon, and
+I says, just to see if he was properly humbled, &#8216;Ay,
+Tammas,&#8217; I says, &#8216;them that discourse was preached
+against, winna think themselves seven feet men for a
+while again.&#8217; &#8216;Ay, Birse,&#8217; he answers, &#8216;and glad I am
+to hear you admit it, for he had you in his eye.&#8217; I was
+fair scunnered at Tammas the day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart was preaching at the whole clanjamfray
+o&#8217; you,&#8221; said Elspeth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe he was,&#8221; said her husband, leering; &#8220;but
+you needna cast it at us, for, my certie, if the men got
+it frae him in the forenoon, the women got it in the
+afternoon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He redd them up most michty,&#8221; said the post.
+&#8220;Thae was his very words or something like them.
+&#8216;Adam,&#8217; says he, &#8216;was an erring man, but aside Eve he
+was respectable.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, but it wasna a&#8217; women he meant,&#8221; Elspeth explained,
+&#8220;for when he said that, he pointed his finger
+direct at T&#8217;nowhead&#8217;s lassie, and I hope it&#8217;ll do her
+good.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I wonder,&#8221; I said, &#8220;that Mr. Dishart chose such
+a subject to-day. I thought he would be on the riot at
+both services.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll wonder mair,&#8221; said Elspeth, &#8220;when you hear
+what happened afore he began the afternoon sermon.
+But I canna get in a word wi&#8217; that man o&#8217; mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve been speaking about it,&#8221; said Birse, &#8220;ever
+since we left the kirk door. Tod, we&#8217;ve been sawing
+it like seed a&#8217; alang the glen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And we meant to tell you about it at once,&#8221; said
+Waster Lunny; &#8220;but there&#8217;s aye so muckle to say about
+a minister. Dagont, to hae ane keeps a body out o&#8217;
+langour. Ay, but this breaks the drum. Dominie,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_93' name='page_93'></a>93</span>
+either Mr. Dishart wasna weel, or he was in the devil&#8217;s
+grip.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This startled me, for the farmer was looking serious.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was weel eneuch,&#8221; said Birse, &#8220;for a heap o&#8217;
+fowk speired at Jean if he had ta&#8217;en his porridge as
+usual, and she admitted he had. But the lassie was
+skeered hersel&#8217;, and said it was a mercy Mrs. Dishart
+wasna in the kirk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why was she not there?&#8221; I asked anxiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, he winna let her out in sic weather.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish you would tell me what happened,&#8221; I said
+to Elspeth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I will,&#8221; she answered, &#8220;if Waster Lunny would
+haud his wheesht for a minute. You see the afternoon
+diet began in the ordinary way, and a&#8217; was richt until
+we came to the sermon. &#8216;You will find my text,&#8217; he
+says, in his piercing voice, &#8216;in the eighth chapter of
+Ezra.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And at thae words,&#8221; said Waster Lunny, &#8220;my heart
+gae a loup, for Ezra is an unca ill book to find; ay, and
+so is Ruth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I kent the books o&#8217; the Bible by heart,&#8221; said Elspeth,
+scornfully, &#8220;when I was a sax year auld.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So did I,&#8221; said Waster Lunny, &#8220;and I ken them yet,
+except when I&#8217;m hurried. When Mr. Dishart gave out
+Ezra he a sort o&#8217; keeked round the kirk to find out if he
+had puzzled onybody, and so there was a kind o&#8217; a competition
+among the congregation wha would lay hand
+on it first. That was what doited me. Ay, there was
+Ruth when she wasna wanted, but Ezra, dagont, it
+looked as if Ezra had jumped clean out o&#8217; the Bible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You wasna the only distressed crittur,&#8221; said his
+wife. &#8220;I was ashamed to see Eppie McLaren looking
+up the order o&#8217; the books at the beginning o&#8217; the Bible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tibbie Birse was even mair brazen,&#8221; said the post,
+&#8220;for the sly cuttie opened at Kings and pretended it
+was Ezra.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_94' name='page_94'></a>94</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;None o&#8217; thae things would I do,&#8221; said Waster
+Lunny, &#8220;and sal, I dauredna, for Davit Lunan was
+glowering over my shuther. Ay, you may scrowl at
+me, Elspeth Proctor, but as far back as I can mind,
+Ezra has done me. Mony a time afore I start for the
+kirk I take my Bible to a quiet place and look Ezra up.
+In the very pew I says canny to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Ezra, Nehemiah,
+Esther, Job,&#8217; the which should be a help, but
+the moment the minister gi&#8217;es out that awfu&#8217; book, away
+goes Ezra like the Egyptian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you after her,&#8221; said Elspeth, &#8220;like the weavers
+that wouldna fecht. You make a windmill of your
+Bible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I winna admit I&#8217;m beat. Never mind, there&#8217;s
+queer things in the world forby Ezra. How is cripples
+aye so puffed up mair than other folk? How does flour-bread
+aye fall on the buttered side?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will mind,&#8221; Elspeth said, &#8220;for I was terrified the
+minister would admonish you frae the pulpit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He couldna hae done that, for was he no baffled to
+find Ezra himsel&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Him no find Ezra!&#8221; cried Elspeth. &#8220;I hae telled
+you a dozen times he found it as easy as you could yoke
+a horse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The thing can be explained in no other way,&#8221; said
+her husband, doggedly, &#8220;if he was weel and in sound
+mind.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe the dominie can clear it up,&#8221; suggested the
+post, &#8220;him being a scholar.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then tell me what happened,&#8221; I asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Godsake, hae we no telled you?&#8221; Birse said. &#8220;I
+thocht we had.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was a terrible scene,&#8221; said Elspeth, giving her
+husband a shove. &#8220;As I said, Mr. Dishart gave out
+Ezra eighth. Weel, I turned it up in a jiffy, and syne
+looked cautiously to see how Eppie McLaren was getting
+on. Just at that minute I heard a groan frae the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_95' name='page_95'></a>95</span>
+pulpit. It didna stop short o&#8217; a groan. Ay, you may
+be sure I looked quick at the minister, and there I saw
+a sicht that would hae made the grandest gape. His
+face was as white as a baker&#8217;s, and he had a sort of
+fallen against the back o&#8217; the pulpit, staring demented-like
+at his open Bible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I saw him,&#8221; said Birse, &#8220;put up his hand
+atween him and the Book, as if he thocht it was to
+jump at him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Twice,&#8221; said Elspeth, &#8220;he tried to speak, and twice
+he let the words fall.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That,&#8221; says Waster Lunny, &#8220;the whole congregation
+admits, but I didna see it mysel&#8217;, for a&#8217; this time
+you may picture me hunting savage-like for Ezra. I
+thocht the minister was waiting till I found it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry Munn,&#8221; said Birse, &#8220;stood upon one leg,
+wondering whether he should run to the session-house
+for a glass of water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But by that time,&#8221; said Elspeth, &#8220;the fit had left
+Mr. Dishart, or rather it had ta&#8217;en a new turn. He
+grew red, and it&#8217;s gospel that he stamped his foot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He had the face of one using bad words,&#8221; said the
+post. &#8220;He didna swear, of course, but that was the
+face he had on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I missed it,&#8221; said Waster Lunny, &#8220;for I was in full
+cry after Ezra, with the sweat running down my face.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the most astounding thing has yet to be telled,&#8221;
+went on Elspeth. &#8220;The minister shook himsel&#8217; like
+one wakening frae a nasty dream, and he cries in a
+voice of thunder, just as if he was shaking his fist at
+somebody&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He cries,&#8221; Birse interposed, cleverly, &#8220;he cries,
+&#8216;You will find the text in Genesis, chapter three, verse
+six.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Elspeth, &#8220;first he gave out one text, and
+then he gave out another, being the most amazing thing
+to my mind that ever happened in the town of Thrums.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_96' name='page_96'></a>96</span>
+What will our children&#8217;s children think o&#8217;t? I wouldna
+hae missed it for a pound note.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nor me,&#8221; said Waster Lunny, &#8220;though I only got
+the tail o&#8217;t. Dominie, no sooner had he said Genesis
+third and sixth, than I laid my finger on Ezra. Was it
+no provoking? Onybody can turn up Genesis, but it
+needs an able-bodied man to find Ezra.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He preached on the Fall,&#8221; Elspeth said, &#8220;for an
+hour and twenty-five minutes, but powerful though he
+was I would rather he had telled us what made him gie
+the go-by to Ezra.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All I can say,&#8221; said Waster Lunny, &#8220;is that I never
+heard him mair awe-inspiring. Whaur has he got sic a
+knowledge of women? He riddled them, he fair riddled
+them, till I was ashamed o&#8217; being married.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s easy kent whaur he got his knowledge of
+women,&#8221; Birse explained, &#8220;it&#8217;s a&#8217; in the original Hebrew.
+You can howk ony mortal thing out o&#8217; the
+original Hebrew, the which all ministers hae at their
+finger ends. What else makes them ken to jump a
+verse now and then when giving out a psalm?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasna women like me he denounced,&#8221; Elspeth
+insisted, &#8220;but young lassies that leads men astray wi&#8217;
+their abominable wheedling ways.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tod,&#8221; said her husband, &#8220;if they try their hands on
+Mr. Dishart they&#8217;ll meet their match.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They will,&#8221; chuckled the post. &#8220;The Hebrew&#8217;s a
+grand thing, though teuch, I&#8217;m telled, michty teuch.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;His sublimest burst,&#8221; Waster Lunny came back to
+tell me, &#8220;was about the beauty o&#8217; the soul being everything
+and the beauty o&#8217; the face no worth a snuff.
+What a scorn he has for bonny faces and toom souls!
+I dinna deny but what a bonny face fell takes me, but
+Mr. Dishart wouldna gie a blade o&#8217; grass for&#8217;t. Ay,
+and I used to think that in their foolishness about
+women there was dagont little differ atween the unlearned
+and the highly edicated.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_97' name='page_97'></a>97</span></div>
+<p>The gossip about Gavin brought hitherto to the school-house
+had been as bread to me, but this I did not like.
+For a minister to behave thus was as unsettling to us as
+a change of Government to Londoners, and I decided to
+give my scholars a holiday on the morrow and tramp
+into the town for fuller news. But all through the
+night it snowed, and next day, and then intermittently
+for many days, and every fall took the school miles
+farther away from Thrums. Birse and the crows had
+now the glen road to themselves, and even Birse had
+twice or thrice to bed with me. At these times had he
+not been so interested in describing his progress through
+the snow, maintaining that the crying want of our glen
+road was palings for postmen to kick their feet against,
+he must have wondered why I always turned the talk to
+the Auld Licht minister.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ony explanation o&#8217; his sudden change o&#8217; texts?&#8221;
+Birse said, repeating my question. &#8220;Tod, and there is
+and to spare, for I hear tell there&#8217;s saxteen explanations
+in the Tenements alone. As Tammas Haggart says,
+that&#8217;s a blessing, for if there had just been twa explanations
+the kirk micht hae split on them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; he said at another time, &#8220;twa or three even
+dared to question the minister, but I&#8217;m thinking they
+made nothing o&#8217;t. The majority agrees that he was
+just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas is
+dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He
+says that after the diet o&#8217; worship on that eventful afternoon
+Mr. Dishart carried the Bible out o&#8217; the pulpit
+instead o&#8217; leaving that duty as usual to the kirk-officer.
+Weel, Tammas, being precentor, has a richt, as you
+ken, to leave the kirk by the session-house door, just
+like the minister himsel&#8217;. He did so that afternoon,
+and what, think you, did he see? He saw Mr. Dishart
+tearing a page out o&#8217; the Bible, and flinging it savagely
+into the session-house fire. You dinna credit it? Weel,
+it&#8217;s staggering, but there&#8217;s Hendry Munn&#8217;s evidence
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_98' name='page_98'></a>98</span>
+too. Hendry took his first chance o&#8217; looking up Ezra
+in the minister&#8217;s Bible, and, behold, the page wi&#8217; the
+eighth chapter was gone. Them that thinks Tammas
+wasna blind wi&#8217; excitement hauds it had been Ezra
+eighth that gaed into the fire. Onyway, there&#8217;s no
+doubt about the page&#8217;s being missing, for whatever excitement
+Tammas was in, Hendry was as cool as ever.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A week later Birse told me that the congregation had
+decided to regard the incident as adding lustre to their
+kirk. This was largely, I fear, because it could then be
+used to belittle the Established minister. That fervent
+Auld Licht, Snecky Hobart, feeling that Gavin&#8217;s action
+was unsound, had gone on the following Sabbath to the
+parish kirk and sat under Mr. Duthie. But Mr. Duthie
+was a close reader, so that Snecky flung himself about
+in his pew in misery. The minister concluded his sermon
+with these words: &#8220;But on this subject I will say
+no more at present.&#8221; &#8220;Because you canna,&#8221; Snecky
+roared, and strutted out of the church. Comparing the
+two scenes, it is obvious that the Auld Lichts had won
+a victory. After preaching impromptu for an hour and
+twenty-five minutes, it could never be said of Gavin
+that he needed to read. He became more popular than
+ever. Yet the change of texts was not forgotten. If
+in the future any other indictments were brought
+against him, it would certainly be pinned to them.</p>
+<p>I marvelled long over Gavin&#8217;s jump from Ezra to
+Genesis, and at this his first philippic against Woman,
+but I have known the cause for many a year. The
+Bible was the one that had lain on the summer-seat
+while the Egyptian hid there. It was the great pulpit
+Bible which remains in the church as a rule, but Gavin
+had taken it home the previous day to make some of
+its loose pages secure with paste. He had studied from
+it on the day preceding the riot, but had used a small
+Bible during the rest of the week. When he turned in
+the pulpit to Ezra, where he had left the large Bible
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_99' name='page_99'></a>99</span>
+open in the summer-seat, he found this scrawled across
+chapter eight:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will never tell who flung the clod at Captain
+Halliwell. But why did you fling it? I will never tell
+that you allowed me to be called Mrs. Dishart before
+witnesses. But is not this a Scotch marriage? Signed,
+Babbie the Egyptian.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_100' name='page_100'></a>100</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_ELEVEN_TELLS_IN_A_WHISPER_OF_MANS_FALL_DURING_THE_CURLING_SEASON' id='CHAPTER_ELEVEN_TELLS_IN_A_WHISPER_OF_MANS_FALL_DURING_THE_CURLING_SEASON'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Eleven.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />TELLS IN A WHISPER OF MAN&#8217;S FALL DURING THE CURLING SEASON.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>No snow could be seen in Thrums by the beginning
+of the year, though clods of it lay in Waster Lunny&#8217;s
+fields, where his hens wandered all day as if looking for
+something they had dropped. A black frost had set in,
+and one walking on the glen road could imagine that
+through the cracks in it he saw a loch glistening. From
+my door I could hear the roar of curling stones at Rashie-bog,
+which is almost four miles nearer Thrums. On
+the day I am recalling, I see that I only made one entry
+in my diary, &#8220;At last bought Waster Lunny&#8217;s bantams.&#8221;
+Well do I remember the transaction, and no wonder, for
+I had all but bought the bantams every day for a six
+months.</p>
+<p>About noon the doctor&#8217;s dogcart was observed by all
+the Tenements standing at the Auld Licht manse. The
+various surmises were wrong. Margaret had not been
+suddenly taken ill; Jean had not swallowed a darning-needle;
+the minister had not walked out at his study
+window in a moment of sublime thought. Gavin stepped
+into the dogcart, which at once drove off in the direction
+of Rashie-bog, but equally in error were those who
+said that the doctor was making a curler of him.</p>
+<p>There was, however, ground for gossip; for Thrums
+folk seldom called in a doctor until it was too late to
+cure them, and McQueen was not the man to pay social
+visits. Of his skill we knew fearsome stories, as that,
+by looking at Archie Allardyce, who had come to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_101' name='page_101'></a>101</span>
+broken bones on a ladder, he discovered which rung
+Archie fell from. When he entered a stuffy room he
+would poke his staff through the window to let in fresh
+air, and then fling down a shilling to pay for the breakage.
+He was deaf in the right ear, and therefore usually
+took the left side of prosy people, thus, as he explained,
+making a blessing of an affliction. &#8220;A pity I don&#8217;t
+hear better?&#8221; I have heard him say. &#8220;Not at all. If
+my misfortune, as you call it, were to be removed, you
+can&#8217;t conceive how I should miss my deaf ear.&#8221; He
+was a fine fellow, though brusque, and I never saw him
+without his pipe until two days before we buried him,
+which was five-and-twenty years ago come Martinmas.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re all quite weel,&#8221; Jean said apprehensively as
+she answered his knock on the manse door, and she
+tried to be pleasant, too, for well she knew that, if a
+doctor willed it, she could have fever in five minutes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, Jean, I&#8217;ll soon alter that,&#8221; he replied ferociously.
+&#8220;Is the master in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s at his sermon,&#8221; Jean said with importance.</p>
+<p>To interrupt the minister at such a moment seemed
+sacrilege to her, for her up-bringing had been good.
+Her mother had once fainted in the church, but though
+the family&#8217;s distress was great, they neither bore her
+out, nor signed to the kirk-officer to bring water. They
+propped her up in the pew in a respectful attitude, joining
+in the singing meanwhile, and she recovered in time
+to look up 2nd Chronicles, 21st and 7th.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell him I want to speak to him at the door,&#8221; said
+the doctor fiercely, &#8220;or I&#8217;ll bleed you this minute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>McQueen would not enter, because his horse might
+have seized the opportunity to return stablewards. At
+the houses where it was accustomed to stop, it drew up
+of its own accord, knowing where the Doctor&#8217;s &#8220;cases&#8221;
+were as well as himself, but it resented new patients.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You like misery, I think, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; McQueen
+said when Gavin came to him, &#8220;at least I am always
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_102' name='page_102'></a>102</span>
+finding you in the thick of it, and that is why I am here
+now. I have a rare job for you if you will jump into
+the machine. You know Nanny Webster, who lives on
+the edge of Windyghoul? No, you don&#8217;t, for she belongs
+to the other kirk. Well, at all events, you knew
+her brother, Sanders, the mole-catcher?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I remember him. You mean the man who boasted
+so much about seeing a ball at Lord Rintoul&#8217;s place?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The same, and, as you may know, his boasting
+about maltreating policemen whom he never saw led to
+his being sentenced to nine months in gaol lately.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is the man,&#8221; said Gavin. &#8220;I never liked
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, but his sister did,&#8221; McQueen answered, drily,
+&#8220;and with reason, for he was her breadwinner, and
+now she is starving.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Anything I can give her&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would be too little, sir.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the neighbours&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She has few near her, and though the Thrums poor
+help each other bravely, they are at present nigh as
+needy as herself. Nanny is coming to the poorhouse,
+Mr. Dishart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;God help her!&#8221; exclaimed Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense,&#8221; said the doctor, trying to make himself
+a hard man. &#8220;She will be properly looked after there,
+and&mdash;and in time she will like it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t let my mother hear you speaking of taking an
+old woman to that place,&#8221; Gavin said, looking anxiously
+up the stair. I cannot pretend that Margaret never
+listened.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You all speak as if the poorhouse was a gaol,&#8221; the
+doctor said testily. &#8220;But so far as Nanny is concerned,
+everything is arranged. I promised to drive her to the
+poorhouse to-day, and she is waiting for me now.
+Don&#8217;t look at me as if I was a brute. She is to take
+some of her things with her to the poorhouse and the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_103' name='page_103'></a>103</span>
+rest is to be left until Sanders&#8217;s return, when she may
+rejoin him. At least we said that to her to comfort her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You want me to go with you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, though I warn you it may be a distressing
+scene; indeed, the truth is that I am loth to face Nanny
+alone to-day. Mr. Duthie should have accompanied
+me, for the Websters are Established Kirk; ay, and so
+he would if Rashie-bog had not been bearing. A terrible
+snare this curling, Mr. Dishart&#8221;&mdash;here the doctor
+sighed&mdash;&#8220;I have known Mr. Duthie wait until midnight
+struck on Sabbath and then be off to Rashie-bog
+with a torch.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will go with you,&#8221; Gavin said, putting on his coat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jump in then. You won&#8217;t smoke? I never see a
+respectable man not smoking, sir, but I feel indignant
+with him for such sheer waste of time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin smiled at this, and Snecky Hobart, who happened
+to be keeking over the manse dyke, bore the news
+to the Tenements.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll no sleep the nicht,&#8221; Snecky said, &#8220;for wondering
+what made the minister lauch. Ay, it would be no
+trifle.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A minister, it is certain, who wore a smile on his
+face would never have been called to the Auld Licht
+kirk, for life is a wrestle with the devil, and only the
+frivolous think to throw him without taking off their
+coats. Yet, though Gavin&#8217;s zeal was what the congregation
+reverenced, many loved him privately for his
+boyishness. He could unbend at marriages, of which
+he had six on the last day of the year, and at every one
+of them he joked (the same joke) like a layman. Some
+did not approve of his playing at the teetotum for ten
+minutes with Kitty Dundas&#8217;s invalid son, but the way
+Kitty boasted about it would have disgusted anybody.
+At the present day there are probably a score of Gavins
+in Thrums, all called after the little minister, and there
+is one Gavinia, whom he hesitated to christen. He
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_104' name='page_104'></a>104</span>
+made humorous remarks (the same remark) about all
+these children, and his smile as he patted their heads
+was for thinking over when one&#8217;s work was done for the
+day.</p>
+<p>The doctor&#8217;s horse clattered up the Backwynd noisily,
+as if a minister behind made no difference to it. Instead
+of climbing the Roods, however, the nearest way
+to Nanny&#8217;s, it went westward, which Gavin, in a reverie,
+did not notice. The truth must be told. The Egyptian
+was again in his head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have I fallen deaf in the left ear, too?&#8221; said the
+doctor. &#8220;I see your lips moving, but I don&#8217;t catch a
+syllable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin started, coloured, and flung the gypsy out of
+the trap.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why are we not going up the Roods?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the doctor slowly, &#8220;at the top of the
+Roods there is a stance for circuses, and this old beast
+of mine won&#8217;t pass it. You know, unless you are behind
+in the clashes and clavers of Thrums, that I bought
+her from the manager of a travelling show. She was
+the horse (&#8216;Lightning&#8217; they called her) that galloped
+round the ring at a mile an hour, and so at the top of
+the Roods she is still unmanageable. She once dragged
+me to the scene of her former triumphs, and went revolving
+round it, dragging the machine after her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you had not explained that,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;I might
+have thought that you wanted to pass by Rashie-bog.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The doctor, indeed, was already standing up to catch
+a first glimpse of the curlers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he admitted, &#8220;I might have managed to pass
+the circus ring, though what I have told you is true.
+However, I have not come this way merely to see how
+the match is going. I want to shame Mr. Duthie for
+neglecting his duty. It will help me to do mine, for
+the Lord knows I am finding it hard, with the music
+of these stones in my ears.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_105' name='page_105'></a>105</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I never saw it played before,&#8221; Gavin said, standing
+up in his turn. &#8220;What a din they make! McQueen, I
+believe they are fighting!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no,&#8221; said the excited doctor, &#8220;they are just a
+bit daft. That&#8217;s the proper spirit for the game. Look,
+that&#8217;s the baron-bailie near standing on his head, and
+there&#8217;s Mr. Duthie off his head a&#8217; thegither. Yon&#8217;s
+twa weavers and a mason cursing the laird, and the man
+wi&#8217; the besom is the Master of Crumnathie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A democracy, at all events,&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By no means,&#8221; said the doctor, &#8220;it&#8217;s an aristocracy
+of intellect. Gee up, Lightning, or the frost will be
+gone before we are there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is my opinion, doctor,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;that you will
+have bones to set before that game is finished. I can
+see nothing but legs now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t say a word against curling, sir, to me,&#8221; said
+McQueen, whom the sight of a game in which he must
+not play had turned crusty. &#8220;Dangerous! It&#8217;s the best
+medicine I know of. Look at that man coming across
+the field. It is Jo Strachan. Well, sir, curling saved
+Jo&#8217;s life after I had given him up. You don&#8217;t believe
+me? Hie, Jo, Jo Strachan, come here and tell the minister
+how curling put you on your legs again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Strachan came forward, a tough, little, wizened
+man, with red flannel round his ears to keep out the
+cold.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s gospel what the doctor says, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; he
+declared. &#8220;Me and my brither Sandy was baith ill,
+and in the same bed, and the doctor had hopes o&#8217; Sandy,
+but nane o&#8217; me. Ay, weel, when I heard that, I thocht
+I micht as weel die on the ice as in my bed, so I up and
+on wi&#8217; my claethes. Sandy was mad at me, for he was
+no curler, and he says, &#8216;Jo Strachan, if you gang to
+Rashie-bog you&#8217;ll assuredly be brocht hame a corp.&#8217; I
+didna heed him, though, and off I gaed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I see you did not die,&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_106' name='page_106'></a>106</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Not me,&#8221; answered the fish cadger, with a grin.
+&#8220;Na, but the joke o&#8217;t is, it was Sandy that died.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not the joke, Jo,&#8221; corrected the doctor, &#8220;the moral.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, the moral; I&#8217;m aye forgetting the word.&#8221;</p>
+<p>McQueen, enjoying Gavin&#8217;s discomfiture, turned
+Lightning down the Rashie-bog road, which would be
+impassable as soon as the thaw came. In summer
+Rashie-bog is several fields in which a cart does not
+sink unless it stands still, but in winter it is a loch with
+here and there a spring where dead men are said to lie.
+There are no rushes at its east end, and here the dogcart
+drew up near the curlers, a crowd of men dancing,
+screaming, shaking their fists and sweeping, while half
+a hundred onlookers got in their way, gesticulating and
+advising.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hold me tight,&#8221; the doctor whispered to Gavin, &#8220;or
+I&#8217;ll be leaving you to drive Nanny to the poorhouse by
+yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He had no sooner said this than he tried to jump out
+of the trap.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You donnert fule, John Robbie,&#8221; he shouted to a
+player, &#8220;soop her up, man, soop her up; no, no, dinna,
+dinna; leave her alane. Bailie, leave her alane, you
+blazing idiot. Mr. Dishart, let me go; what do you
+mean, sir, by hanging on to my coat tails? Dang it
+all, Duthie&#8217;s winning. He has it, he has it!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re to play, doctor?&#8221; some cried, running to the
+dogcart. &#8220;We hae missed you sair.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jeames, I&mdash;I&mdash;. No, I daurna.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then we get our licks. I never saw the minister in
+sic form. We can do nothing against him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then,&#8221; cried McQueen, &#8220;I&#8217;ll play. Come what
+will, I&#8217;ll play. Let go my tails, Mr. Dishart, or I&#8217;ll
+cut them off. Duty? Fiddlesticks!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shame on you, sir,&#8221; said Gavin; &#8220;yes, and on you
+others who would entice him from his duty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shame!&#8221; the doctor cried. &#8220;Look at Mr. Duthie.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_107' name='page_107'></a>107</span>
+Is he ashamed? And yet that man has been reproving
+me for a twelvemonths because I&#8217;ve refused to become
+one of his elders. Duthie,&#8221; he shouted, &#8220;think shame
+of yourself for curling this day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Duthie had carefully turned his back to the trap,
+for Gavin&#8217;s presence in it annoyed him. We seldom
+care to be reminded of our duty by seeing another do
+it. Now, however, he advanced to the dogcart, taking
+the far side of Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Put on your coat, Mr. Duthie,&#8221; said the doctor,
+&#8220;and come with me to Nanny Webster&#8217;s. You promised.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Mr. Duthie looked quizzically at Gavin, and then at
+the sky.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The thaw may come at any moment,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think the frost is to hold,&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It may hold over to-morrow,&#8221; Mr. Duthie admitted;
+&#8220;but to-morrow&#8217;s the Sabbath, and so a lost day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A what?&#8221; exclaimed Gavin, horrified.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only mean,&#8221; Mr. Duthie answered, colouring,
+&#8220;that we can&#8217;t curl on the Lord&#8217;s day. As for what it
+may be like on Monday, no one can say. No, doctor,
+I won&#8217;t risk it. We&#8217;re in the middle of a game,
+man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin looked very grave.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see what you are thinking, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; the old
+minister said doggedly; &#8220;but then, you don&#8217;t curl.
+You are very wise. I have forbidden my sons to
+curl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then you openly snap your fingers at your duty,
+Mr. Duthie?&#8221; said the doctor, loftily. (&#8220;You can let
+go my tails now, Mr. Dishart, for the madness has
+passed.&#8221;)</p>
+<p>&#8220;None of your virtuous airs, McQueen,&#8221; said Mr.
+Duthie, hotly. &#8220;What was the name of the doctor that
+warned women never to have bairns while it was hauding?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_108' name='page_108'></a>108</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And what,&#8221; retorted McQueen, &#8220;was the name of
+the minister that told his session he would neither
+preach nor pray while the black frost lasted?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hoots, doctor,&#8221; said Duthie, &#8220;don&#8217;t lose your temper
+because I&#8217;m in such form.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t lose yours, Duthie, because I aye beat
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You beat me, McQueen! Go home, sir, and don&#8217;t
+talk havers. Who beat you at&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who made you sing small at&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who won&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll play you on Monday for whatever you like!&#8221;
+shrieked the doctor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it holds,&#8221; cried the minister, &#8220;I&#8217;ll be here the
+whole day. Name the stakes yourself. A stone?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; the doctor said, &#8220;but I&#8217;ll tell you what we&#8217;ll
+play for. You&#8217;ve been dinging me doited about that
+eldership, and we&#8217;ll play for&#8217;t. If you win I accept
+office.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Done,&#8221; said the minister, recklessly.</p>
+<p>The dogcart was now turned toward Windyghoul,
+its driver once more good-humoured, but Gavin silent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You would have been the better of my deaf ear just
+now, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; McQueen said after the loch had
+been left behind. &#8220;Aye, and I&#8217;m thinking my pipe
+would soothe you. But don&#8217;t take it so much to heart,
+man. I&#8217;ll lick him easily. He&#8217;s a decent man, the
+minister, but vain of his play, ridiculously vain. However,
+I think the sight of you, in the place that should
+have been his, has broken his nerve for this day, and
+our side may win yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe,&#8221; Gavin said, with sudden enlightenment,
+&#8220;that you brought me here for that purpose.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe,&#8221; chuckled the doctor; &#8220;maybe.&#8221; Then he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_109' name='page_109'></a>109</span>
+changed the subject suddenly. &#8220;Mr. Dishart,&#8221; he
+asked, &#8220;were you ever in love?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never!&#8221; answered Gavin violently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, well,&#8221; said the doctor, &#8220;don&#8217;t terrify the
+horse. I have been in love myself. It&#8217;s bad, but it&#8217;s
+nothing to curling.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_110' name='page_110'></a>110</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWELVE_TRAGEDY_OF_A_MUD_HOUSE' id='CHAPTER_TWELVE_TRAGEDY_OF_A_MUD_HOUSE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twelve.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />TRAGEDY OF A MUD HOUSE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>The dogcart bumped between the trees of Caddam,
+flinging Gavin and the doctor at each other as a wheel
+rose on some beech-root or sank for a moment in a pool.
+I suppose the wood was a pretty sight that day, the
+pines only white where they had met the snow, as if the
+numbed painter had left his work unfinished, the brittle
+twigs snapping overhead, the water as black as tar.
+But it matters little what the wood was like. Within
+a squirrel&#8217;s leap of it an old woman was standing at the
+door of a mud house listening for the approach of the
+trap that was to take her to the poorhouse. Can you
+think of the beauty of the day now?</p>
+<p>Nanny was not crying. She had redd up her house
+for the last time and put on her black merino. Her
+mouth was wide open while she listened. If you had
+addressed her you would have thought her polite and
+stupid. Look at her. A flabby-faced woman she is
+now, with a swollen body, and no one has heeded her
+much these thirty years. I can tell you something; it
+is almost droll. Nanny Webster was once a gay flirt,
+and in Airlie Square there is a weaver with an unsteady
+head who thought all the earth of her. His loom has
+taken a foot from his stature, and gone are Nanny&#8217;s
+raven locks on which he used to place his adoring hand.
+Down in Airlie Square he is weaving for his life, and
+here is Nanny, ripe for the poorhouse, and between
+them is the hill where they were lovers. That is all
+the story save that when Nanny heard the dogcart she
+screamed.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_111' name='page_111'></a>111</span></div>
+<p>No neighbour was with her. If you think this hard,
+it is because you do not understand. Perhaps Nanny
+had never been very lovable except to one man, and
+him, it is said, she lost through her own vanity; but
+there was much in her to like. The neighbours, of
+whom there were two not a hundred yards away, would
+have been with her now but they feared to hurt her
+feelings. No heart opens to sympathy without letting
+in delicacy, and these poor people knew that Nanny
+would not like them to see her being taken away. For
+a week they had been aware of what was coming, and
+they had been most kind to her, but that hideous word,
+the poorhouse, they had not uttered. Poorhouse is not
+to be spoken in Thrums, though it is nothing to tell a
+man that you see death in his face. Did Nanny think
+they knew where she was going? was a question they
+whispered to each other, and her suffering eyes cut
+scars on their hearts. So now that the hour had come
+they called their children into their houses and pulled
+down their blinds.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you would like to see her by yourself,&#8221; the doctor
+said eagerly to Gavin, as the horse drew up at Nanny&#8217;s
+gate, &#8220;I&#8217;ll wait with the horse. Not,&#8221; he added, hastily,
+&#8220;that I feel sorry for her. We are doing her a
+kindness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They dismounted together, however, and Nanny, who
+had run from the trap into the house, watched them
+from her window.</p>
+<p>McQueen saw her and said glumly, &#8220;I should have
+come alone, for if you pray she is sure to break down.
+Mr. Dishart, could you not pray cheerfully?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t look very cheerful yourself,&#8221; Gavin said
+sadly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nonsense,&#8221; answered the doctor. &#8220;I have no
+patience with this false sentiment. Stand still, Lightning,
+and be thankful you are not your master to-day.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_112' name='page_112'></a>112</span></div>
+<p>The door stood open, and Nanny was crouching
+against the opposite wall of the room, such a poor, dull
+kitchen, that you would have thought the furniture had
+still to be brought into it. The blanket and the piece
+of old carpet that was Nanny&#8217;s coverlet were already
+packed in her box. The plate rack was empty. Only
+the round table and the two chairs, and the stools and
+some pans were being left behind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, Nanny,&#8221; the doctor said, trying to bluster, &#8220;I
+have come, and you see Mr. Dishart is with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny rose bravely. She knew the doctor was good
+to her, and she wanted to thank him. I have not seen
+a great deal of the world myself, but often the sweet
+politeness of the aged poor has struck me as beautiful.
+Nanny dropped a curtesy, an ungainly one maybe, but
+it was an old woman giving the best she had.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you kindly, sirs,&#8221; she said; and then two
+pairs of eyes dropped before hers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Please to take a chair,&#8221; she added timidly. It is
+strange to know that at that awful moment, for let none
+tell me it was less than awful, the old woman was the
+one who could speak.</p>
+<p>Both men sat down, for they would have hurt Nanny
+by remaining standing. Some ministers would have
+known the right thing to say to her, but Gavin dared
+not let himself speak. I have again to remind you that
+he was only one-and-twenty.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m drouthy, Nanny,&#8221; the doctor said, to give her
+something to do, &#8220;and I would be obliged for a drink
+of water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny hastened to the pan that stood behind her
+door, but stopped before she reached it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s toom,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I&mdash;I didna think I needed to
+fill it this morning.&#8221; She caught the doctor&#8217;s eye, and
+could only half restrain a sob. &#8220;I couldna help that,&#8221;
+she said, apologetically. &#8220;I&#8217;m richt angry at myself
+for being so ungrateful like.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_113' name='page_113'></a>113</span></div>
+<p>The doctor thought it best that they should depart at
+once. He rose.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no, doctor,&#8221; cried Nanny in alarm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you are ready?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I have been ready this twa hours,
+but you micht wait a minute. Hendry Munn and Andrew
+Allardyce is coming yont the road, and they would
+see me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wait, doctor,&#8221; Gavin said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thank you kindly, sir,&#8221; answered Nanny.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But Nanny,&#8221; the doctor said, &#8220;you must remember
+what I told you about the poo&mdash;, about the place you
+are going to. It is a fine house, and you will be very
+happy in it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, I&#8217;ll be happy in&#8217;t,&#8221; Nanny faltered, &#8220;but, doctor,
+if I could just hae bidden on here though I wasna
+happy!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Think of the food you will get; broth nearly every
+day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&mdash;it&#8217;ll be terrible enjoyable,&#8221; Nanny said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And there will be pleasant company for you always,&#8221;
+continued the doctor, &#8220;and a nice room to sit in.
+Why, after you have been there a week, you won&#8217;t be
+the same woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s it!&#8221; cried Nanny with sudden passion.
+&#8220;Na, na; I&#8217;ll be a woman on the poor&#8217;s rates. Oh,
+mither, mither, you little thocht when you bore me that
+I would come to this!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nanny,&#8221; the doctor said, rising again, &#8220;I am
+ashamed of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I humbly speir your forgiveness, sir,&#8221; she said,
+&#8220;and you micht bide just a wee yet. I&#8217;ve been ready
+to gang these twa hours, but now that the machine is
+at the gate, I dinna ken how it is, but I&#8217;m terrible
+sweer to come awa&#8217;. Oh, Mr. Dishart, it&#8217;s richt true
+what the doctor says about the&mdash;the place, but I canna
+just take it in. I&#8217;m&mdash;I&#8217;m gey auld.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_114' name='page_114'></a>114</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You will often get out to see your friends,&#8221; was all
+Gavin could say.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, na, na,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;dinna say that; I&#8217;ll gang,
+but you mauna bid me ever come out, except in a
+hearse. Dinna let onybody in Thrums look on my face
+again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must go,&#8221; said the doctor firmly. &#8220;Put on your
+mutch, Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna need to put on a mutch,&#8221; she answered, with
+a faint flush of pride. &#8220;I have a bonnet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took the bonnet from her bed, and put it on
+slowly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you sure there&#8217;s naebody looking?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>The doctor glanced at the minister, and Gavin
+rose.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let us pray,&#8221; he said, and the three went down on
+their knees.</p>
+<p>It was not the custom of Auld Licht ministers to
+leave any house without offering up a prayer in it, and
+to us it always seemed that when Gavin prayed, he was
+at the knees of God. The little minister pouring himself
+out in prayer in a humble room, with awed people
+around him who knew much more of the world than he,
+his voice at times thick and again a squeal, and his
+hands clasped not gracefully, may have been only a
+comic figure, but we were old-fashioned, and he seemed
+to make us better men. If I only knew the way, I
+would draw him as he was, and not fear to make him
+too mean a man for you to read about. He had not
+been long in Thrums before he knew that we talked
+much of his prayers, and that doubtless puffed him up
+a little. Sometimes, I daresay, he rose from his knees
+feeling that he had prayed well to-day, which is a
+dreadful charge to bring against any one. But it was
+not always so, nor was it so now.</p>
+<p>I am not speaking harshly of this man, whom I have
+loved beyond all others, when I say that Nanny came
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_115' name='page_115'></a>115</span>
+between him and his prayer. Had he been of God&#8217;s
+own image, unstained, he would have forgotten all else
+in his Maker&#8217;s presence, but Nanny was speaking too,
+and her words choked his. At first she only whispered,
+but soon what was eating her heart burst out painfully,
+and she did not know that the minister had
+stopped.</p>
+<p>They were such moans as these that brought him back
+to earth:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll hae to gang.... I&#8217;m a base woman no&#8217; to be
+mair thankfu&#8217; to them that is so good to me.... I
+dinna like to prig wi&#8217; them to take a roundabout road,
+and I&#8217;m sair fleid a&#8217; the Roods will see me.... If it
+could just be said to poor Sanders when he comes back
+that I died hurriedly, syne he would be able to haud
+up his head.... Oh, mither!... I wish terrible
+they had come and ta&#8217;en me at nicht.... It&#8217;s a dogcart,
+and I was praying it micht be a cart, so that they
+could cover me wi&#8217; straw.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is more than I can stand,&#8221; the doctor cried.</p>
+<p>Nanny rose frightened.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve tried you, sair,&#8221; she said, &#8220;but, oh, I&#8217;m grateful,
+and I&#8217;m ready now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They all advanced toward the door without another
+word, and Nanny even tried to smile. But in the middle
+of the floor something came over her, and she stood
+there. Gavin took her hand, and it was cold. She
+looked from one to the other, her mouth opening and
+shutting.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I canna help it,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s cruel hard,&#8221; muttered the doctor. &#8220;I knew this
+woman when she was a lassie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The little minister stretched out his hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have pity on her, O God!&#8221; he prayed, with the
+presumptuousness of youth.</p>
+<p>Nanny heard the words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, God,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;you micht!&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_116' name='page_116'></a>116</span></div>
+<p>God needs no minister to tell Him what to do, but it
+was His will that the poorhouse should not have this
+woman. He made use of a strange instrument, no
+other than the Egyptian, who now opened the mudhouse
+door.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_117' name='page_117'></a>117</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTEEN_SECOND_COMING_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN' id='CHAPTER_THIRTEEN_SECOND_COMING_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirteen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />SECOND COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>The gypsy had been passing the house, perhaps on
+her way to Thrums for gossip, and it was only curiosity,
+born suddenly of Gavin&#8217;s cry, that made her enter.
+On finding herself in unexpected company she retained
+hold of the door, and to the amazed minister she seemed
+for a moment to have stepped into the mud house from
+his garden. Her eyes danced, however, as they recognised
+him, and then he hardened. &#8220;This is no place
+for you,&#8221; he was saying fiercely, when Nanny, too distraught
+to think, fell crying at the Egyptian&#8217;s feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;They are taking me to the poorhouse,&#8221; she sobbed;
+&#8220;dinna let them, dinna let them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian&#8217;s arms clasped her, and the Egyptian
+kissed a sallow cheek that had once been as fair as
+yours, madam, who may read this story. No one had
+caressed Nanny for many years, but do you think she
+was too poor and old to care for these young arms
+around her neck? There are those who say that women
+cannot love each other, but it is not true. Woman is
+not undeveloped man, but something better, and Gavin
+and the doctor knew it as they saw Nanny clinging to
+her protector. When the gypsy turned with flashing
+eyes to the two men she might have been a mother
+guarding her child.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How dare you!&#8221; she cried, stamping her foot; and
+they quaked like malefactors.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You don&#8217;t see&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; Gavin began, but her indignation
+stopped him.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_118' name='page_118'></a>118</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You coward!&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>Even the doctor had been impressed, so that he now
+addressed the gypsy respectfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is all very well,&#8221; he said, &#8220;but a woman&#8217;s
+sympathy&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A woman!&mdash;ah, if I could be a man for only five
+minutes!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She clenched her little fists, and again turned to
+Nanny.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You poor dear,&#8221; she said tenderly, &#8220;I won&#8217;t let
+them take you away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She looked triumphantly at both minister and doctor,
+as one who had foiled them in their cruel designs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go!&#8221; she said, pointing grandly to the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is this the Egyptian of the riots,&#8221; the doctor said
+in a low voice to Gavin, &#8220;or is she a queen? Hoots,
+man, don&#8217;t look so shamefaced. We are not criminals.
+Say something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then to the Egyptian Gavin said firmly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean well, but you are doing this poor woman
+a cruelty in holding out hopes to her that cannot be
+realised. Sympathy is not meal and bedclothes, and
+these are what she needs.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you who live in luxury,&#8221; retorted the girl,
+&#8220;would send her to the poorhouse for them. I thought
+better of you!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tuts!&#8221; said the doctor, losing patience, &#8220;Mr. Dishart
+gives more than any other man in Thrums to the
+poor, and he is not to be preached to by a gypsy. We
+are waiting for you, Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, I&#8217;m coming,&#8221; said Nanny, leaving the Egyptian.
+&#8220;I&#8217;ll hae to gang, lassie. Dinna greet for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the Egyptian said, &#8220;No, you are not going. It
+is these men who are going. Go, sirs, and leave us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you will provide for Nanny?&#8221; asked the doctor
+contemptuously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_119' name='page_119'></a>119</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And where is the siller to come from?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is my affair, and Nanny&#8217;s. Begone, both of
+you. She shall never want again. See how the very
+mention of your going brings back life to her face.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t begone,&#8221; the doctor said roughly, &#8220;till I see
+the colour of your siller.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, the money,&#8221; said the Egyptian scornfully. She
+put her hand into her pocket confidently, as if used to
+well-filled purses, but could only draw out two silver
+pieces.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had forgotten,&#8221; she said aloud, though speaking
+to herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought so,&#8221; said the cynical doctor. &#8220;Come,
+Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You presume to doubt me!&#8221; the Egyptian said,
+blocking his way to the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How could I presume to believe you?&#8221; he answered.
+&#8220;You are a beggar by profession, and yet talk as if&mdash;&mdash;pooh,
+nonsense.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would live on terrible little,&#8221; Nanny whispered,
+&#8220;and Sanders will be out again in August month.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Seven shillings a week,&#8221; rapped out the doctor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that all?&#8221; the Egyptian asked. &#8220;She shall have
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;At once. No, it is not possible to-night, but to-morrow
+I will bring five pounds; no, I will send it; no,
+you must come for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And where, O daughter of Dives, do you reside?&#8221;
+the doctor asked.</p>
+<p>No doubt the Egyptian could have found a ready answer
+had her pity for Nanny been less sincere; as it
+was, she hesitated, wanting to propitiate the doctor,
+while holding her secret fast.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only asked,&#8221; McQueen said, eyeing her curiously,
+&#8220;because when I make an appointment I like to know
+where it is to be held. But I suppose you are suddenly
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_120' name='page_120'></a>120</span>
+to rise out of the ground as you have done to-day, and
+did six weeks ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whether I rise out of the ground or not,&#8221; the gypsy
+said, keeping her temper with an effort, &#8220;there will be
+a five-pound note in my hand. You will meet me to-morrow
+about this hour at&mdash;say the Kaims of Cushie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; said the doctor after a moment&#8217;s pause; &#8220;I
+won&#8217;t. Even if I went to the Kaims I should not find
+you there. Why can you not come to me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you carry a woman&#8217;s hair,&#8221; replied the
+Egyptian, &#8220;in that locket on your chain?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Whether she was speaking of what she knew, or this
+was only a chance shot, I cannot tell, but the doctor
+stepped back from her hastily, and could not help looking
+down at the locket.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said the Egyptian calmly, &#8220;it is still shut; but
+why do you sometimes open it at nights?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lassie,&#8221; the old doctor cried, &#8220;are you a witch?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; she said; &#8220;but I ask for no answer to my
+questions. If you have your secrets, why may I not
+have mine? Now will you meet me at the Kaims?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; I distrust you more than ever. Even if you
+came, it would be to play with me as you have done
+already. How can a vagrant have five pounds in her
+pocket when she does not have five shillings on her
+back?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are a cruel, hard man,&#8221; the Egyptian said, beginning
+to lose hope. &#8220;But, see,&#8221; she cried, brightening,
+&#8220;look at this ring. Do you know its value?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She held up her finger, but the stone would not live
+in the dull light.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see it is gold,&#8221; the doctor said cautiously, and she
+smiled at the ignorance that made him look only at the
+frame.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly, it is gold,&#8221; said Gavin, equally stupid.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mercy on us!&#8221; Nanny cried; &#8220;I believe it&#8217;s what
+they call a diamond.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_121' name='page_121'></a>121</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;How did you come by it?&#8221; the doctor asked suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought we had agreed not to ask each other questions,&#8221;
+the Egyptian answered drily. &#8220;But, see, I will
+give it to you to hold in hostage. If I am not at the
+Kaims to get it back you can keep it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The doctor took the ring in his hand and examined it
+curiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is a quirk in this,&#8221; he said at last, &#8220;that I
+don&#8217;t like. Take back your ring, lassie. Mr. Dishart,
+give Nanny your arm, and I&#8217;ll carry her box to the
+machine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now all this time Gavin had been in the dire distress
+of a man possessed of two minds, of which one said,
+&#8220;This is a true woman,&#8221; and the other, &#8220;Remember
+the seventeenth of October.&#8221; They were at war within
+him, and he knew that he must take a side, yet no
+sooner had he cast one out than he invited it back. He
+did not answer the doctor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unless,&#8221; McQueen said, nettled by his hesitation,
+&#8220;you trust this woman&#8217;s word.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin tried honestly to weigh those two minds against
+each other, but could not prevent impulse jumping into
+one of the scales.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You do trust me,&#8221; the Egyptian said, with wet eyes;
+and now that he looked on her again&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said firmly, &#8220;I trust you,&#8221; and the words
+that had been so difficult to say were the right words.
+He had no more doubt of it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just think a moment first,&#8221; the doctor warned him.
+&#8220;I decline to have anything to do with this matter.
+You will go to the Kaims for the siller?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it is necessary,&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is necessary,&#8221; the Egyptian said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I will go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny took his hand timidly, and would have kissed
+it had he been less than a minister.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_122' name='page_122'></a>122</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You dare not, man,&#8221; the doctor said gruffly, &#8220;make
+an appointment with this gypsy. Think of what will
+be said in Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I honour Gavin for the way in which he took this
+warning. For him, who was watched from the rising
+of his congregation to their lying down, whose every
+movement was expected to be a text to Thrums, it was
+no small thing that he had promised. This he knew,
+but he only reddened because the doctor had implied
+an offensive thing in a woman&#8217;s presence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You forget yourself, doctor,&#8221; he said sharply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Send some one in your place,&#8221; advised the doctor,
+who liked the little minister.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He must come himself and alone,&#8221; said the Egyptian.
+&#8220;You must both give me your promise not to
+mention who is Nanny&#8217;s friend, and she must promise
+too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; said the doctor, buttoning up his coat, &#8220;I
+cannot keep my horse freezing any longer. Remember,
+Mr. Dishart, you take the sole responsibility of this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;and with the utmost confidence.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Give him the ring then, lassie,&#8221; said McQueen.</p>
+<p>She handed the minister the ring, but he would not
+take it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have your word,&#8221; he said; &#8220;that is sufficient.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then the Egyptian gave him the first look that he
+could think of afterwards without misgivings.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So be it,&#8221; said the doctor. &#8220;Get the money, and I
+will say nothing about it, unless I have reason to think
+that it has been dishonestly come by. Don&#8217;t look so
+frightened at me, Nanny. I hope for your sake that
+her stocking-foot is full of gold.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Surely it&#8217;s worth risking,&#8221; Nanny said, not very
+brightly, &#8220;when the minister&#8217;s on her side.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, but on whose side, Nanny?&#8221; asked the doctor.
+&#8220;Lassie, I bear you no grudge; will you not tell me
+who you are?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_123' name='page_123'></a>123</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Only a puir gypsy, your honour,&#8221; said the girl, becoming
+mischievous now that she had gained her point;
+&#8220;only a wandering hallen-shaker, and will I tell you
+your fortune, my pretty gentleman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you shan&#8217;t,&#8221; replied the doctor, plunging his
+hands so hastily into his pockets that Gavin laughed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t need to look at your hand,&#8221; said the gypsy,
+&#8220;I can read your fortune in your face.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She looked at him fixedly, so that he fidgeted.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see you,&#8221; said the Egyptian in a sepulchral voice,
+and speaking slowly, &#8220;become very frail. Your eyesight
+has almost gone. You are sitting alone in a
+cauld room, cooking your ain dinner ower a feeble fire.
+The soot is falling down the lum. Your bearish manners
+towards women have driven the servant lassie frae
+your house, and your wife beats you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, you spoil your prophecy there,&#8221; the doctor said,
+considerably relieved, &#8220;for I&#8217;m not married; my pipe&#8217;s
+the only wife I ever had.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will be married by that time,&#8221; continued the
+Egyptian, frowning at this interruption, &#8220;for I see your
+wife. She is a shrew. She marries you in your dotage.
+She lauchs at you in company. She doesna allow you
+to smoke.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Away with you, you jade,&#8221; cried the doctor in a
+fury, and feeling nervously for his pipe. &#8220;Mr. Dishart,
+you had better stay and arrange this matter as you
+choose, but I want a word with you outside.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;re no angry wi&#8217; me, doctor, are you?&#8221;
+asked Nanny wistfully. &#8220;You&#8217;ve been richt good to
+me, but I canna thole the thocht o&#8217; that place. And,
+oh, doctor, you winna tell naebody that I was so near
+taen to it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the garden McQueen said to Gavin:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You may be right, Mr. Dishart, in this matter, for
+there is this in our favour, that the woman can gain
+nothing by tricking us. She did seem to feel for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_124' name='page_124'></a>124</span>
+Nanny. But who can she be? You saw she could put
+on and off the Scotch tongue as easily as if it were a
+cap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is as much a mystery to me as to you,&#8221; Gavin
+answered, &#8220;but she will give me the money, and that
+is all I ask of her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, that remains to be seen. But take care of yourself;
+a man&#8217;s second childhood begins when a woman
+gets hold of him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t alarm yourself about me, doctor. I daresay
+she is only one of those gypsies from the South. They
+are said to be wealthy, many of them, and even, when
+they like, to have a grand manner. The Thrums people
+had no doubt but that she was what she seemed to
+be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, but what does she seem to be? Even that puzzles
+me. And then there is this mystery about her
+which she admits herself, though perhaps only to play
+with us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;she is only taking precautions
+against her discovery by the police. You must
+remember her part in the riots.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but we never learned how she was able to play
+that part. Besides, there is no fear in her, or she would
+not have ventured back to Thrums. However, good
+luck attend you. But be wary. You saw how she kept
+her feet among her shalls and wills? Never trust a
+Scotch man or woman who does not come to grief among
+them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The doctor took his seat in the dogcart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; he called out, &#8220;that was all
+nonsense about the locket.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_125' name='page_125'></a>125</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FOURTEEN_THE_MINISTER_DANCES_TO_THE_WOMANS_PIPING' id='CHAPTER_FOURTEEN_THE_MINISTER_DANCES_TO_THE_WOMANS_PIPING'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Fourteen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE MINISTER DANCES TO THE WOMAN&#8217;S PIPING.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Gavin let the doctor&#8217;s warnings fall in the grass. In
+his joy over Nanny&#8217;s deliverance he jumped the garden
+gate, whose hinges were of yarn, and cleverly caught
+his hat as it was leaving his head in protest. He then
+re-entered the mud house staidly. Pleasant was the
+change. Nanny&#8217;s home was as a clock that had been
+run out, and is set going again. Already the old woman
+was unpacking her box, to increase the distance between
+herself and the poorhouse. But Gavin only saw her in
+the background, for the Egyptian, singing at her work,
+had become the heart of the house. She had flung her
+shawl over Nanny&#8217;s shoulders, and was at the fireplace
+breaking peats with the leg of a stool. She turned
+merrily to the minister to ask him to chop up his staff
+for firewood, and he would have answered wittily but
+could not. Then, as often, the beauty of the Egyptian
+surprised him into silence. I could never get used to
+her face myself in the after-days. It has always held
+me wondering, like my own Glen Quharity on a summer
+day, when the sun is lingering and the clouds are
+on the march, and the glen is never the same for two
+minutes, but always so beautiful as to make me sad.
+Never will I attempt to picture the Egyptian as she
+seemed to Gavin while she bent over Nanny&#8217;s fire, never
+will I describe my glen. Yet a hundred times have I
+hankered after trying to picture both.</p>
+<p>An older minister, believing that Nanny&#8217;s anguish
+was ended, might have gone on his knees and finished
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_126' name='page_126'></a>126</span>
+the interrupted prayer, but now Gavin was only doing
+this girl&#8217;s bidding.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nanny and I are to have a dish of tea, as soon as we
+have set things to rights,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;Do you think
+we should invite the minister, Nanny?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We couldna dare,&#8221; Nanny answered quickly.
+&#8220;You&#8217;ll excuse her, Mr. Dishart, for the presumption?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Presumption!&#8221; said the Egyptian, making a face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lassie,&#8221; Nanny said, fearful to offend her new
+friend, yet horrified at this affront to the minister, &#8220;I
+ken you mean weel, but Mr. Dishart&#8217;ll think you&#8217;re
+putting yoursel&#8217; on an equality wi&#8217; him.&#8221; She added
+in a whisper, &#8220;Dinna be so free; he&#8217;s the Auld Licht
+minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The gypsy bowed with mock awe, but Gavin let it
+pass. He had, indeed, forgotten that he was anybody
+in particular, and was anxious to stay to tea.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But there is no water,&#8221; he remembered, &#8220;and is
+there any tea?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am going out for them and for some other things,&#8221;
+the Egyptian explained. &#8220;But no,&#8221; she continued, reflectively,
+&#8220;if I go for the tea, you must go for the
+water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lassie,&#8221; cried Nanny, &#8220;mind wha you&#8217;re speaking
+to. To send a minister to the well!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will go,&#8221; said Gavin, recklessly lifting the pitcher.
+&#8220;The well is in the wood, I think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gie me the pitcher, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; said Nanny, in
+distress. &#8220;What a town there would be if you was
+seen wi&#8217;t!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then he must remain here and keep the house till
+we come back,&#8221; said the Egyptian, and thereupon
+departed, with a friendly wave of her hand to the
+minister.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s an awfu&#8217; lassie,&#8221; Nanny said, apologetically,
+&#8220;but it&#8217;ll just be the way she has been brought up.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_14' id='linki_14'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus154.jpg' alt='' title='' width='468' height='671' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD INVITE THE MINISTER, NANNY?&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;She has been very good to you, Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_127' name='page_127'></a>127</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;She has; leastwise, she promises to be. Mr. Dishart,
+she&#8217;s awa&#8217;; what if she doesna come back?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny spoke nervously, and Gavin drew a long face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think she will,&#8221; he said faintly. &#8220;I am confident
+of it,&#8221; he added in the same voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And has she the siller?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe in her,&#8221; said Gavin, so doggedly that his
+own words reassured him. &#8220;She has an excellent
+heart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Nanny, to whom the minister&#8217;s faith was
+more than the Egyptian&#8217;s promise, &#8220;and that&#8217;s hardly
+natural in a gaen-aboot body. Yet a gypsy she maun
+be, for naebody would pretend to be ane that wasna.
+Tod, she proved she was an Egyptian by dauring to
+send you to the well.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This conclusive argument brought her prospective
+dower so close to Nanny&#8217;s eyes that it hid the poorhouse.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose she&#8217;ll gie you the money,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and
+syne you&#8217;ll gie me the seven shillings a week?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That seems the best plan,&#8221; Gavin answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what will you gie it me in?&#8221; Nanny asked, with
+something on her mind. &#8220;I would be terrible obliged
+if you gae it to me in saxpences.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do the smaller coins go farther?&#8221; Gavin asked,
+curiously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, it&#8217;s no that. But I&#8217;ve heard tell o&#8217; folk giving
+away half-crowns by mistake for twa-shilling bits; ay,
+and there&#8217;s something dizzying in ha&#8217;en fower-and-twenty
+pennies in one piece; it has sic terrible little
+bulk. Sanders had aince a gold sovereign, and he
+looked at it so often that it seemed to grow smaller and
+smaller in his hand till he was feared it micht just be a
+half after all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her mind relieved on this matter, the old woman set
+off for the well. A minute afterwards Gavin went to
+the door to look for the gypsy, and, behold, Nanny was
+no further than the gate. Have you who read ever
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_128' name='page_128'></a>128</span>
+been sick near to death, and then so far recovered that
+you could once again stand at your window? If so, you
+have not forgotten how the beauty of the world struck
+you afresh, so that you looked long and said many
+times, &#8220;How fair a world it is!&#8221; like one who had
+made a discovery. It was such a look that Nanny gave
+to the hill and Caddam while she stood at her garden
+gate.</p>
+<p>Gavin returned to the fire and watched a girl in it
+in an officer&#8217;s cloak playing at hide and seek with soldiers.
+After a time he sighed, then looked round
+sharply to see who had sighed, then, absent-mindedly,
+lifted the empty kettle and placed it on the glowing
+peats. He was standing glaring at the kettle, his arms
+folded, when Nanny returned from the well.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve been thinking,&#8221; she said, &#8220;o&#8217; something that
+proves the lassie to be just an Egyptian. Ay, I noticed
+she wasna nane awed when I said you was the Auld
+Licht minister. Weel, I&#8217;se uphaud that came frae her
+living ower muckle in the open air. Is there no&#8217; a
+smell o&#8217; burning in the house?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have noticed it,&#8221; Gavin answered, sniffing, &#8220;since
+you came in. I was busy until then, putting on the
+kettle. The smell is becoming worse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny had seen the empty kettle on the fire as he
+began to speak, and so solved the mystery. Her first
+thought was to snatch the kettle out of the blaze, but
+remembering who had put it there, she dared not. She
+sidled toward the hearth instead, and saying craftily,
+&#8220;Ay, here it is; it&#8217;s a clout among the peats,&#8221; softly
+laid the kettle on the earthen floor. It was still red
+with sparks, however, when the gypsy reappeared.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who burned the kettle?&#8221; she asked, ignoring
+Nanny&#8217;s signs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lassie,&#8221; Nanny said, &#8220;it was me;&#8221; but Gavin, flushing,
+confessed his guilt.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, you stupid!&#8221; exclaimed the Egyptian, shaking
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_129' name='page_129'></a>129</span>
+her two ounces of tea (which then cost six shillings the
+pound) in his face.</p>
+<p>At this Nanny wrung her hands, crying, &#8220;That&#8217;s
+waur than swearing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If men,&#8221; said the gypsy, severely, &#8220;would keep
+their hands in their pockets all day, the world&#8217;s affairs
+would be more easily managed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wheesht!&#8221; cried Nanny, &#8220;if Mr. Dishart cared to
+set his mind to it, he could make the kettle boil quicker
+than you or me. But his thochts is on higher things.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No higher than this,&#8221; retorted the gypsy, holding
+her hand level with her brow. &#8220;Confess, Mr. Dishart,
+that this is the exact height of what you were thinking
+about. See, Nanny, he is blushing as if I meant that
+he had been thinking about me. He cannot answer,
+Nanny: we have found him out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And kindly of him it is no to answer,&#8221; said Nanny,
+who had been examining the gypsy&#8217;s various purchases;
+&#8220;for what could he answer, except that he would need
+to be sure o&#8217; living a thousand years afore he could
+spare five minutes on you or me? Of course it would
+be different if we sat under him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet,&#8221; said the Egyptian, with great solemnity,
+&#8220;he is to drink tea at that very table. I hope you are
+sensible of the honour, Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Am I no?&#8221; said Nanny, whose education had not
+included sarcasm. &#8220;I&#8217;m trying to keep frae thinking
+o&#8217;t till he&#8217;s gone, in case I should let the teapot fall.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have nothing to thank me for, Nanny,&#8221; said
+Gavin, &#8220;but much for which to thank this&mdash;this&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This haggarty-taggarty Egyptian,&#8221; suggested the
+girl. Then, looking at Gavin curiously, she said, &#8220;But
+my name is Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s short for Barbara,&#8221; said Nanny; &#8220;but Babbie
+what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Babbie Watt,&#8221; replied the gypsy, as if one
+name were as good as another.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_130' name='page_130'></a>130</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, then, lift the lid off the kettle, Babbie,&#8221; said
+Nanny, &#8220;for it&#8217;s boiling ower.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin looked at Nanny with admiration and envy,
+for she had said Babbie as coolly as if it was the name
+of a pepper-box.</p>
+<p>Babbie tucked up her sleeves to wash Nanny&#8217;s cups
+and saucers, which even in the most prosperous days of
+the mud house had only been in use once a week, and
+Gavin was so eager to help that he bumped his head on
+the plate-rack.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sit there,&#8221; said Babbie, authoritatively, pointing,
+with a cup in her hand, to a stool, &#8220;and don&#8217;t rise till I
+give you permission.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Nanny&#8217;s amazement, he did as he was bid.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I got the things in the little shop you told me of,&#8221;
+the Egyptian continued, addressing the mistress of the
+house, &#8220;but the horrid man would not give them to me
+until he had seen my money.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Enoch would be suspicious o&#8217; you,&#8221; Nanny explained,
+&#8220;you being an Egyptian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; said Babbie, with a side-glance at the minister,
+&#8220;I am only an Egyptian. Is that why you dislike
+me, Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin hesitated foolishly over his answer, and the
+Egyptian, with a towel round her waist, made a pretty
+gesture of despair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He neither likes you nor dislikes you,&#8221; Nanny explained;
+&#8220;you forget he&#8217;s a minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is what I cannot endure,&#8221; said Babbie, putting
+the towel to her eyes, &#8220;to be neither liked nor disliked.
+Please hate me, Mr. Dishart, if you cannot lo&mdash;ove
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her face was behind the towel, and Gavin could not
+decide whether it was the face or the towel that shook
+with agitation. He gave Nanny a look that asked,
+&#8220;Is she really crying?&#8221; and Nanny telegraphed back,
+&#8220;I question it.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_131' name='page_131'></a>131</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Come, come,&#8221; said the minister, gallantly, &#8220;I did
+not say that I disliked you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Even this desperate compliment had not the desired
+effect, for the gypsy continued to sob behind her screen.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can honestly say,&#8221; went on Gavin, as solemnly as
+if he were making a statement in a court of justice,
+&#8220;that I like you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then the Egyptian let drop her towel, and replied
+with equal solemnity:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, tank oo! Nanny, the minister says me is a dood
+&#8217;ittle dirl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He didna gang that length,&#8221; said Nanny, sharply,
+to cover Gavin&#8217;s confusion. &#8220;Set the things, Babbie,
+and I&#8217;ll make the tea.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian obeyed demurely, pretending to wipe
+her eyes every time Gavin looked at her. He frowned
+at this, and then she affected to be too overcome to go
+on with her work.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me, Nanny,&#8221; she asked presently, &#8220;what sort
+of man this Enoch is, from whom I bought the things?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is not very regular, I fear,&#8221; answered Gavin,
+who felt that he had sat silent and self-conscious on his
+stool too long.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean that he drinks?&#8221; asked Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I mean regular in his attendance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian&#8217;s face showed no enlightenment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;His attendance at church,&#8221; Gavin explained.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s far frae it,&#8221; said Nanny, &#8220;and as a body kens,
+Joe Cruickshanks, the atheist, has the wite o&#8217; that.
+The scoundrel telled Enoch that the great ministers in
+Edinbury and London believed in no hell except sic as
+your ain conscience made for you, and ever since syne
+Enoch has been careless about the future state.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; said Babbie, waving the Church aside, &#8220;what
+I want to know is whether he is a single man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is not,&#8221; Gavin replied; &#8220;but why do you want
+to know that?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_132' name='page_132'></a>132</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Because single men are such gossips. I am sorry
+he is not single, as I want him to repeat to everybody
+what I told him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Trust him to tell Susy,&#8221; said Nanny, &#8220;and Susy to
+tell the town.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;His wife is a gossip?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, she&#8217;s aye tonguing, especially about her teeth.
+They&#8217;re folk wi&#8217; siller, and she has a set o&#8217; false teeth.
+It&#8217;s fair scumfishing to hear her blawing about thae
+teeth, she&#8217;s so fleid we dinna ken that they&#8217;re
+false.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny had spoken jealously, but suddenly she trembled
+with apprehension.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Babbie,&#8221; she cried, &#8220;you didna speak about the
+poorhouse to Enoch?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian shook her head, though of the poorhouse
+she had been forced to speak, for Enoch, having
+seen the doctor going home alone, insisted on knowing
+why.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I knew,&#8221; the gypsy said, &#8220;that the Thrums
+people would be very unhappy until they discovered
+where you get the money I am to give you, and as that
+is a secret, I hinted to Enoch that your benefactor is
+Mr. Dishart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You should not have said that,&#8221; interposed Gavin.
+&#8220;I cannot foster such a deception.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They will foster it without your help,&#8221; the Egyptian
+said. &#8220;Besides, if you choose, you can say you
+get the money from a friend.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, you can say that,&#8221; Nanny entreated with such
+eagerness that Babbie remarked a little bitterly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is no fear of Nanny&#8217;s telling any one that the
+friend is a gypsy girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, na,&#8221; agreed Nanny, again losing Babbie&#8217;s sarcasm.
+&#8220;I winna let on. It&#8217;s so queer to be befriended
+by an Egyptian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is scarcely respectable,&#8221; Babbie said.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_133' name='page_133'></a>133</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no,&#8221; answered simple Nanny.</p>
+<p>I suppose Nanny&#8217;s unintentional cruelty did hurt
+Babbie as much as Gavin thought. She winced, and
+her face had two expressions, the one cynical, the other
+pained. Her mouth curled as if to tell the minister
+that gratitude was nothing to her, but her eyes had to
+struggle to keep back a tear. Gavin was touched, and
+she saw it, and for a moment they were two people who
+understood each other.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I, at least,&#8221; Gavin said in a low voice, &#8220;will know
+who is the benefactress, and think none the worse of
+her because she is a gypsy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At this Babbie smiled gratefully to him, and then
+both laughed, for they had heard Nanny remarking to
+the kettle, &#8220;But I wouldna hae been nane angry if she
+had telled Enoch that the minister was to take his tea
+here. Susy&#8217;ll no believe&#8217;t though I tell her, as tell her
+I will.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To Nanny the table now presented a rich appearance,
+for besides the teapot there were butter and loaf-bread
+and cheesies: a biscuit of which only Thrums knows
+the secret.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Draw in your chair, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; she said, in suppressed
+excitement.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Babbie, &#8220;you take this chair, Mr. Dishart,
+and Nanny will have that one, and I can sit
+humbly on the stool.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Nanny held up her hands in horror.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep us a&#8217;!&#8221; she exclaimed; &#8220;the lassie thinks her
+and me is to sit down wi&#8217; the minister! We&#8217;re no to
+gang that length, Babbie; we&#8217;re just to stand and
+serve him, and syne we&#8217;ll sit down when he has
+risen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Delightful!&#8221; said Babbie, clapping her hands.
+&#8220;Nanny, you kneel on that side of him, and I will
+kneel on this. You will hold the butter and I the
+biscuits.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_134' name='page_134'></a>134</span></div>
+<p>But Gavin, as this girl was always forgetting, was a
+lord of creation.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sit down both of you at once!&#8221; he thundered, &#8220;I
+command you.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_15' id='linki_15'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus164.jpg' alt='' title='' width='500' height='332' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;SIT DOWN, BOTH OF YOU, AT ONCE!&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>Then the two women fell into their seats; Nanny in
+terror, Babbie affecting it.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_135' name='page_135'></a>135</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FIFTEEN_THE_MINISTER_BEWITCHEDSECOND_SERMON_AGAINST_WOMEN' id='CHAPTER_FIFTEEN_THE_MINISTER_BEWITCHEDSECOND_SERMON_AGAINST_WOMEN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Fifteen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE MINISTER BEWITCHED&mdash;SECOND SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>To Nanny it was a dizzying experience to sit at the
+head of her own table, and, with assumed calmness, invite
+the minister not to spare the loaf-bread. Babbie&#8217;s
+prattle, and even Gavin&#8217;s answers, were but an indistinct
+noise to her, to be as little regarded, in the
+excitement of watching whether Mr. Dishart noticed
+that there was a knife for the butter, as the music of the
+river by a man who is catching trout. Every time
+Gavin&#8217;s cup went to his lips Nanny calculated (correctly)
+how much he had drunk, and yet, when the
+right moment arrived, she asked in the English voice
+that is fashionable at ceremonies, &#8220;if his cup was toom.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Perhaps it was well that Nanny had these matters to
+engross her, for though Gavin spoke freely, he was saying
+nothing of lasting value, and some of his remarks
+to the Egyptian, if preserved for the calmer contemplation
+of the morrow, might have seemed frivolous to
+himself. Usually his observations were scrambled for,
+like ha&#8217;pence at a wedding, but to-day they were only
+for one person. Infected by the Egyptian&#8217;s high spirits,
+Gavin had laid aside the minister with his hat, and what
+was left was only a young man. He who had stamped
+his feet at thought of a soldier&#8217;s cloak now wanted to
+be reminded of it. The little minister, who used to
+address himself in terms of scorn every time he wasted
+an hour, was at present dallying with a teaspoon. He
+even laughed boisterously, flinging back his head, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_136' name='page_136'></a>136</span>
+little knew that behind Nanny&#8217;s smiling face was a
+terrible dread, because his chair had once given way
+before.</p>
+<p>Even though our thoughts are not with our company,
+the mention of our name is a bell to which we usually
+answer. Hearing hers Nanny started.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can tell me, Nanny,&#8221; the Egyptian had said,
+with an arch look at the minister. &#8220;Oh, Nanny, for
+shame! How can you expect to follow our conversation
+when you only listen to Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is saying, Nanny,&#8221; Gavin broke in, almost gaily
+for a minister, &#8220;that she saw me recently wearing a
+cloak. You know I have no such thing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na,&#8221; Nanny answered artlessly, &#8220;you have just the
+thin brown coat wi&#8217; the braid round it, forby the ane
+you have on the now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see,&#8221; Gavin said to Babbie, &#8220;I could not have
+a new neckcloth, not to speak of a cloak, without everybody
+in Thrums knowing about it. I dare say Nanny
+knows all about the braid, and even what it cost.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Three bawbees the yard at Kyowowy&#8217;s shop,&#8221; replied
+Nanny, promptly, &#8220;and your mother sewed it on.
+Sam&#8217;l Fairweather has the marrows o&#8217;t on his top coat.
+No that it has the same look on him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nevertheless,&#8221; Babbie persisted, &#8220;I am sure the
+minister has a cloak; but perhaps he is ashamed of it.
+No doubt it is hidden away in the garret.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, we would hae kent o&#8217;t if it was there,&#8221; said
+Nanny.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it may be in a chest, and the chest may be
+locked,&#8221; the Egyptian suggested.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, but the kist in the garret isna locked,&#8221; Nanny
+answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you get to know all these things, Nanny?&#8221;
+asked Gavin, sighing.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_16' id='linki_16'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus168.jpg' alt='' title='' width='485' height='563' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;&#8216;HE ISN&#8217;T MARRIED?&#8217; ASKED BABBIE.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Your congregation tells me. Naebody would lay
+by news about a minister.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_137' name='page_137'></a>137</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But how do they know?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna ken. They just find out, because they&#8217;re so
+fond o&#8217; you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope they will never become so fond of me as
+that,&#8221; said Babbie. &#8220;Still, Nanny, the minister&#8217;s cloak
+is hidden somewhere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Losh, what would make him hod it?&#8221; demanded the
+old woman. &#8220;Folk that has cloaks doesna bury them
+in boxes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At the word &#8220;bury&#8221; Gavin&#8217;s hand fell on the table,
+and he returned to Nanny apprehensively.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That would depend on how the cloak was got,&#8221; said
+the cruel Egyptian. &#8220;If it was not his own&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lassie,&#8221; cried Nanny, &#8220;behave yoursel&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Or if he found it in his possession against his will?&#8221;
+suggested Gavin, slyly. &#8220;He might have got it from
+some one who picked it up cheap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;From his wife, for instance,&#8221; said Babbie, whereupon
+Gavin suddenly became interested in the floor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, ay, the minister was hitting at you there, Babbie,&#8221;
+Nanny explained, &#8220;for the way you made off wi&#8217;
+the captain&#8217;s cloak. The Thrums folk wondered less
+at your taking it than at your no keeping it. It&#8217;s said
+to be michty grand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was rather like the one the minister&#8217;s wife gave
+him,&#8221; said Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The minister has neither a wife nor a cloak,&#8221; retorted
+Nanny.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He isn&#8217;t married?&#8221; asked Babbie, the picture of
+incredulity.</p>
+<p>Nanny gathered from the minister&#8217;s face that he deputed
+to her the task of enlightening this ignorant girl,
+so she replied with emphasis, &#8220;Na, they hinna got him
+yet, and I&#8217;m cheated if it doesna tak them all their time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Thus do the best of women sell their sex for nothing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did wonder,&#8221; said the Egyptian, gravely, &#8220;at any
+mere woman&#8217;s daring to marry such a minister.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_138' name='page_138'></a>138</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; replied Nanny, spiritedly, &#8220;but there&#8217;s dauring
+limmers wherever there&#8217;s a single man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So I have often suspected,&#8221; said Babbie, duly
+shocked. &#8220;But, Nanny, I was told the minister had a
+wife, by one who said he saw her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He lied, then,&#8221; answered Nanny turning to Gavin
+for further instructions.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, see, the minister does not deny the horrid
+charge himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, and for the reason he didna deny the cloak: because
+it&#8217;s no worth his while. I&#8217;ll tell you wha your
+friend had seen. It would be somebody that would like
+to be Mrs. Dishart. There&#8217;s a hantle o&#8217; that kind. Ay,
+lassie, but wishing winna land a woman in a manse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was one of the soldiers,&#8221; Babbie said, &#8220;who told me
+about her. He said Mr. Dishart introduced her to him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sojers!&#8221; cried Nanny. &#8220;I could never thole the
+name o&#8217; them. Sanders in his young days hankered
+after joining them, and so he would, if it hadna been
+for the fechting. Ay, and now they&#8217;ve ta&#8217;en him awa
+to the gaol, and sworn lies about him. Dinna put any
+faith in sojers, lassie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was told,&#8221; Babbie went on, &#8220;that the minister&#8217;s
+wife was rather like me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Heaven forbid!&#8221; ejaculated Nanny, so fervently
+that all three suddenly sat back from the table.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m no meaning,&#8221; Nanny continued hurriedly, fearing
+to offend her benefactress, &#8220;but what you&#8217;re the
+bonniest tid I ever saw out o&#8217; an almanack. But you
+would ken Mr. Dishart&#8217;s contempt for bonny faces if
+you had heard his sermon against them. I didna hear
+it mysel&#8217;, for I&#8217;m no Auld Licht, but it did the work o&#8217;
+the town for an aucht days.&#8221;</p>
+<p>If Nanny had not taken her eyes off Gavin for the
+moment she would have known that he was now anxious
+to change the topic. Babbie saw it, and became
+suspicious.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_139' name='page_139'></a>139</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;When did he preach against the wiles of women,
+Nanny?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was long ago,&#8221; said Gavin, hastily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No so very lang syne,&#8221; corrected Nanny. &#8220;It was
+the Sabbath after the sojers was in Thrums; the day
+you changed your text so hurriedly. Some thocht you
+wasna weel, but Lang Tammas&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Thomas Whamond is too officious,&#8221; Gavin said with
+dignity. &#8220;I forbid you, Nanny, to repeat his story.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what made you change your text?&#8221; asked
+Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see he winna tell,&#8221; Nanny said, wistfully.
+&#8220;Ay, I dinna deny but what I would like richt to ken.
+But the session&#8217;s as puzzled as yoursel&#8217;, Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps more puzzled,&#8221; answered the Egyptian,
+with a smile that challenged Gavin&#8217;s frowns to combat
+and overthrow them. &#8220;What surprises me, Mr. Dishart,
+is that such a great man can stoop to see whether women
+are pretty or not. It was very good of you to remember
+me to-day. I suppose you recognized me by my frock?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;By your face,&#8221; he replied, boldly; &#8220;by your eyes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nanny,&#8221; exclaimed the Egyptian, &#8220;did you hear
+what the minister said?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Woe is me,&#8221; answered Nanny, &#8220;I missed it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He says he would know me anywhere by my eyes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So would I mysel&#8217;,&#8221; said Nanny.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what colour are they, Mr. Dishart?&#8221; demanded
+Babbie. &#8220;Don&#8217;t speak, Nanny, for I want to expose
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She closed her eyes tightly. Gavin was in a quandary.
+I suppose he had looked at her eyes too long to
+know much about them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Blue,&#8221; he guessed at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, they&#8217;re black,&#8221; said Nanny, who had doubtless
+known this for an hour. I am always marvelling
+over the cleverness of women, as every one must see
+who reads this story.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_140' name='page_140'></a>140</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;No but what they micht be blue in some lichts,&#8221;
+Nanny added, out of respect to the minister.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t defend him, Nanny,&#8221; said Babbie, looking
+reproachfully at Gavin. &#8220;I don&#8217;t see that any minister
+has a right to denounce women when he is so ignorant
+of his subject. I will say it, Nanny, and you need not
+kick me beneath the table.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Was not all this intoxicating to the little minister,
+who had never till now met a girl on equal terms? At
+twenty-one a man is a musical instrument given to the
+other sex, but it is not as instruments learned at school,
+for when She sits down to it she cannot tell what tune
+she is about to play. That is because she has no notion
+of what the instrument is capable. Babbie&#8217;s kind-heartedness,
+her gaiety, her coquetry, her moments of
+sadness, had been a witch&#8217;s fingers, and Gavin was still
+trembling under their touch. Even in being taken to
+task by her there was a charm, for every pout of her
+mouth, every shake of her head, said, &#8220;You like me,
+and therefore you have given me the right to tease
+you.&#8221; Men sign these agreements without reading
+them. But, indeed, man is a stupid animal at the best,
+and thinks all his life that he did not propose until he
+blurted out, &#8220;I love you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was later than it should have been when the
+minister left the mud house, and even then he only put
+on his hat because Babbie said that she must go.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But not your way,&#8221; she added. &#8220;I go into the wood
+and vanish. You know, Nanny, I live up a tree.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna say that,&#8221; said Nanny, anxiously, &#8220;or I&#8217;ll be
+fleid about the siller.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t fear about it. Mr. Dishart will get some of
+it to-morrow at the Kaims. I would bring it here, but
+I cannot come so far to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_17' id='linki_17'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus174.jpg' alt='' title='' width='469' height='667' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;I HAVE READ MY FORTUNE.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll hae peace to the end o&#8217; my days,&#8221; said the
+old woman, &#8220;and, Babbie, I wish the same to you wi&#8217;
+all my heart.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_141' name='page_141'></a>141</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; Babbie replied, mournfully, &#8220;I have read my
+fortune, Nanny, and there is not much happiness in it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope that is not true,&#8221; Gavin said, simply.</p>
+<p>They were standing at the door, and she was looking
+toward the hill, perhaps without seeing it. All at once
+it came to Gavin that this fragile girl might have a
+history far sadder and more turbulent than his.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you really care?&#8221; she asked, without looking at
+him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said stoutly, &#8220;I care.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because you do not know me,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because I do know you,&#8221; he answered.</p>
+<p>Now she did look at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe,&#8221; she said, making a discovery, &#8220;that you
+misunderstand me less than those who have known me
+longer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was a perilous confidence, for it at once made
+Gavin say &#8220;Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; she answered, frankly, &#8220;I am glad to hear that.
+I thought you did not really like me, because you never
+called me by my name.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin drew a great breath.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was not the reason,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>The reason was now unmistakable.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was wrong,&#8221; said the Egyptian, a little alarmed;
+&#8220;you do not understand me at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She returned to Nanny, and Gavin set off, holding
+his head high, his brain in a whirl. Five minutes afterwards,
+when Nanny was at the fire, the diamond ring
+on her little finger, he came back, looking like one who
+had just seen sudden death.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had forgotten,&#8221; he said, with a fierceness aimed at
+himself, &#8220;that to-morrow is the Sabbath.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Need that make any difference?&#8221; asked the gypsy.</p>
+<p>&#8220;At this hour on Monday,&#8221; said Gavin, hoarsely,
+&#8220;I will be at the Kaims.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He went away without another word, and Babbie
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_142' name='page_142'></a>142</span>
+watched him from the window. Nanny had not looked
+up from the ring.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What a pity he is a minister!&#8221; the girl said, reflectively.
+&#8220;Nanny, you are not listening.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The old woman was making the ring flash by the
+light of the fire.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nanny, do you hear me? Did you see Mr. Dishart
+come back?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard the door open,&#8221; Nanny answered, without
+taking her greedy eyes off the ring. &#8220;Was it him?
+Whaur did you get this, lassie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Give it me back, Nanny, I am going now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Nanny did not give it back; she put her other
+hand over it to guard it, and there she crouched, warming
+herself not at the fire, but at the ring.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Give it me, Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It winna come off my finger.&#8221; She gloated over it,
+nursed it, kissed it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must have it, Nanny.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian put her hand lightly on the old woman&#8217;s
+shoulder, and Nanny jumped up, pressing the ring to
+her bosom. Her face had become cunning and ugly;
+she retreated into a corner.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nanny, give me back my ring or I will take it from
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The cruel light of the diamond was in Nanny&#8217;s eyes
+for a moment, and then, shuddering, she said, &#8220;Tak
+your ring awa, tak it out o&#8217; my sicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the meantime Gavin was trudging home gloomily
+composing his second sermon against women. I have
+already given the entry in my own diary for that day:
+this is his:&mdash;&#8220;Notes on Jonah. Exchanged vol. xliii.,
+&#8216;European Magazine,&#8217; for Owen&#8217;s &#8216;Justification&#8217; (<i>per</i>
+flying stationer). Began Second Samuel. Visited
+Nanny Webster.&#8221; There is no mention of the Egyptian.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_143' name='page_143'></a>143</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_SIXTEEN_CONTINUED_MISBEHAVIOUR_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN' id='CHAPTER_SIXTEEN_CONTINUED_MISBEHAVIOUR_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN_WOMAN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Sixteen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />CONTINUED MISBEHAVIOUR OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>By the following Monday it was known at many
+looms that something sat heavily on the Auld Licht
+minister&#8217;s mind. On the previous day he had preached
+his second sermon of warning to susceptible young men,
+and his first mention of the word &#8220;woman&#8221; had blown
+even the sleepy heads upright. Now he had salt fish
+for breakfast, and on clearing the table Jean noticed
+that his knife and fork were uncrossed. He was observed
+walking into a gooseberry bush by Susy Linn, who
+possessed the pioneer spring-bed of Thrums, and always
+knew when her man jumped into it by suddenly finding
+herself shot to the ceiling. Lunan, the tinsmith, and
+two women, who had the luck to be in the street at the
+time, saw him stopping at Dr. McQueen&#8217;s door, as if
+about to knock, and then turning smartly away. His
+hat blew off in the school wynd, where a wind wanders
+ever, looking for hats, and he chased it so passionately
+that Lang Tammas went into Allardyce&#8217;s smiddy to
+say&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna like it. Of course he couldna afford to lose
+his hat, but he should hae run after it mair reverently.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin, indeed, was troubled. He had avoided speaking
+of the Egyptian to his mother. He had gone to
+McQueen&#8217;s house to ask the doctor to accompany him
+to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand he
+changed his mind, and now he was at the place of meeting
+alone. It was a day of thaw, nothing to be heard
+from a distance but the swish of curling-stones through
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_144' name='page_144'></a>144</span>
+water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the eldership
+was going on. Around him, Gavin saw only dejected
+firs with drops of water falling listlessly from them,
+clods of snow, and grass that rustled as if animals were
+crawling through it. All the roads were slack.</p>
+<p>I suppose no young man to whom society has not
+become a cheap thing can be in Gavin&#8217;s position, awaiting
+the coming of an attractive girl, without giving
+thought to what he should say to her. When in the
+pulpit or visiting the sick, words came in a rush to the
+little minister, but he had to set his teeth to determine
+what to say to the Egyptian.</p>
+<p>This was because he had not yet decided which of
+two women she was. Hardly had he started on one line
+of thought when she crossed his vision in a new light,
+and drew him after her.</p>
+<p>Her &#8220;Need that make any difference?&#8221; sang in his ear
+like another divit, cast this time at religion itself, and
+now he spoke aloud, pointing his finger at a fir: &#8220;I said
+at the mud house that I believed you because I knew
+you. To my shame be it said that I spoke falsely. How
+dared you bewitch me? In your presence I flung away
+the precious hours in frivolity; I even forgot the Sabbath.
+For this I have myself to blame. I am an unworthy
+preacher of the Word. I sinned far more than
+you who have been brought up godlessly from your
+cradle. Nevertheless, whoever you are, I call upon
+you, before we part never to meet again, to repent of
+your&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>And then it was no mocker of the Sabbath he was
+addressing, but a woman with a child&#8217;s face, and there
+were tears in her eyes. &#8220;Do you care?&#8221; she was saying,
+and again he answered, &#8220;Yes, I care.&#8221; This girl&#8217;s
+name was not Woman, but Babbie.</p>
+<p>Now Gavin made an heroic attempt to look upon both
+these women at once. &#8220;Yes, I believe in you,&#8221; he said
+to them, &#8220;but henceforth you must send your money to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_145' name='page_145'></a>145</span>
+Nanny by another messenger. You are a gypsy and I
+am a minister; and that must part us. I refuse to see
+you again. I am not angry with you, but as a minister&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was not the disappearance of one of the women
+that clipped this argument short; it was Babbie singing&mdash;</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;It fell on a day, on a bonny summer day,</p>
+<p class='indent2'>When the corn grew green and yellow,</p>
+<p>That there fell out a great dispute</p>
+<p class='indent2'>Between Argyle and Airly.</p>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;The Duke of Montrose has written to Argyle</p>
+<p class='indent2'>To come in the morning early,</p>
+<p>An&#8217; lead in his men by the back o&#8217; Dunkeld</p>
+<p class='indent2'>To plunder the bonny house o&#8217; Airly.&#8221;</p>
+</div></div>
+<p>&#8220;Where are you?&#8221; cried Gavin in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am watching you from my window so high,&#8221;
+answered the Egyptian; and then the minister, looking
+up, saw her peering at him from a fir.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did you get up there?&#8221; he asked in amazement.</p>
+<p>&#8220;On my broomstick,&#8221; Babbie replied, and sang on&mdash;</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;The lady looked o&#8217;er her window sae high,</p>
+<p class='indent2'>And oh! but she looked weary,</p>
+<p>And there she espied the great Argyle</p>
+<p class='indent2'>Come to plunder the bonny house o&#8217; Airly.&#8221;</p>
+</div></div>
+<p>&#8220;What are you doing there?&#8221; Gavin said, wrathfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is my home,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;I told you I
+lived in a tree.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come down at once,&#8221; ordered Gavin. To which the
+singer responded&mdash;</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Come down, come down, Lady Margaret,&#8217; he says;</p>
+<p class='indent2'>&#8216;Come down and kiss me fairly</p>
+<p>Or before the morning clear day light</p>
+<p class='indent2'>I&#8217;ll no leave a standing stane in Airly.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</div></div>
+<p>&#8220;If you do not come down this instant,&#8221; Gavin said
+in a rage, &#8220;and give me what I was so foolish as to
+come for, I&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_146' name='page_146'></a>146</span></div>
+<p>The Egyptian broke in&mdash;</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I wouldna kiss thee, great Argyle,</p>
+<p class='indent2'>I wouldna kiss thee fairly;</p>
+<p>I wouldna kiss thee, great Argyle,</p>
+<p class='indent2'>Gin you shouldna leave a standing stane in Airly.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+</div></div>
+<p>&#8220;You have deceived Nanny,&#8221; Gavin cried, hotly,
+&#8220;and you have brought me here to deride me. I will
+have no more to do with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He walked away quickly, but she called after him,
+&#8220;I am coming down. I have the money,&#8221; and next
+moment a snowball hit his hat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is for being cross,&#8221; she explained, appearing
+so unexpectedly at his elbow that he was taken aback.
+&#8220;I had to come close up to you before I flung it, or it
+would have fallen over my shoulder. Why are you so
+nasty to-day? and, oh, do you know you were speaking
+to yourself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are mistaken,&#8221; said Gavin, severely. &#8220;I was
+speaking to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You didn&#8217;t see me till I began to sing, did you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nevertheless I was speaking to you, or rather, I was
+saying to myself what&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What you had decided to say to me?&#8221; said the delighted
+gypsy. &#8220;Do you prepare your talk like
+sermons? I hope you have prepared something nice for
+me. If it is very nice I may give you this bunch of holly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was dressed as he had seen her previously, but
+for a cluster of holly berries at her breast.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t know that you will think it nice,&#8221; the minister
+answered, slowly, &#8220;but my duty&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it is about duty,&#8221; entreated Babbie, &#8220;don&#8217;t say it.
+Don&#8217;t, and I will give you the berries.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She took the berries from her dress, smiling triumphantly
+the while like one who had discovered a cure for
+duty; and instead of pointing the finger of wrath at
+her, Gavin stood expectant.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_147' name='page_147'></a>147</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But no,&#8221; he said, remembering who he was, and
+pushing the gift from him, &#8220;I will not be bribed. I
+must tell you&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now,&#8221; said the Egyptian, sadly, &#8220;I see you are
+angry with me. Is it because I said I lived in a tree?
+Do forgive me for that dreadful lie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She had gone on her knees before he could stop her,
+and was gazing imploringly at him, with her hands
+clasped.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are mocking me again,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;but I am
+not angry with you. Only you must understand&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>She jumped up and put her fingers to her ears.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see I can hear nothing,&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen while I tell you&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t hear a word. Why do you scold me when I
+have kept my promise? If I dared to take my fingers
+from my ears I would give you the money for Nanny.
+And, Mr. Dishart, I must be gone in five minutes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In five minutes!&#8221; echoed Gavin, with such a dismal
+face that Babbie heard the words with her eyes, and
+dropped her hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why are you in such haste?&#8221; he asked, taking the
+five pounds mechanically, and forgetting all that he
+had meant to say.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because they require me at home,&#8221; she answered,
+with a sly glance at her fir. &#8220;And, remember, when I
+run away you must not follow me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t,&#8221; said Gavin, so promptly that she was
+piqued.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why not?&#8221; she asked. &#8220;But of course you only
+came here for the money. Well, you have got it.
+Good-bye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know that was not what I meant,&#8221; said Gavin,
+stepping after her. &#8220;I have told you already that whatever
+other people say, I trust you. I believe in you,
+Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Was that what you were saying to the tree?&#8221; asked
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_148' name='page_148'></a>148</span>
+the Egyptian, demurely. Then, perhaps thinking it
+wisest not to press this point, she continued irrelevantly,
+&#8220;It seems such a pity that you are a minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A pity to be a minister!&#8221; exclaimed Gavin, indignantly.
+&#8220;Why, why, you&mdash;why, Babbie, how have you
+been brought up?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In a curious way,&#8221; Babbie answered, shortly, &#8220;but
+I can&#8217;t tell you about that just now. Would you like
+to hear all about me?&#8221; Suddenly she seemed to have
+become confidential.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you really think me a gypsy?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have tried not to ask myself that question.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because it seems like doubting your word.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t see how you can think of me at all without
+wondering who I am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, and so I try not to think of you at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know that you need do that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have not quite succeeded.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian&#8217;s pique had vanished, but she may
+have thought that the conversation was becoming dangerous,
+for she said abruptly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I sometimes think about you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you?&#8221; said Gavin, absurdly gratified. &#8220;What
+do you think about me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder,&#8221; answered the Egyptian, pleasantly,
+&#8220;which of us is the taller.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin&#8217;s fingers twitched with mortification, and not
+only his fingers but his toes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let us measure,&#8221; she said, sweetly, putting her back
+to his. &#8220;You are not stretching your neck, are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the minister broke away from her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is one subject,&#8221; he said, with great dignity,
+&#8220;that I allow no one to speak of in my presence, and
+that is my&mdash;my height.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His face was as white as his cravat when the surprised
+Egyptian next looked at him, and he was panting
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_149' name='page_149'></a>149</span>
+like one who has run a mile. She was ashamed of herself,
+and said so.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is a topic I would rather not speak about,&#8221; Gavin
+answered, dejectedly, &#8220;especially to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He meant that he would rather be a tall man in her
+company than in any other, and possibly she knew this,
+though all she answered was&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You wanted to know if I am really a gypsy. Well,
+I am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;An ordinary gypsy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think me ordinary?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish I knew what to think of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, well, that is my forbidden topic. But we have
+a good many ideas in common after all, have we not,
+though you are only a minis&mdash;I mean, though I am only
+a gypsy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>There fell between them a silence that gave Babbie
+time to remember she must go.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have already stayed too long,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Give
+my love to Nanny, and say that I am coming to see her
+soon, perhaps on Monday. I don&#8217;t suppose you will
+be there on Monday, Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I cannot say.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you will be too busy. Are you to take the holly
+berries?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had better not,&#8221; said Gavin, dolefully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, if you don&#8217;t want them&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Give them to me,&#8221; he said, and as he took them his
+hand shook.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know why you are looking so troubled,&#8221; said the
+Egyptian, archly. &#8220;You think I am to ask you the
+colour of my eyes, and you have forgotten again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He would have answered, but she checked him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Make no pretence,&#8221; she said, severely; &#8220;I know you
+think they are blue.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She came close to him until her face almost touched
+his.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_150' name='page_150'></a>150</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Look hard at them,&#8221; she said, solemnly, &#8220;and after
+this you may remember that they are black, black,
+black!&#8221;</p>
+<p>At each repetition of the word she shook her head in
+his face. She was adorable. Gavin&#8217;s arms&mdash;but they
+met on nothing. She had run away.</p>
+<p>When the little minister had gone, a man came from
+behind a tree and shook his fist in the direction taken
+by the gypsy. It was Rob Dow, black with passion.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the Egyptian!&#8221; he cried. &#8220;You limmer, wha
+are you that hae got haud o&#8217; the minister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He pursued her, but she vanished as from Gavin in
+Windyghoul.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A common Egyptian!&#8221; he muttered when he had
+to give up the search. &#8220;But take care, you little devil,&#8221;
+he called aloud; &#8220;take care; if I catch you playing
+pranks wi&#8217; that man again I&#8217;ll wring your neck like a
+hen&#8217;s!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_151' name='page_151'></a>151</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN_INTRUSION_OF_HAGGART_INTO_THESE_PAGES_AGAINST_THE_AUTHORS_WISH' id='CHAPTER_SEVENTEEN_INTRUSION_OF_HAGGART_INTO_THESE_PAGES_AGAINST_THE_AUTHORS_WISH'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Seventeen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />INTRUSION OF HAGGART INTO THESE PAGES AGAINST THE AUTHOR&#8217;S WISH.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Margaret having heard the doctor say that one may
+catch cold in the back, had decided instantly to line
+Gavin&#8217;s waistcoat with flannel. She was thus engaged,
+with pins in her mouth and the scissors hiding from her
+every time she wanted them, when Jean, red and flurried,
+abruptly entered the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There! I forgot to knock at the door again,&#8221; Jean
+exclaimed, pausing contritely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never mind. Is it Rob Dow wanting the minister?&#8221;
+asked Margaret, who had seen Rob pass the manse dyke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, he wasna wanting to see the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, then, he came to see you, Jean,&#8221; said Margaret,
+archly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A widow man!&#8221; cried Jean, tossing her head. &#8220;But
+Rob Dow was in no condition to be friendly wi&#8217; onybody
+the now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean, you don&#8217;t mean that he has been drinking
+again?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I canna say he was drunk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then what condition was he in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was in a&mdash;a swearing condition,&#8221; Jean answered,
+guardedly. &#8220;But what I want to speir at you is, can I
+gang down to the Tenements for a minute? I&#8217;ll run
+there and back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly you can go, Jean, but you must not run.
+You are always running. Did Dow bring you word
+that you were wanted in the Tenements?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_152' name='page_152'></a>152</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;No exactly, but I&mdash;I want to consult Tammas Haggart
+about&mdash;about something.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;About Dow, I believe, Jean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, but about something he has done. Oh, ma&#8217;am,
+you surely dinna think I would take a widow man?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was the day after Gavin&#8217;s meeting with the Egyptian
+at the Kaims, and here is Jean&#8217;s real reason for
+wishing to consult Haggart. Half an hour before she
+hurried to the parlour she had been at the kitchen door
+wondering whether she should spread out her washing
+in the garret or risk hanging it in the courtyard. She
+had just decided on the garret when she saw Rob Dow
+morosely regarding her from the gateway.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur is he?&#8221; growled Rob.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s out, but it&#8217;s no for me to say whaur he is,&#8221;
+replied Jean, whose weakness was to be considered a
+church official. &#8220;No that I ken,&#8221; truthfulness compelled
+her to add, for she had an ambition to be
+everything she thought Gavin would like a woman
+to be.</p>
+<p>Rob seized her wrists viciously and glowered into her
+face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re ane o&#8217; them,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let me go. Ane o&#8217; what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ane o&#8217; thae limmers called women.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sal,&#8221; retorted Jean with spirit, &#8220;you&#8217;re ane o&#8217; thae
+brutes called men. You&#8217;re drunk, Rob Dow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In the legs maybe, but no higher. I haud a heap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Drunk again, after all your promises to the minister!
+And you said yoursel&#8217; that he had pulled you out o&#8217; hell
+by the root.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s himsel&#8217; that has flung me back again,&#8221; Rob
+said, wildly. &#8220;Jean Baxter, what does it mean when a
+minister carries flowers in his pouch; ay, and takes
+them out to look at them ilka minute?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you ken about the holly?&#8221; asked Jean, off
+her guard.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_153' name='page_153'></a>153</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You limmer,&#8221; said Dow, &#8220;you&#8217;ve been in his
+pouches.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a lie!&#8221; cried the outraged Jean. &#8220;I just saw
+the holly this morning in a jug on his chimley.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Carefully put by? Is it hod on the chimley? Does
+he stand looking at it? Do you tell me he&#8217;s fond-like
+o&#8217;t?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mercy me!&#8221; Jean exclaimed, beginning to shake;
+&#8220;wha is she, Rob Dow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let me see it first in its jug,&#8221; Rob answered, slyly,
+&#8220;and syne I may tell you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was not the only time Jean had been asked to
+show the minister&#8217;s belongings. Snecky Hobart, among
+others, had tried on Gavin&#8217;s hat in the manse kitchen,
+and felt queer for some time afterwards. Women had
+been introduced on tiptoe to examine the handle of his
+umbrella. But Rob had not come to admire. He
+snatched the holly from Jean&#8217;s hands, and casting it on
+the ground pounded it with his heavy boots, crying,
+&#8220;Greet as you like, Jean. That&#8217;s the end o&#8217; his flowers,
+and if I had the tawpie he got them frae I would serve
+her in the same way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell him what you&#8217;ve done,&#8221; said terrified Jean,
+who had tried to save the berries at the expense of her
+fingers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell him,&#8221; Dow roared; &#8220;and tell him what I said
+too. Ay, and tell him I was at the Kaims yestreen.
+Tell him I&#8217;m hunting high and low for an Egyptian
+woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He flung recklessly out of the courtyard, leaving
+Jean looking blankly at the mud that had been holly
+lately. Not his act of sacrilege was distressing her,
+but his news. Were these berries a love token? Had
+God let Rob Dow say they were a gypsy&#8217;s love token,
+and not slain him?</p>
+<p>That Rob spoke of the Egyptian of the riots Jean
+never doubted. It was known that the minister had
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_154' name='page_154'></a>154</span>
+met this woman in Nanny Webster&#8217;s house, but was it
+not also known that he had given her such a talking-to
+as she could never come above? Many could repeat the
+words in which he had announced to Nanny that his
+wealthy friends in Glasgow were to give her all she
+needed. They could also tell how majestic he looked
+when he turned the Egyptian out of the house. In
+short, Nanny having kept her promise of secrecy, the
+people had been forced to construct the scene in the
+mud house for themselves, and it was only their story
+that was known to Jean.</p>
+<p>She decided that, so far as the gypsy was concerned,
+Rob had talked trash. He had seen the holly in the
+minister&#8217;s hand, and, being in drink, had mixed it up
+with the gossip about the Egyptian. But that Gavin
+had preserved the holly because of the donor was as
+obvious to Jean as that the vase in her hand was empty.
+Who could she be? No doubt all the single ladies in
+Thrums were in love with him, but that, Jean was sure,
+had not helped them a step forward.</p>
+<p>To think was to Jean a waste of time. Discovering
+that she had been thinking, she was dismayed. There
+were the wet clothes in the basket looking reproachfully
+at her. She hastened back to Gavin&#8217;s room with the
+vase, but it too had eyes, and they said, &#8220;When the
+minister misses his holly he will question you.&#8221; Now
+Gavin had already smiled several times to Jean, and
+once he had marked passages for her in her &#8220;Pilgrim&#8217;s
+Progress,&#8221; with the result that she prized the marks
+more even than the passages. To lose his good opinion
+was terrible to her. In her perplexity she decided to
+consult wise Tammas Haggart, and hence her appeal to
+Margaret.</p>
+<p>To avoid Chirsty, the humourist&#8217;s wife, Jean sought
+Haggart at his workshop window, which was so small
+that an old book sufficed for its shutter. Haggart,
+whom she could see distinctly at his loom, soon guessed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_155' name='page_155'></a>155</span>
+from her knocks and signs (for he was strangely quick
+in the uptake) that she wanted him to open the window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to speak to you confidentially,&#8221; Jean said in
+a low voice. &#8220;If you saw a grand man gey fond o&#8217; a
+flower, what would you think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would think, Jean,&#8221; Haggart answered, reflectively,
+&#8220;that he had gien siller for&#8217;t; ay, I would
+wonder&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What would you wonder?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would wonder how muckle he paid.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if he was a&mdash;a minister, and keepit the flower&mdash;say
+it was a common rose&mdash;fond-like on his chimley,
+what would you think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would think it was a black-burning disgrace for a
+minister to be fond o&#8217; flowers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna haud wi&#8217; that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean,&#8221; said Haggart, &#8220;I allow no one to contradict
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasna my design. But, Tammas, if a&mdash;a minister
+was fond o&#8217; a particular flower&mdash;say a rose&mdash;and you
+destroyed it by an accident, when he wasna looking,
+what would you do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would gie him another rose for&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if you didna want him to ken you had meddled
+wi&#8217;t on his chimley, what would you do?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would put the new rose on the chimley, and he
+would never ken the differ.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what I&#8217;ll do,&#8221; muttered Jean, but she said
+aloud&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it micht be that particular rose he liked?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Havers, Jean. To a thinking man one rose is
+identical wi&#8217; another rose. But how are you speiring?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just out o&#8217; curiosity, and I maun be stepping now.
+Thank you kindly, Tammas, for your humour.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re welcome,&#8221; Haggart answered, and closed
+his window.</p>
+<p>That day Rob Dow spent in misery, but so little were
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_156' name='page_156'></a>156</span>
+his fears selfish that he scarcely gave a thought to his
+conduct at the manse. For an hour he sat at his loom
+with his arms folded. Then he slouched out of the
+house, cursing little Micah, so that a neighbour cried
+&#8220;You drucken scoundrel!&#8221; after him. &#8220;He may be a
+wee drunk,&#8221; said Micah in his father&#8217;s defence, &#8220;but
+he&#8217;s no mortal.&#8221; Rob <ins title='Was wondered'>wandered</ins> to the Kaims in search
+of the Egyptian, and returned home no happier. He
+flung himself upon his bed and dared Micah to light the
+lamp. About gloaming he rose, unable to keep his
+mouth shut on his thoughts any longer, and staggered
+to the Tenements to consult Haggart. He found the
+humourist&#8217;s door ajar, and Wearyworld listening at it.
+&#8220;Out o&#8217; the road!&#8221; cried Rob, savagely, and flung the
+policeman into the gutter.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was ill-dune, Rob Dow,&#8221; Wearyworld said,
+picking himself up leisurely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking it was weel-dune,&#8221; snarled Rob.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Wearyworld, &#8220;we needna quarrel about
+a difference o&#8217; opeenion; but, Rob&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Dow, however, had already entered the house and
+slammed the door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, ay,&#8221; muttered Wearyworld, departing, &#8220;you
+micht hae stood still, Rob, and argued it out wi&#8217;
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In less than an hour after his conversation with Jean
+at the window it had suddenly struck Haggart that the
+minister she spoke of must be Mr. Dishart. In two
+hours he had confided his suspicions to Chirsty. In ten
+minutes she had filled the house with gossips. Rob
+arrived to find them in full cry.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, Rob,&#8221; said Chirsty, genially, for gossip levels
+ranks, &#8220;you&#8217;re just in time to hear a query about the
+minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob,&#8221; said the Glen Quharity post, from whom I
+subsequently got the story, &#8220;Mr. Dishart has fallen in&mdash;in&mdash;what
+do you call the thing, Chirsty?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_157' name='page_157'></a>157</span></div>
+<p>Birse knew well what the thing was called, but the
+word is a staggerer to say in company.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In love,&#8221; answered Chirsty, boldly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now we ken what he was doing in the country yestreen,&#8221;
+said Snecky Hobart, &#8220;the which has been
+bothering us sair.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The manse is fu&#8217; o&#8217; the flowers she sends him,&#8221; said
+Tibbie Craik. &#8220;Jean&#8217;s at her wits&#8217;-end to ken whaur
+to put them a&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha is she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was Rob Dow who spoke. All saw he had been
+drinking, or they might have wondered at his vehemence.
+As it was, everybody looked at every other
+body, and then everybody sighed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, wha is she?&#8221; repeated several.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I see you ken nothing about her,&#8221; said Rob, much
+relieved; and he then lapsed into silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We ken a&#8217; about her,&#8221; said Snecky, &#8220;except just
+wha she is. Ay, that&#8217;s what we canna bottom. Maybe
+you could guess, Tammas?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe I could, Sneck,&#8221; Haggart replied, cautiously;
+&#8220;but on that point I offer no opinion.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If she bides on the Kaims road,&#8221; said Tibbie Craik,
+&#8220;she maun be a farmer&#8217;s dochter. What say you to
+Bell Finlay?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na; she&#8217;s U. P. But it micht be Loups o&#8217; Malcolm&#8217;s
+sister. She&#8217;s promised to Muckle Haws; but
+no doubt she would gie him the go-by at a word frae
+the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s mair likely,&#8221; said Chirsty, &#8220;to be the factor at
+the Spittal&#8217;s lassie. The factor has a grand garden,
+and that would account for such basketfuls o&#8217; flowers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaever she is,&#8221; said Birse, &#8220;I&#8217;m thinking he could
+hae done better.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be fine pleased wi&#8217; ony o&#8217; them,&#8221; said Tibbie,
+who had a magenta silk, and so was jealous of no one.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It hasna been proved,&#8221; Haggart pointed out, &#8220;that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_158' name='page_158'></a>158</span>
+the flowers came frae thae parts. She may be sending
+them frae Glasgow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I aye understood it was a Glasgow lady,&#8221; said Snecky.
+&#8220;He&#8217;ll be like the Tilliedrum minister that got a lady
+to send him to the college on the promise that he would
+marry her as soon as he got a kirk. She made him sign
+a paper.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The far-seeing limmer,&#8221; exclaimed Chirsty. &#8220;But
+if that&#8217;s what Mr. Dishart has done, how has he kept it
+so secret?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He wouldna want the women o&#8217; the congregation to
+ken he was promised till after they had voted for him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna haud wi&#8217; that explanation o&#8217;t,&#8221; said Haggart,
+&#8220;but I may tell you that I ken for sure she&#8217;s a
+Glasgow leddy. Lads, ministers is near aye bespoke
+afore they&#8217;re licensed. There&#8217;s a michty competition
+for them in the big toons. Ay, the leddies just stand
+at the college gates, as you may say, and snap them up
+as they come out.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And just as well for the ministers, I&#8217;se uphaud,&#8221;
+said Tibbie, &#8220;for it saves them a heap o&#8217; persecution
+when they come to the like o&#8217; Thrums. There was Mr.
+Meiklejohn, the U. P. minister: he was no sooner placed
+than every genteel woman in the town was persecuting
+him. The Miss Dobies was the maist shameless; they
+fair hunted him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Snecky; &#8220;and in the tail o&#8217; the day ane
+o&#8217; them snacked him up. Billies, did you ever hear
+o&#8217; a minister being refused?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Weel, then, I have; and by a widow woman too.
+His name was Samson, and if it had been Tamson she
+would hae ta&#8217;en him. Ay, you may look, but it&#8217;s true.
+Her name was Turnbull, and she had another gent after
+her, name o&#8217; Tibbets. She couldna make up her mind
+atween them, and for a while she just keeped them dangling
+on. Ay, but in the end she took Tibbets. And
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_159' name='page_159'></a>159</span>
+what, think you, was her reason? As you ken, thae
+grand folk has their initials on their spoons and nichtgowns.
+Ay, weel, she thocht it would be mair handy
+to take Tibbets, because if she had ta&#8217;en the minister
+the <i>T&#8217;s</i> would have had to be changed to <i>S&#8217;s</i>. It was
+thoctfu&#8217; o&#8217; her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is Tibbets living?&#8221; asked Haggart sharply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; he&#8217;s dead.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What,&#8221; asked Haggart, &#8220;was the corp to trade?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna ken.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thocht no,&#8221; said Haggart, triumphantly. &#8220;Weel,
+I warrant he was a minister too. Ay, catch a woman
+giving up a minister, except for another minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>All were looking on Haggart with admiration, when
+a voice from the door cried&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen, and I&#8217;ll tell you a queerer ane than that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dagont,&#8221; cried Birse, &#8220;it&#8217;s Wearywarld, and he has
+been hearkening. Leave him to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>When the post returned, the conversation was back
+at Mr. Dishart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, lathies,&#8221; Haggart was saying, &#8220;daftness about
+women comes to all, gentle and simple, common and
+colleged, humourists and no humourists. You say Mr.
+Dishart has preached ower muckle at women to stoop
+to marriage, but that makes no differ. Mony a humorous
+thing hae I said about women, and yet Chirsty has
+me. It&#8217;s the same wi&#8217; ministers. A&#8217; at aince they see
+a lassie no&#8217; unlike ither lassies, away goes their learning,
+and they skirl out, &#8216;You dawtie!&#8217; That&#8217;s what
+comes to all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it hasna come to Mr. Dishart,&#8221; cried Rob Dow,
+jumping to his feet. He had sought Haggart to tell
+him all, but now he saw the wisdom of telling nothing.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m sick o&#8217; your blathers. Instead o&#8217; the minister&#8217;s
+being sweethearting yesterday, he was just at the
+Kaims visiting the gamekeeper. I met him in the
+Wast town-end, and gaed there and back wi&#8217; him.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_160' name='page_160'></a>160</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s proof it&#8217;s a Glasgow leddy,&#8221; said Snecky.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I tell you there&#8217;s no leddy ava!&#8221; swore Rob.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yea, and wha sends the baskets o&#8217; flowers, then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was only one flower,&#8221; said Rob, turning to
+his host.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I aye understood,&#8221; said Haggart heavily, &#8220;that
+there was only one flower.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But though there was just ane,&#8221; persisted Chirsty,
+&#8220;what we want to ken is wha gae him it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was me that gae him it,&#8221; said Rob; &#8220;it was
+growing on the roadside, and I plucked it and gae it to
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The company dwindled away shamefacedly, yet unconvinced;
+but Haggart had courage to say slowly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Rob, I had aye a notion that he got it frae
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Meanwhile, Gavin, unaware that talk about him and
+a woman unknown had broken out in Thrums, was gazing,
+sometimes lovingly and again with scorn, at a little
+bunch of holly-berries which Jean had gathered from
+her father&#8217;s garden. Once she saw him fling them out
+of his window, and then she rejoiced. But an hour
+afterwards she saw him pick them up, and then she
+mourned. Nevertheless, to her great delight, he
+preached his third sermon against Woman on the following
+Sabbath. It was universally acknowledged to be
+the best of the series. It was also the last.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_161' name='page_161'></a>161</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN_CADDAMLOVE_LEADING_TO_A_RUPTURE' id='CHAPTER_EIGHTEEN_CADDAMLOVE_LEADING_TO_A_RUPTURE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Eighteen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />CADDAM&mdash;LOVE LEADING TO A RUPTURE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Gavin told himself not to go near the mud house on
+the following Monday; but he went. The distance is
+half a mile, and the time he took was two hours. This
+was owing to his setting out due west to reach a point
+due north; yet with the intention of deceiving none
+save himself. His reason had warned him to avoid the
+Egyptian, and his desires had consented to be dragged
+westward because they knew he had started too soon.
+When the proper time came they knocked reason on the
+head and carried him straight to Caddam. Here reason
+came to, and again began to state its case. Desires
+permitted him to halt, as if to argue the matter out, but
+were thus tolerant merely because from where he stood
+he could see Nanny&#8217;s doorway. When Babbie emerged
+from it reason seems to have made one final effort, for
+Gavin quickly took that side of a tree which is loved of
+squirrels at the approach of an enemy. He looked
+round the tree-trunk at her, and then reason discarded
+him. The gypsy had two empty pans in her hands.
+For a second she gazed in the minister&#8217;s direction, then
+demurely leaped the ditch of leaves that separated
+Nanny&#8217;s yard from Caddam, and strolled into the wood.
+Discovering with indignation that he had been skulking
+behind the tree, Gavin came into the open. How
+good of the Egyptian, he reflected, to go to the well for
+water, and thus save the old woman&#8217;s arms! Reason
+shouted from near the manse (he only heard the echo)
+that he could still make up on it. &#8220;Come along,&#8221;
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_162' name='page_162'></a>162</span>
+said his desires, and marched him prisoner to the
+well.</p>
+<p>The path which Babbie took that day is lost in blaeberry
+leaves now, and my little maid and I lately
+searched for an hour before we found the well. It was
+dry, choked with broom and stones, and broken rusty
+pans, but we sat down where Babbie and Gavin had
+talked, and I stirred up many memories. Probably two
+of those pans, that could be broken in the hands to-day
+like shortbread, were Nanny&#8217;s, and almost certainly the
+stones are fragments from the great slab that used to
+cover the well. Children like to peer into wells to see
+what the world is like at the other side, and so this
+covering was necessary. Rob Angus was the strong
+man who bore the stone to Caddam, flinging it a yard
+before him at a time. The well had also a wooden lid
+with leather hinges, and over this the stone was dragged.</p>
+<p>Gavin arrived at the well in time to offer Babbie the
+loan of his arms. In her struggle she had taken her
+lips into her mouth, but in vain did she tug at the stone,
+which refused to do more than turn round on the wood.
+But for her presence, the minister&#8217;s efforts would have
+been equally futile. Though not strong, however, he
+had the national horror of being beaten before a spectator,
+and once at school he had won a fight by telling his
+big antagonist to come on until the boy was tired of
+pummelling him. As he fought with the stone now,
+pains shot through his head, and his arms threatened to
+come away at the shoulders; but remove it he did.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How strong you are!&#8221; Babbie said with open
+admiration.</p>
+<p>I am sure no words of mine could tell how pleased the
+minister was; yet he knew he was not strong, and
+might have known that she had seen him do many
+things far more worthy of admiration without admiring
+them. This, indeed, is a sad truth, that we seldom
+give our love to what is worthiest in its object.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_163' name='page_163'></a>163</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;How curious that we should have met here,&#8221; Babbie
+said, in her dangerously friendly way, as they filled the
+pans. &#8220;Do you know I quite started when your shadow
+fell suddenly on the stone. Did you happen to be passing
+through the wood?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; answered truthful Gavin, &#8220;I was looking for
+you. I thought you saw me from Nanny&#8217;s door.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you? I only saw a man hiding behind a tree,
+and of course I knew it could not be you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin looked at her sharply, but she was not laughing
+at him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was I,&#8221; he admitted; &#8220;but I was not exactly hiding
+behind the tree.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You had only stepped behind it for a moment,&#8221; suggested
+the Egyptian.</p>
+<p>Her gravity gave way to laughter under Gavin&#8217;s suspicious
+looks, but the laughing ended abruptly. She
+had heard a noise in the wood, Gavin heard it too, and
+they both turned round in time to see two ragged boys
+running from them. When boys are very happy they
+think they must be doing wrong, and in a wood, of
+which they are among the natural inhabitants, they
+always take flight from the enemy, adults, if given time.
+For my own part, when I see a boy drop from a tree I
+am as little surprised as if he were an apple or a nut.
+But Gavin was startled, picturing these spies handing
+in the new sensation about him at every door, as a district
+visitor distributes tracts. The gypsy noted his
+uneasiness and resented it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What does it feel like to be afraid?&#8221; she asked, eyeing
+him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am afraid of nothing,&#8221; Gavin answered, offended
+in turn.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, you are. When you saw me come out of
+Nanny&#8217;s you crept behind a tree; when these boys
+showed themselves you shook. You are afraid of being
+seen with me. Go away, then; I don&#8217;t want you.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_164' name='page_164'></a>164</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Fear,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;is one thing, and prudence is
+another.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Another name for it,&#8221; Babbie interposed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not at all; but I owe it to my position to be careful.
+Unhappily, you do not seem to feel&mdash;to recognise&mdash;to
+know&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To know what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let us avoid the subject.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; the Egyptian said, petulantly. &#8220;I hate not to
+be told things. Why must you be &#8216;prudent?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You should see,&#8221; Gavin replied, awkwardly, &#8220;that
+there is a&mdash;a difference between a minister and a
+gypsy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if I am willing to overlook it?&#8221; asked Babbie,
+impertinently.</p>
+<p>Gavin beat the brushwood mournfully with his staff.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot allow you,&#8221; he said, &#8220;to talk disrespectfully
+of my calling. It is the highest a man can follow. I
+wish&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He checked himself; but he was wishing she could
+see him in his pulpit.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose,&#8221; said the gypsy, reflectively, &#8220;one must
+be very clever to be a minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;As for that&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; answered Gavin, waving his hand
+grandly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And it must be nice, too,&#8221; continued Babbie, &#8220;to be
+able to speak for a whole hour to people who can neither
+answer nor go away. Is it true that before you begin
+to preach you lock the door to keep the congregation
+in?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must leave you if you talk in that way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only wanted to know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Babbie, I am afraid you have little acquaintance
+with the inside of churches. Do you sit under
+anybody?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do I sit under anybody?&#8221; repeated Babbie, blankly.</p>
+<p>Is it any wonder that the minister sighed? &#8220;Whom
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_165' name='page_165'></a>165</span>
+do you sit under?&#8221; was his form of salutation to
+strangers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I mean, where do you belong?&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wanderers,&#8221; Babbie answered, still misunderstanding
+him, &#8220;belong to nowhere in particular.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am only asking you if you ever go to church?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that is what you mean. Yes, I go often.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What church?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You promised not to ask questions.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only mean what denomination do you belong to?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, the&mdash;the&mdash;&mdash;Is there an English church
+denomination?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin groaned.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that is my denomination,&#8221; said Babbie, cheerfully.
+&#8220;Some day, though, I am coming to hear you
+preach. I should like to see how you look in your gown.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We don&#8217;t wear gowns.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What a shame! But I am coming, nevertheless. I
+used to like going to church in Edinburgh.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have lived in Edinburgh?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We gypsies have lived everywhere,&#8221; Babbie said,
+lightly, though she was annoyed at having mentioned
+Edinburgh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But all gypsies don&#8217;t speak as you do,&#8221; said Gavin,
+puzzled again. &#8220;I don&#8217;t understand you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course you dinna,&#8221; replied Babbie, in broad
+Scotch. &#8220;Maybe, if you did, you would think that it&#8217;s
+mair imprudent in me to stand here cracking clavers
+wi&#8217; the minister than for the minister to waste his time
+cracking wi&#8217; me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then why do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because&mdash;&mdash;Oh, because prudence and I always
+take different roads.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me who you are, Babbie,&#8221; the minister entreated;
+&#8220;at least, tell me where your encampment is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have warned me against imprudence,&#8221; she
+said.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_166' name='page_166'></a>166</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I want,&#8221; Gavin continued, earnestly, &#8220;to know your
+people, your father and mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because,&#8221; he answered, stoutly, &#8220;I like their
+daughter.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that Babbie&#8217;s fingers played on one of the pans,
+and, for the moment, there was no more badinage in her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are a good man,&#8221; she said, abruptly; &#8220;but you
+will never know my parents.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are they dead?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They may be; I cannot tell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is all incomprehensible to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose it is. I never asked any one to understand
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps not,&#8221; said Gavin, excitedly; &#8220;but the time
+has come when I must know everything of you that is
+to be known.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie receded from him in quick fear.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must never speak to me in that way again,&#8221;
+she said, in a warning voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In what way?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin knew what way very well, but he thirsted to
+hear in her words what his own had implied. She did
+not choose to oblige him, however.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You never will understand me,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I daresay
+I might be more like other people now, if&mdash;if I had
+been brought up differently. Not,&#8221; she added, passionately,
+&#8220;that I want to be like others. Do you never
+feel, when you have been living a humdrum life for
+months, that you must break out of it, or go crazy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her vehemence alarmed Gavin, who hastened to
+reply&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My life is not humdrum. It is full of excitement,
+anxieties, pleasures, and I am too fond of the pleasures.
+Perhaps it is because I have more of the luxuries of life
+than you that I am so content with my lot.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, what can you know of luxuries?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_167' name='page_167'></a>167</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I have eighty pounds a year.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie laughed. &#8220;Are ministers so poor?&#8221; she
+asked, calling back her gravity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is a considerable sum,&#8221; said Gavin, a little hurt,
+for it was the first time he had ever heard any one speak
+disrespectfully of eighty pounds.</p>
+<p>The Egyptian looked down at her ring, and smiled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall always remember your saying that,&#8221; she told
+him, &#8220;after we have quarrelled.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We shall not quarrel,&#8221; said Gavin, decidedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, yes, we shall.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We might have done so once, but we know each
+other too well now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is why we are to quarrel.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;About what?&#8221; said the minister. &#8220;I have not
+blamed you for deriding my stipend, though how it can
+seem small in the eyes of a gypsy&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who can afford,&#8221; broke in Babbie, &#8220;to give Nanny
+seven shillings a week?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;True,&#8221; Gavin said, uncomfortably, while the Egyptian
+again toyed with her ring. She was too impulsive
+to be reticent except now and then, and suddenly she
+said, &#8220;You have looked at this ring before now. Do
+you know that if you had it on your finger you would
+be more worth robbing than with eighty pounds in each
+of your pockets?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where did you get it?&#8221; demanded Gavin, fiercely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am sorry I told you that,&#8221; the gypsy said, regretfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me how you got it,&#8221; Gavin insisted, his face
+now hard.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, you see, we are quarrelling.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Must know! You forget yourself,&#8221; she said
+haughtily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where
+did you get that ring?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_168' name='page_168'></a>168</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Good afternoon to you,&#8221; said the Egyptian, lifting
+her pans.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is not good afternoon,&#8221; he cried, detaining her.
+&#8220;It is good-bye for ever, unless you answer me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;As you please,&#8221; she said. &#8220;I will not tell you
+where I got my ring. It is no affair of yours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, Babbie, it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him
+say so, for she made no answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are no gypsy,&#8221; he continued, suspiciously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps not,&#8221; she answered, again taking the pans.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This dress is but a disguise.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It may be. Why don&#8217;t you go away and leave me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am going,&#8221; he replied, wildly. &#8220;I will have no
+more to do with you. Formerly I pitied you, but&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He could not have used a word more calculated to
+rouse the Egyptian&#8217;s ire, and she walked away with her
+head erect. Only once did she look back, and it was
+to say&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is prudence&mdash;now.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_169' name='page_169'></a>169</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_NINETEEN_CIRCUMSTANCES_LEADING_TO_THE_FIRST_SERMON_IN_APPROVAL_OF_WOMEN' id='CHAPTER_NINETEEN_CIRCUMSTANCES_LEADING_TO_THE_FIRST_SERMON_IN_APPROVAL_OF_WOMEN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Nineteen.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THE FIRST SERMON IN APPROVAL OF WOMEN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>A young man thinks that he alone of mortals is impervious
+to love, and so the discovery that he is in it
+suddenly alters his views of his own mechanism. It is
+thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone. Did Gavin
+make this discovery when the Egyptian left him?
+Apparently he only came to the brink of it and
+stood blind. He had driven her from him for ever,
+and his sense of loss was so acute that his soul
+cried out for the cure rather than for the name of the
+malady.</p>
+<p>In time he would have realised what had happened,
+but time was denied him, for just as he was starting for
+the mud house Babbie saved his dignity by returning
+to him. It was not her custom to fix her eyes on the
+ground as she walked, but she was doing so now, and
+at the same time swinging the empty pans. Doubtless
+she had come back for more water, in the belief that
+Gavin had gone. He pronounced her name with a
+sense of guilt, and she looked up surprised, or seemingly
+surprised, to find him still there.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought you had gone away long ago,&#8221; she said
+stiffly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Otherwise,&#8221; asked Gavin the dejected, &#8220;you would
+not have come back to the well?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certainly not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am very sorry. Had you waited another moment
+I should have been gone.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_170' name='page_170'></a>170</span></div>
+<p>This was said in apology, but the wilful Egyptian
+chose to change its meaning.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have no right to blame me for disturbing you,&#8221;
+she declared with warmth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did not. I only&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You could have been a mile away by this time.
+Nanny wanted more water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie scrutinised the minister sharply as she made
+this statement. Surely her conscience troubled her,
+for on his not answering immediately she said, &#8220;Do
+you presume to disbelieve me? What could have made
+me return except to fill the pans again?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing,&#8221; Gavin admitted eagerly, &#8220;and I assure
+you&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie should have been grateful to his denseness,
+but it merely set her mind at rest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say anything against me you choose,&#8221; she told him.
+&#8220;Say it as brutally as you like, for I won&#8217;t listen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stopped to hear his response to that, and she
+looked so cold that it almost froze on Gavin&#8217;s lips.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had no right,&#8221; he said, dolefully, &#8220;to speak to you
+as I did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You had not,&#8221; answered the proud Egyptian. She
+was looking away from him to show that his repentance
+was not even interesting to her. However, she had
+forgotten already not to listen.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What business is it of mine?&#8221; asked Gavin, amazed
+at his late presumption, &#8220;whether you are a gypsy or
+no?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;None whatever.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And as for the ring&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Here he gave her an opportunity of allowing that his
+curiosity about the ring was warranted. She declined
+to help him, however, and so he had to go on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The ring is yours,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and why should you
+not wear it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, indeed?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_171' name='page_171'></a>171</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I am afraid I have a very bad temper.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He paused for a contradiction, but she nodded her
+head in agreement.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And it is no wonder,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;that you think
+me a&mdash;a brute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m sure it is not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, Babbie, I want you to know that I despise myself
+for my base suspicions. No sooner did I see them
+than I loathed them and myself for harbouring them.
+Despite this mystery, I look upon you as a noble-hearted
+girl. I shall always think of you so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This time Babbie did not reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was all I had to say,&#8221; concluded Gavin, &#8220;except
+that I hope you will not punish Nanny for my sins.
+Good-bye.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; said the Egyptian, who was looking at
+the well.</p>
+<p>The minister&#8217;s legs could not have heard him give
+the order to march, for they stood waiting.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought,&#8221; said the Egyptian, after a moment,
+&#8220;that you said you were going.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was only&mdash;brushing my hat,&#8221; Gavin answered
+with dignity. &#8220;You want me to go?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She bowed, and this time he did set off.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can go if you like,&#8221; she remarked now.</p>
+<p>He turned at this.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you said&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; he began, diffidently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I did not,&#8221; she answered, with indignation.</p>
+<p>He could see her face at last.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&mdash;you are crying!&#8221; he exclaimed, in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because you are so unfeeling,&#8221; sobbed Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What have I said, what have I done?&#8221; cried Gavin,
+in an agony of self-contempt. &#8220;Oh, that I had gone
+away at once!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is cruel.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_172' name='page_172'></a>172</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;To say that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did I say?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That you wished you had gone away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But surely,&#8221; the minister faltered, &#8220;you asked me
+to go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How can you say so?&#8221; asked the gypsy, reproachfully.</p>
+<p>Gavin was distracted. &#8220;On my word,&#8221; he said,
+earnestly, &#8220;I thought you did. And now I have made
+you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody but myself;
+I am a hopeless lout.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now you are unjust,&#8221; said Babbie, hiding her face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Again? To you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, you stupid,&#8221; she said, beaming on him in her
+most delightful manner, &#8220;to yourself!&#8221;</p>
+<p>She gave him both her hands impetuously, and he
+did not let them go until she added:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am so glad that you are reasonable at last. Men
+are so much more unreasonable than women, don&#8217;t you
+think?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps we are,&#8221; Gavin said, diplomatically.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course you are. Why, every one knows that.
+Well, I forgive you; only remember, you have admitted
+that it was all your fault?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was pointing her finger at him like a schoolmistress,
+and Gavin hastened to answer&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You were not to blame at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I like to hear you say that,&#8221; explained the representative
+of the more reasonable sex, &#8220;because it was
+really all my fault.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it was; but of course I could not say so until
+you had asked my pardon. You must understand that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The representative of the less reasonable sex could
+not understand it, but he agreed recklessly, and it
+seemed so plain to the woman that she continued confidentially&mdash;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_173' name='page_173'></a>173</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I pretended that I did not want to make it up, but I
+did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you?&#8221; asked Gavin, elated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, but nothing could have induced me to make
+the first advance. You see why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because I was so unreasonable?&#8221; asked Gavin,
+doubtfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and nasty. You admit you were nasty?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Undoubtedly, I have an evil temper. It has brought
+me to shame many times.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; said the Egyptian, charitably.
+&#8220;I like it. I believe I admire bullies.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did I bully you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never knew such a bully. You quite frightened
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin began to be less displeased with himself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are sure,&#8221; inquired Babbie, &#8220;that you had no
+right to question me about the ring?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Certain,&#8221; answered Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I will tell you all about it,&#8221; said Babbie, &#8220;for
+it is natural that you should want to know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked eagerly at her, and she had become serious
+and sad.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must tell you at the same time,&#8221; she said, &#8220;who I
+am, and then&mdash;then we shall never see each other any
+more.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why should you tell me?&#8221; cried Gavin, his hand
+rising to stop her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because you have a right to know,&#8221; she replied,
+now too much in earnest to see that she was yielding a
+point. &#8220;I should prefer not to tell you; yet there is
+nothing wrong in my secret, and it may make you think
+of me kindly when I have gone away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t speak in that way, Babbie, after you have
+forgiven me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did I hurt you? It was only because I know that
+you cannot trust me while I remain a mystery. I know
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_174' name='page_174'></a>174</span>
+you would try to trust me, but doubts would cross your
+mind. Yes, they would; they are the shadows that
+mysteries cast. Who can believe a gypsy if the odds
+are against her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can,&#8221; said Gavin; but she shook her head, and so
+would he had he remembered three recent sermons of
+his own preaching.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had better tell you all,&#8221; she said, with an effort.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is my turn now to refuse to listen to you,&#8221; exclaimed
+Gavin, who was only a chivalrous boy. &#8220;Babbie,
+I should like to hear your story, but until you want
+to tell it to me I will not listen to it. I have faith in
+your honour, and that is sufficient.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was boyish, but I am glad Gavin said it; and now
+Babbie admired something in him that deserved admiration.
+His faith, no doubt, made her a better
+woman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I admit that I would rather tell you nothing just
+now,&#8221; she said, gratefully. &#8220;You are sure you will
+never say again that you don&#8217;t understand me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite sure,&#8221; said Gavin, bravely. &#8220;And by-and-by
+you will offer to tell me of your free will?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, don&#8217;t let us think of the future,&#8221; answered
+Babbie. &#8220;Let us be happy for the moment.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This had been the Egyptian&#8217;s philosophy always,
+but it was ill-suited for Auld Licht ministers, as one of
+them was presently to discover.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to make one confession, though,&#8221; Babbie
+continued, almost reluctantly. &#8220;When you were so
+nasty a little while ago, I didn&#8217;t go back to Nanny&#8217;s.
+I stood watching you from behind a tree, and then, for
+an excuse to come back, I&mdash;I poured out the water.
+Yes, and I told you another lie. I really came back to
+admit that it was all my fault, if I could not get you to
+say that it was yours. I am so glad you gave in first.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was very near him, and the tears had not yet
+dried on her eyes. They were laughing eyes, eyes in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_175' name='page_175'></a>175</span>
+distress, imploring eyes. Her pale face, smiling, sad,
+dimpled, yet entreating forgiveness, was the one prominent
+thing in the world to him just then. He wanted
+to kiss her. He would have done it as soon as her eyes
+rested on his, but she continued without regarding
+him&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How mean that sounds! Oh, if I were a man I
+should wish to be everything that I am not, and nothing
+that I am. I should scorn to be a liar, I should choose
+to be open in all things, I should try to fight the world
+honestly. But I am only a woman, and so&mdash;well, that
+is the kind of man I should like to marry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A minister may be all these things,&#8221; said Gavin,
+breathlessly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The man I could love,&#8221; Babbie went on, not heeding
+him, almost forgetting that he was there, &#8220;must
+not spend his days in idleness as the men I know do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He must be brave, no mere worker among others,
+but a leader of men.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All ministers are.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who makes his influence felt.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Assuredly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And takes the side of the weak against the strong,
+even though the strong be in the right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Always my tendency.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A man who has a mind of his own, and having once
+made it up stands to it in defiance even of&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of his session.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of the world. He must understand me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And be my master.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is his lawful position in the house.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He must not yield to my coaxing or tempers.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be weakness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But compel me to do his bidding; yes, even thrash
+me if&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_176' name='page_176'></a>176</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;If you won&#8217;t listen to reason. Babbie,&#8221; cried Gavin,
+&#8220;I am that man!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Here the inventory abruptly ended, and these two
+people found themselves staring at each other, as if of
+a sudden they had heard something dreadful. I do not
+know how long they stood thus, motionless and horrified.
+I cannot tell even which stirred first. All I know is
+that almost simultaneously they turned from each other
+and hurried out of the wood in opposite directions.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_177' name='page_177'></a>177</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTY_END_OF_THE_STATE_OF_INDECISION' id='CHAPTER_TWENTY_END_OF_THE_STATE_OF_INDECISION'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />END OF THE STATE OF INDECISION.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Long before I had any thought of writing this story,
+I had told it so often to my little maid that she now
+knows some of it better than I. If you saw me looking
+up from my paper to ask her, &#8220;What was it that Birse
+said to Jean about the minister&#8217;s flowers?&#8221; or, &#8220;Where
+was Hendry Munn hidden on the night of the riots?&#8221;
+and heard her confident answers, you would conclude
+that she had been in the thick of these events, instead
+of born many years after them. I mention this now
+because I have reached a point where her memory contradicts
+mine. She maintains that Rob Dow was told
+of the meeting in the wood by the two boys whom it
+disturbed, while my own impression is that he was a
+witness of it. If she is right, Rob must have succeeded
+in frightening the boys into telling no other person, for
+certainly the scandal did not spread in Thrums. After
+all, however, it is only important to know that Rob did
+learn of the meeting. Its first effect was to send him
+sullenly to the drink.</p>
+<p>Many a time since these events have I pictured what
+might have been their upshot had Dow confided their
+discovery to me. Had I suspected why Rob was grown
+so dour again, Gavin&#8217;s future might have been very
+different. I was meeting Rob now and again in the
+glen, asking, with an affected carelessness he did not
+bottom, for news of the little minister, but what he told
+me was only the gossip of the town; and what I should
+have known, that Thrums might never know it, he kept
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_178' name='page_178'></a>178</span>
+to himself. I suppose he feared to speak to Gavin, who
+made several efforts to reclaim him, but without avail.</p>
+<p>Yet Rob&#8217;s heart opened for a moment to one man, or
+rather was forced open by that man. A few days after
+the meeting at the well, Rob was bringing the smell of
+whisky with him down Banker&#8217;s Close when he ran
+against a famous staff, with which the doctor pinned
+him to the wall.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said the outspoken doctor, looking contemptuously
+into Rob&#8217;s bleary eyes, &#8220;so this is what your
+conversion amounts to? Faugh! Rob Dow, if you
+were half a man the very thought of what Mr. Dishart
+has done for you would make you run past the public
+houses.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the thocht o&#8217; him that sends me running to
+them,&#8221; growled Rob, knocking down the staff. &#8220;Let
+me alane.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you mean by that?&#8221; demanded McQueen,
+hooking him this time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Speir at himsel&#8217;; speir at the woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What woman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take your staff out o&#8217; my neck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not till you tell me why you, of all people, are
+speaking against the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Torn by a desire for a confidant and loyalty to Gavin,
+Rob was already in a fury.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say again,&#8221; he burst forth, &#8220;that I was speaking
+agin the minister and I&#8217;ll practise on you what I&#8217;m
+awid to do to her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who is she?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha&#8217;s wha?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The woman whom the minister&mdash;&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I said nothing about a woman,&#8221; said poor Rob,
+alarmed for Gavin. &#8220;Doctor, I&#8217;m ready to swear afore
+a bailie that I never saw them thegither at the Kaims.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Kaims!&#8221; exclaimed the doctor suddenly enlightened.
+&#8220;Pooh! you only mean the Egyptian.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_179' name='page_179'></a>179</span>
+Rob, make your mind easy about this. I know why he
+met her there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you ken that she has bewitched him; do you
+ken I saw him trying to put his arms round her; do you
+ken they have a trysting-place in Caddam wood?&#8221;</p>
+<p>This came from Rob in a rush, and he would fain
+have called it all back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m drunk, doctor, roaring drunk,&#8221; he said, hastily,
+&#8220;and it wasna the minister I saw ava; it was another
+man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nothing more could the doctor draw from Rob, but
+he had heard sufficient to smoke some pipes on. Like
+many who pride themselves on being recluses, McQueen
+loved the gossip that came to him uninvited; indeed,
+he opened his mouth to it as greedily as any man in
+Thrums. He respected Gavin, however, too much to
+find this new dish palatable, and so his researches to
+discover whether other Auld Lichts shared Rob&#8217;s fears
+were conducted with caution. &#8220;Is there no word of
+your minister&#8217;s getting a wife yet?&#8221; he asked several,
+but only got for answers, &#8220;There&#8217;s word o&#8217; a Glasgow
+leddy&#8217;s sending him baskets o&#8217; flowers,&#8221; or &#8220;He has
+his een open, but he&#8217;s taking his time; ay, he&#8217;s looking
+for the blade o&#8217; corn in the stack o&#8217; chaff.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This convinced McQueen that the congregation knew
+nothing of the Egyptian, but it did not satisfy him, and
+he made an opportunity of inviting Gavin into the
+surgery. It was, to the doctor, the cosiest nook in his
+house, but to me and many others a room that smelled
+of hearses. On the top of the pipes and tobacco tins
+that littered the table there usually lay a death certificate,
+placed there deliberately by the doctor to scare his
+sister, who had a passion for putting the surgery to
+rights.</p>
+<p>&#8220;By the way,&#8221; McQueen said, after he and Gavin
+had talked a little while, &#8220;did I ever advise you to
+smoke?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_180' name='page_180'></a>180</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It is your usual form of salutation,&#8221; Gavin answered,
+laughing. &#8220;But I don&#8217;t think you ever supplied me
+with a reason.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I daresay not. I am too experienced a doctor to
+cheapen my prescriptions in that way. However, here
+is one good reason. I have noticed, sir, that at your
+age a man is either a slave to a pipe or to a woman.
+Do you want me to lend you a pipe now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I am to understand,&#8221; asked Gavin, slyly,
+&#8220;that your locket came into your possession in your
+pre-smoking days, and that you merely wear it from
+habit?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tuts!&#8221; answered the doctor, buttoning his coat. &#8220;I
+told you there was nothing in the locket. If there is, I
+have forgotten what it is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are a hopeless old bachelor, I see,&#8221; said Gavin,
+unaware that the doctor was probing him. He was
+surprised next moment to find McQueen in the ecstasies
+of one who has won a rubber.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, then,&#8221; cried the jubilant doctor, &#8220;as you have
+confessed so much, tell me all about her. Name and
+address, please.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Confess! What have I confessed?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It won&#8217;t do, Mr. Dishart, for even your face betrays
+you. No, no, I am an old bird, but I have not forgotten
+the ways of the fledgelings. &#8216;Hopeless bachelor,&#8217;
+sir, is a sweetmeat in every young man&#8217;s mouth until
+of a sudden he finds it sour, and that means the banns.
+When is it to be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must find the lady first,&#8221; said the minister,
+uncomfortably.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You tell me, in spite of that face, that you have not
+fixed on her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The difficulty, I suppose, would be to persuade her
+to fix on me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a bit of it. But you admit there is some one?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who would have me?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_181' name='page_181'></a>181</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You are wriggling out of it. Is it the banker&#8217;s
+daughter?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; Gavin cried.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hear you have walked up the back wynd with her
+three times this week. The town is in a ferment about
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is a great deal in the back wynd.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fiddle-de-dee! I am oftener in the back wynd than
+you, and I never meet her there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is curious.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it isn&#8217;t, but never mind. Perhaps you have
+fallen to Miss Pennycuick&#8217;s piano? Did you hear it
+going as we passed the house?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She seems always to be playing on her piano.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not she; but you are supposed to be musical, and
+so when she sees you from her window she begins to
+thump. If I am in the school wynd and hear the piano
+going, I know you will turn the corner immediately.
+However, I am glad to hear it is not Miss Pennycuick.
+Then it is the factor at the Spittal&#8217;s lassie? Well done,
+sir. You should arrange to have the wedding at the
+same time as the old earl&#8217;s, which comes off in summer,
+I believe.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;One foolish marriage is enough in a day, doctor.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Eh? You call him a fool for marrying a young
+wife? Well, no doubt he is, but he would have been a
+bigger fool to marry an old one. However, it is not
+Lord Rintoul we are discussing, but Gavin Dishart. I
+suppose you know that the factor&#8217;s lassie is an heiress?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And, therefore, would scorn me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Try her,&#8221; said the doctor, drily. &#8220;Her father and
+mother, as I know, married on a ten-pound note. But
+if I am wrong again, I must adopt the popular view in
+Thrums. It is a Glasgow lady after all? Man, you
+needn&#8217;t look indignant at hearing that the people are
+discussing your intended. You can no more stop it
+than a doctor&#8217;s orders could keep Lang Tammas out of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_182' name='page_182'></a>182</span>
+church. They have discovered that she sends you
+flowers twice every week.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They never reach me,&#8221; answered Gavin, then remembered
+the holly and winced.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some,&#8221; persisted the relentless doctor, &#8220;even speak
+of your having been seen together; but of course, if she
+is a Glasgow lady, that is a mistake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where did they see us?&#8221; asked Gavin, with a sudden
+trouble in his throat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are shaking,&#8221; said the doctor, keenly, &#8220;like a
+medical student at his first operation. But as for the
+story that you and the lady have been seen together, I
+can guess how it arose. Do you remember that gypsy
+girl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The doctor had begun by addressing the fire, but he
+suddenly wheeled round and fired his question in the
+minister&#8217;s face. Gavin, however, did not even blink.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why should I have forgotten her?&#8221; he replied,
+coolly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, in the stress of other occupations. But it was
+your getting the money from her at the Kaims for
+Nanny that I was to speak of. Absurd though it seems,
+I think some dotard must have seen you and her at the
+Kaims, and mistaken her for the lady.&#8221;</p>
+<p>McQueen flung himself back in his chair to enjoy this
+joke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Fancy mistaking that woman for a lady!&#8221; he said
+to Gavin, who had not laughed with him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think Nanny has some justification for considering
+her a lady,&#8221; the minister said, firmly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, I grant that. But what made me guffaw was
+a vision of the harum-scarum, devil-may-care little
+Egyptian mistress of an Auld Licht manse!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is neither harum-scarum nor devil-may-care,&#8221;
+Gavin answered, without heat, for he was no longer a
+distracted minister. &#8220;You don&#8217;t understand her as I
+do.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_183' name='page_183'></a>183</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;No, I seem to understand her differently.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you know of her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is just it,&#8221; said the doctor, irritated by Gavin&#8217;s
+coolness. &#8220;I know she saved Nanny from the poorhouse,
+but I don&#8217;t know where she got the money. I
+know she can talk fine English when she chooses, but I
+don&#8217;t know where she learned it. I know she heard
+that the soldiers were coming to Thrums before they
+knew of their destination themselves, but I don&#8217;t know
+who told her. You who understand her can doubtless
+explain these matters?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She offered to explain them to me,&#8221; Gavin answered,
+still unmoved, &#8220;but I forbade her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is no business of yours, doctor. Forgive me for
+saying so.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In Thrums,&#8221; replied McQueen, &#8220;a minister&#8217;s business
+is everybody&#8217;s business. I have often wondered
+who helped her to escape from the soldiers that night.
+Did she offer to explain that to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She did not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; said the doctor, sharply, &#8220;because it was
+unnecessary?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was the reason.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You helped her to escape?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you are not ashamed of it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why were you so anxious to screen her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She saved some of my people from gaol.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Which was more than they deserved.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have always understood that you concealed two of
+them in your own stable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe I did,&#8221; the doctor had to allow. &#8220;But I
+took my stick to them next morning. Besides, they
+were Thrums folk, while you had never set eyes on
+that imp of mischief before.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_184' name='page_184'></a>184</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot sit here, doctor, and hear her called names,&#8221;
+Gavin said, rising, but McQueen gripped him by the
+shoulder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;For pity&#8217;s sake, sir, don&#8217;t let us wrangle like a pair
+of women. I brought you here to speak my mind to
+you, and speak it I will. I warn you, Mr. Dishart,
+that you are being watched. You have been seen
+meeting this lassie in Caddam as well as at the Kaims.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let the whole town watch, doctor. I have met her
+openly.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And why? Oh, don&#8217;t make Nanny your excuse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I won&#8217;t. I met her because I love her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you mad?&#8221; cried McQueen. &#8220;You speak as if
+you would marry her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; replied Gavin, determinedly, &#8220;and I mean to
+do it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The doctor flung up his hands.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I give you up,&#8221; he said, raging. &#8220;I give you up.
+Think of your congregation, man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have been thinking of them, and as soon as I have
+a right to do so I shall tell them what I have told you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And until you tell them I will keep your madness
+to myself, for I warn you that, as soon as they do know,
+there will be a vacancy in the Auld Licht kirk of
+Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is a woman,&#8221; said Gavin, hesitating, though
+preparing to go, &#8220;of whom any minister might be
+proud.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is a woman,&#8221; the doctor roared, &#8220;that no congregation
+would stand. Oh, if you will go, there is
+your hat.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Perhaps Gavin&#8217;s face was whiter as he left the house
+than when he entered it, but there was no other change.
+Those who were watching him decided that he was
+looking much as usual, except that his mouth was shut
+very firm, from which they concluded that he had been
+taking the doctor to task for smoking. They also noted
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_185' name='page_185'></a>185</span>
+that he returned to McQueen&#8217;s house within half an
+hour after leaving it, but remained no time.</p>
+<p>Some explained this second visit by saying that the
+minister had forgotten his cravat, and had gone back
+for it. What really sent him back, however, was his
+conscience. He had said to McQueen that he helped
+Babbie to escape from the soldiers because of her kindness
+to his people, and he returned to own that it was a
+lie.</p>
+<p>Gavin knocked at the door of the surgery, but entered
+without waiting for a response. McQueen was no
+longer stamping through the room, red and furious.
+He had even laid aside his pipe. He was sitting back
+in his chair, looking half-mournfully, half-contemptuously,
+at something in his palm. His hand closed
+instinctively when he heard the door open, but Gavin
+had seen that the object was an open locket.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was only your reference to the thing,&#8221; the detected
+doctor said, with a grim laugh, &#8220;that made me open it.
+Forty years ago, sir, I&mdash;&mdash;Phew! it is forty-two years,
+and I have not got over it yet.&#8221; He closed the locket
+with a snap. &#8220;I hope you have come back, Dishart,
+to speak more rationally?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin told him why he had come back, and the
+doctor said he was a fool for his pains.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is it useless, Dishart, to make another appeal to
+you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quite useless, doctor,&#8221; Gavin answered, promptly.
+&#8220;My mind is made up at last.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_186' name='page_186'></a>186</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYONE_NIGHTMARGARETFLASHING_OF_A_LANTERN' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYONE_NIGHTMARGARETFLASHING_OF_A_LANTERN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-One.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />NIGHT&mdash;MARGARET&mdash;FLASHING OF A LANTERN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>That evening the little minister sat silently in his
+parlour. Darkness came, and with it weavers rose
+heavy-eyed from their looms, sleepy children sought
+their mothers, and the gate of the field above the manse
+fell forward to let cows pass to their byre; the great
+Bible was produced in many homes, and the ten o&#8217;clock
+bell clanged its last word to the night. Margaret had
+allowed the lamp to burn low. Thinking that her boy
+slept, she moved softly to his side and spread her shawl
+over his knees. He had forgotten her. The doctor&#8217;s
+warnings scarcely troubled him. He was Babbie&#8217;s
+lover. The mystery of her was only a veil hiding her
+from other men, and he was looking through it upon
+the face of his beloved.</p>
+<p>It was a night of long ago, but can you not see my
+dear Margaret still as she bends over her son? Not
+twice in many days dared the minister snatch a moment&#8217;s
+sleep from grey morning to midnight, and, when
+this did happen, he jumped up by-and-by in shame, to
+revile himself for an idler and ask his mother wrathfully
+why she had not tumbled him out of his chair? To-night
+Margaret was divided between a desire to let him
+sleep and a fear of his self-reproach when he awoke;
+and so, perhaps, the tear fell that roused him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did not like to waken you,&#8221; Margaret said, apprehensively.
+&#8220;You must have been very tired, Gavin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was not sleeping, mother,&#8221; he said, slowly. &#8220;I
+was only thinking.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_187' name='page_187'></a>187</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, Gavin, you never rise from your loom. It is
+hardly fair that your hands should be so full of other
+people&#8217;s troubles.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They only fill one hand, mother; I carry the people&#8217;s
+joys in the other hand, and that keeps me erect, like a
+woman between her pan and pitcher. I think the joys
+have outweighed the sorrows since we came here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It has been all joy to me, Gavin, for you never tell
+me of the sorrows. An old woman has no right to be
+so happy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Old woman, mother!&#8221; said Gavin. But his indignation
+was vain. Margaret was an old woman. I
+made her old before her time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As for these terrible troubles,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;I forget
+them the moment I enter the garden and see you at
+your window. And, maybe, I keep some of the joys
+from you as well as the troubles.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Words about Babbie leaped to his mouth, but with
+an effort he restrained them. He must not tell his
+mother of her until Babbie of her free will had told him
+all there was to tell.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have been a selfish woman, Gavin.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You selfish, mother!&#8221; Gavin said, smiling. &#8220;Tell
+me when you did not think of others before yourself?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Always, Gavin. Has it not been selfishness to hope
+that you would never want to bring another mistress
+to the manse? Do you remember how angry you used
+to be in Glasgow when I said that you would marry
+some day?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I remember,&#8221; Gavin said, sadly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; you used to say, &#8216;Don&#8217;t speak of such a thing,
+mother, for the horrid thought of it is enough to drive
+all the Hebrew out of my head.&#8217; Was not that lightning
+just now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did not see it. What a memory you have, mother,
+for all the boyish things I said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t deny,&#8221; Margaret admitted with a sigh, &#8220;that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_188' name='page_188'></a>188</span>
+I liked to hear you speak in that way, though I knew
+you would go back on your word. You see, you have
+changed already.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How, mother?&#8221; asked Gavin, surprised.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said just now that those were boyish speeches.
+Gavin, I can&#8217;t understand the mothers who are glad
+to see their sons married; though I had a dozen I
+believe it would be a wrench to lose one of them.
+It would be different with daughters. You are laughing,
+Gavin!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, at your reference to daughters. Would you
+not have preferred me to be a girl?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8217;Deed I would not,&#8221; answered Margaret, with tremendous
+conviction. &#8220;Gavin, every woman on earth, be
+she rich or poor, good or bad, offers up one prayer
+about her firstborn, and that is, &#8216;May he be a boy!&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think you are wrong, mother. The banker&#8217;s wife
+told me that there is nothing for which she thanks the
+Lord so much as that all her children are girls.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;May she be forgiven for that, Gavin!&#8221; exclaimed
+Margaret; &#8220;though she maybe did right to put the best
+face on her humiliation. No, no, there are many kinds
+of women in the world, but there never was one yet
+that didn&#8217;t want to begin with a laddie. You can speculate
+about a boy so much more than about a girl.
+Gavin, what is it a woman thinks about the day her son
+is born? yes, and the day before too? She is picturing
+him a grown man, and a slip of a lassie taking him
+from her. Ay, that is where the lassies have their revenge
+on the mothers. I remember as if it were this
+morning a Harvie fishwife patting your head and asking
+who was your sweetheart, and I could never thole the
+woman again. We were at the door of the cottage, and
+I mind I gripped you up in my arms. You had on a
+tartan frock with a sash and diamond socks. When I
+look back, Gavin, it seems to me that you have shot up
+from that frock to manhood in a single hour.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_189' name='page_189'></a>189</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;There are not many mothers like you,&#8221; Gavin said,
+laying his hand fondly on Margaret&#8217;s shoulder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are many better mothers, but few such sons.
+It is easily seen why God could not afford me another.
+Gavin, I am sure that was lightning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think it was; but don&#8217;t be alarmed, mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am never frightened when you are with me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And I always will be with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, if you were married&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think,&#8221; asked Gavin, indignantly, &#8220;that it
+would make any difference to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Margaret did not answer. She knew what a difference
+it would make.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Except,&#8221; continued Gavin, with a man&#8217;s obtuseness,
+&#8220;that you would have a daughter as well as a son to
+love you and take care of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Margaret could have told him that men give themselves
+away needlessly who marry for the sake of their
+mother, but all she said was&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, I see you can speak more composedly of
+marrying now than you spoke a year ago. If I did not
+know better, I should think a Thrums young lady had
+got hold of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was a moment before Gavin replied; then he said,
+gaily&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Really, mother, the way the best of women speak of
+each other is lamentable. You say I should be better
+married, and then you take for granted that every
+marriageable woman in the neighbourhood is trying
+to kidnap me. I am sure you did not take my father
+by force in that way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He did not see that Margaret trembled at the mention
+of his father. He never knew that she was many times
+pining to lay her head upon his breast and tell him of
+me. Yet I cannot but believe that she always shook
+when Adam Dishart was spoken of between them. I
+cannot think that the long-cherishing of the secret
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_190' name='page_190'></a>190</span>
+which was hers and mine kept her face steady when
+that horror suddenly confronted her as now. Gavin
+would have suspected much had he ever suspected anything.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know,&#8221; Margaret said, courageously, &#8220;that you
+would be better married; but when it comes to selecting
+the woman I grow fearful. O Gavin!&#8221; she said, earnestly,
+&#8220;it is an awful thing to marry the wrong man!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Here in a moment had she revealed much, though
+far from all, and there must have been many such moments
+between them. But Gavin was thinking of his
+own affairs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You mean the wrong woman, don&#8217;t you, mother?&#8221;
+he said, and she hastened to agree. But it was the
+wrong man she meant.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The difficulty, I suppose, is to hit upon the right
+one?&#8221; Gavin said, blithely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To know which is the right one in time,&#8221; answered
+Margaret, solemnly. &#8220;But I am saying nothing
+against the young ladies of Thrums, Gavin. Though
+I have scarcely seen them, I know there are good
+women among them. Jean says&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe, mother,&#8221; Gavin interposed, reproachfully,
+&#8220;that you have been questioning Jean about them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just because I was afraid&mdash;I mean because I fancied&mdash;you
+might be taking a liking to one of them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what is Jean&#8217;s verdict?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She says every one of them would jump at you, like
+a bird at a berry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the berry cannot be divided. How would Miss
+Pennycuick please you, mother?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin!&#8221; cried Margaret, in consternation, &#8220;you
+don&#8217;t mean to&mdash;&mdash;But you are laughing at me again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then there is the banker&#8217;s daughter?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t thole her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, I question if you ever set eyes on her,
+mother.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_191' name='page_191'></a>191</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps not, Gavin; but I have suspected her ever
+since she offered to become one of your tract distributors.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The doctor,&#8221; said Gavin, not ill-pleased, &#8220;was saying
+that either of these ladies would suit me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What business has he,&#8221; asked Margaret, vindictively,
+&#8220;to put such thoughts into your head?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he only did as you are doing. Mother, I see
+you will never be satisfied without selecting the woman
+for me yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, Gavin,&#8221; said Margaret, earnestly; &#8220;and I question
+if I should be satisfied even then. But I am sure
+I should be a better guide to you than Dr. McQueen is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am convinced of that. But I wonder what sort of
+woman would content you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whoever pleased you, Gavin, would content me,&#8221;
+Margaret ventured to maintain. &#8220;You would only take
+to a clever woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She must be nearly as clever as you, mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hoots, Gavin,&#8221; said Margaret, smiling, &#8220;I&#8217;m not
+to be caught with chaff. I am a stupid, ignorant
+woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I must look out for a stupid, ignorant woman,
+for that seems to be the kind I like,&#8221; answered Gavin,
+of whom I may confess here something that has to be
+told sooner or later. It is this: he never realised that
+Babbie was a great deal cleverer than himself. Forgive
+him, you who read, if you have any tolerance for the
+creature, man.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She will be terribly learned in languages,&#8221; pursued
+Margaret, &#8220;so that she may follow you in your studies,
+as I have never been able to do.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your face has helped me more than Hebrew,
+mother,&#8221; replied Gavin. &#8220;I will give her no marks for
+languages.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;At any rate,&#8221; Margaret insisted, &#8220;she must be a
+grand housekeeper, and very thrifty.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_192' name='page_192'></a>192</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;As for that,&#8221; Gavin said, faltering a little, &#8220;one
+can&#8217;t expect it of a mere girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should expect it,&#8221; maintained his mother.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no; but she would have you,&#8221; said Gavin, happily,
+&#8220;to teach her housekeeping.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be a pleasant occupation to me, that,&#8221;
+Margaret admitted. &#8220;And she would soon learn: she
+would be so proud of her position as mistress of a
+manse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps,&#8221; Gavin said, doubtfully. He had no doubt
+on the subject in his college days.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And we can take for granted,&#8221; continued his mother,
+&#8220;that she is a lassie of fine character.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Of course,&#8221; said Gavin, holding his head high, as
+if he thought the doctor might be watching him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have thought,&#8221; Margaret went on, &#8220;that there
+was a great deal of wisdom in what you said at that
+last marriage in the manse, the one where, you remember,
+the best man and the bridesmaid joined hands instead
+of the bride and bridegroom.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What did I say?&#8221; asked the little minister, with
+misgivings.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That there was great danger when people married
+out of their own rank of life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh&mdash;ah&mdash;well, of course, that would depend on circumstances.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They were wise words, Gavin. There was the sermon,
+too, that you preached a month or two ago against
+marrying into other denominations. Jean told me that
+it greatly impressed the congregation. It is a sad sight,
+as you said, to see an Auld Licht lassie changing her
+faith because her man belongs to the U. P.&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did I say that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You did, and it so struck Jean that she told me she
+would rather be an old maid for life, &#8216;the which,&#8217; she
+said, &#8216;is a dismal prospect,&#8217; than marry out of the Auld
+Licht kirk.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_193' name='page_193'></a>193</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps that was a rather narrow view I took,
+mother. After all, the fitting thing is that the wife
+should go with her husband; especially if it is he
+that is the Auld Licht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t hold with narrowness myself, Gavin,&#8221; Margaret
+said, with an effort, &#8220;and admit that there are
+many respectable persons in the other denominations.
+But though a weaver might take a wife from another
+kirk without much scandal, an Auld Licht minister&#8217;s
+madam must be Auld Licht born and bred. The congregation
+would expect no less. I doubt if they would
+be sure of her if she came from some other Auld Licht
+kirk. &#8217;Deed, though she came from our own kirk, I&#8217;m
+thinking the session would want to catechise her. Ay,
+and if all you tell me of Lang Tammas be true (for, as
+you know, I never spoke to him), I warrant he would
+catechise the session.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would brook no interference from my session,&#8221;
+said Gavin, knitting his brows, &#8220;and I do not consider
+it necessary that a minister&#8217;s wife should have been
+brought up in his denomination. Of course she would
+join it. We must make allowance, mother, for the
+thousands of young women who live in places where
+there is no Auld Licht kirk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can pity them, Gavin,&#8221; said Margaret, &#8220;without
+marrying them. A minister has his congregation
+to think of.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So the doctor says,&#8221; interposed her son.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then it was just like his presumption!&#8221; cried Margaret.
+&#8220;A minister should marry to please himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Decidedly he should,&#8221; Gavin agreed, eagerly, &#8220;and
+the bounden duty of the congregation is to respect and
+honour his choice. If they forget that duty, his is to
+remind them of it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, well, Gavin,&#8221; said Margaret, confidently, &#8220;your
+congregation are so fond of you that your choice would
+doubtless be theirs. Jean tells me that even Lang
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_194' name='page_194'></a>194</span>
+Tammas, though he is so obstinate, has a love for you
+passing the love of woman. These were her words.
+Jean is more sentimental than you might think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish he would show his love,&#8221; said Gavin, &#8220;by
+contradicting me less frequently.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have Rob Dow to weigh against him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; I cannot make out what has come over Rob
+lately. He is drinking heavily again, and avoiding
+me. The lightning is becoming very vivid.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, and I hear no thunder. There is another thing,
+Gavin. I am one of those that like to sit at home, but
+if you had a wife she would visit the congregation. A
+truly religious wife would be a great help to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Religious,&#8221; Gavin repeated slowly. &#8220;Yes, but
+some people are religious without speaking of it. If a
+woman is good she is religious. A good woman who
+has been, let us say, foolishly brought up, only needs
+to be shown the right way to tread it. Mother, I question
+if any man, minister or layman, ever yet fell in
+love because the woman was thrifty, or clever, or went
+to church twice on Sabbath.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe that is true,&#8221; Margaret said, &#8220;and I would
+not have it otherwise. But it is an awful thing, Gavin,
+as you said from the pulpit two weeks ago, to worship
+only at a beautiful face.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You think too much about what I say in the pulpit,
+mother,&#8221; Gavin said, with a sigh, &#8220;though of course a
+man who fell in love merely with a face would be a
+contemptible creature. Yet I see that women do not
+understand how beauty affects a man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, yes, my boy&mdash;oh, indeed, they do,&#8221; said Margaret,
+who on some matters knew far more than her
+son.</p>
+<p>Twelve o&#8217;clock struck, and she rose to go to bed,
+alarmed lest she should not waken early in the morning.
+&#8220;But I am afraid I shan&#8217;t sleep,&#8221; she said, &#8220;if
+that lightning continues.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_195' name='page_195'></a>195</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It is harmless,&#8221; Gavin answered, going to the window.
+He started back next moment, and crying,
+&#8220;Don&#8217;t look out, mother,&#8221; hastily pulled down the
+blind.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why, Gavin,&#8221; Margaret said in fear, &#8220;you look as
+if it had struck you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, no,&#8221; Gavin answered, with a forced laugh, and
+he lit her lamp for her.</p>
+<p>But it had struck him, though it was not lightning.
+It was the flashing of a lantern against the window to
+attract his attention, and the holder of the lantern was
+Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-night, mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-night, Gavin. Don&#8217;t sit up any later.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_196' name='page_196'></a>196</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYTWO_LOVERS' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYTWO_LOVERS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Two.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />LOVERS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Only something terrible, Gavin thought, could have
+brought Babbie to him at such an hour; yet when he
+left his mother&#8217;s room it was to stand motionless on
+the stair, waiting for a silence in the manse that would
+not come. A house is never still in darkness to those
+who listen intently; there is a whispering in distant
+chambers, an unearthly hand presses the snib of the
+window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created when
+the first man woke in the night.</p>
+<p>Now Margaret slept. Two hours earlier, Jean, sitting
+on the salt-bucket, had read the chapter with which
+she always sent herself to bed. In honour of the little
+minister she had begun her Bible afresh when he came
+to Thrums, and was progressing through it, a chapter
+at night, sighing, perhaps, on washing days at a long
+chapter, such as Exodus twelfth, but never making two
+of it. The kitchen wag-at-the-wall clock was telling
+every room in the house that she had neglected to shut
+her door. As Gavin felt his way down the dark stair,
+awakening it into protest at every step, he had a glimpse
+of the pendulum&#8217;s shadow running back and forward
+on the hearth; he started back from another shadow on
+the lobby wall, and then seeing it start too, knew it for
+his own. He opened the door and passed out unobserved;
+it was as if the sounds and shadows that filled
+the manse were too occupied with their game to mind
+an interloper.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that you?&#8221; he said to a bush, for the garden was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_197' name='page_197'></a>197</span>
+in semi-darkness. Then the lantern&#8217;s flash met him,
+and he saw the Egyptian in the summer-seat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;At last!&#8221; she said, reproachfully. &#8220;Evidently a
+lantern is a poor door-bell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; Gavin asked, in suppressed excitement,
+for the least he expected to hear was that she was again
+being pursued for her share in the riot. The tremor
+in his voice surprised her into silence, and he thought
+she faltered because what she had to tell him was so
+woeful. So, in the darkness of the summer-seat, he
+kissed her, and she might have known that with that
+kiss the little minister was hers forever.</p>
+<p>Now Babbie had been kissed before, but never thus,
+and she turned from Gavin, and would have liked to be
+alone, for she had begun to know what love was, and
+the flash that revealed it to her laid bare her own
+shame, so that her impulse was to hide herself from
+her lover. But of all this Gavin was unconscious, and
+he repeated his question. The lantern was swaying in
+her hand, and when she turned fearfully to him its
+light fell on his face, and she saw how alarmed he was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am going away back to Nanny&#8217;s,&#8221; she said suddenly,
+and rose cowed, but he took her hand and held
+her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Babbie,&#8221; he said, huskily, &#8220;tell me what has happened
+to bring you here at this hour.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She sought to pull her hand from him, but could not.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How you are trembling!&#8221; he whispered. &#8220;Babbie,&#8221;
+he cried, &#8220;something terrible has happened to you, but
+do not fear. Tell me what it is, and then&mdash;then I will
+take you to my mother: yes, I will take you now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian would have given all she had in the
+world to be able to fly from him then, that he might
+never know her as she was, but it could not be, and so
+she spoke out remorselessly. If her voice had become
+hard, it was a new-born scorn of herself that made it so.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are needlessly alarmed,&#8221; she said; &#8220;I am not
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_198' name='page_198'></a>198</span>
+at all the kind of person who deserves sympathy or expects
+it. There is nothing wrong. I am staying with
+Nanny over-night, and only came to Thrums to amuse
+myself. I chased your policeman down the Roods with
+my lantern, and then came here to amuse myself with
+you. That is all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was nothing but a love of mischief that brought you
+here?&#8221; Gavin asked, sternly, after an unpleasant pause.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing,&#8221; the Egyptian answered, recklessly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could not have believed this of you,&#8221; the minister
+said; &#8220;I am ashamed of you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought,&#8221; Babbie retorted, trying to speak lightly
+until she could get away from him, &#8220;that you would be
+glad to see me. Your last words in Caddam seemed to
+justify that idea.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am very sorry to see you,&#8221; he answered, reproachfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I will go away at <ins title='Was one'>once</ins>,&#8221; she said, stepping out
+of the summer-seat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;you must go at once.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I won&#8217;t,&#8221; she said, turning back defiantly.
+&#8220;I know what you are to say: that the Thrums people
+would be shocked if they knew I was here; as if I cared
+what the Thrums people think of me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I care what they think of you,&#8221; Gavin said, as if
+that were decisive, &#8220;and I tell you I will not allow you
+to repeat this freak.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You &#8216;will not allow me,&#8217;&#8221; echoed Babbie, almost
+enjoying herself, despite her sudden loss of self-respect.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will not,&#8221; Gavin said, resolutely. &#8220;Henceforth
+you must do as I think fit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Since when have you taken command of me?&#8221; demanded
+Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Since a minute ago,&#8221; Gavin replied, &#8220;when you let
+me kiss you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let you!&#8221; exclaimed Babbie, now justly incensed.
+&#8220;You did it yourself. I was very angry.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_199' name='page_199'></a>199</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;No, you were not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am not allowed to say that even?&#8221; asked the
+Egyptian. &#8220;Tell me something I may say, then, and
+I will repeat it after you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have something to say to you,&#8221; Gavin told her,
+after a moment&#8217;s reflection; &#8220;yes, and there is something
+I should like to hear you repeat after me, but
+not to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to hear what it is,&#8221; Babbie said, quickly,
+but she knew what it was, and even then, despite the
+new pain at her heart, her bosom swelled with pride
+because this man still loved her. Now she wanted to
+run away with his love for her before he could take it
+from her, and then realising that this parting must be
+forever, a great desire filled her to hear him put that
+kiss into words, and she said, faltering:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You can tell me what it is if you like.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not to-night,&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To-night, if at all,&#8221; the gypsy almost entreated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To-morrow, at Nanny&#8217;s,&#8221; answered Gavin, decisively:
+and this time he remembered without dismay
+that the morrow was the Sabbath.</p>
+<p>In the fairy tale the beast suddenly drops his skin and
+is a prince, and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some
+such change had come over this man, her plaything.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your lantern is shining on my mother&#8217;s window,&#8221;
+were the words that woke her from this discovery, and
+then she found herself yielding the lantern to him.
+She became conscious vaguely that a corresponding
+change was taking place in herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You spoke of taking me to your mother,&#8221; she said,
+bitterly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he answered at once, &#8220;to-morrow&#8221;; but she
+shook her head, knowing that to-morrow he would be
+wiser.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Give me the lantern,&#8221; she said, in a low voice, &#8220;I
+am going back to Nanny&#8217;s now.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_200' name='page_200'></a>200</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he said, &#8220;we must set out now, but I can
+carry the lantern.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are not coming with me!&#8221; she exclaimed, shaking
+herself free of his hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am coming,&#8221; he replied, calmly, though he was
+not calm. &#8220;Take my arm, Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She made a last effort to free herself from bondage,
+crying passionately, &#8220;I will not let you come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I say I am coming,&#8221; Gavin answered between
+his teeth, &#8220;I mean that I am coming, and so let that
+be an end of this folly. Take my arm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I hate you,&#8221; she said, retreating from him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take my arm,&#8221; he repeated, and, though her breast
+was rising rebelliously, she did as he ordered, and so
+he escorted her from the garden. At the foot of the
+field she stopped, and thought to frighten him by saying,
+&#8220;What would the people say if they saw you with
+me now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It does not much matter what they would say,&#8221; he
+answered, still keeping his teeth together as if doubtful
+of their courage. &#8220;As for what they would do, that is
+certain; they would put me out of my church.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And it is dear to you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dearer than life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You told me long ago that your mother&#8217;s heart
+would break if&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, I am sure it would.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They had begun to climb the fields, but she stopped
+him with a jerk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go back, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; she implored, clutching his
+arm with both hands. &#8220;You make me very unhappy
+for no purpose. Oh, why should you risk so much for
+me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot have you wandering here alone at midnight,&#8221;
+Gavin answered, gently.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is nothing to me,&#8221; she said, eagerly, but no
+longer resenting his air of proprietorship.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_201' name='page_201'></a>201</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You will never do it again if I can prevent it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you cannot,&#8221; she said, sadly. &#8220;Oh, yes, you
+can, Mr. Dishart. If you will turn back now I shall
+promise never to do anything again without first asking
+myself whether it would seem right to you. I know I
+acted very wrongly to-night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only thoughtlessly,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then have pity on me,&#8221; she besought him, &#8220;and go
+back. If I have only been thoughtless, how can you
+punish me thus? Mr. Dishart,&#8221; she entreated, her
+voice breaking, &#8220;if you were to suffer for this folly of
+mine, do you think I could live?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We are in God&#8217;s hands, dear,&#8221; he answered, firmly,
+and he again drew her arm to him. So they climbed
+the first field, and were almost at the hill before either
+spoke again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stop,&#8221; Babbie whispered, crouching as she spoke;
+&#8220;I see some one crossing the hill.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have seen him for some time,&#8221; Gavin answered,
+quietly; &#8220;but I am doing no wrong, and I will not
+hide.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Egyptian had to walk on with him, and I suppose
+she did not think the less of him for that. Yet
+she said, warningly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If he sees you, all Thrums will be in an uproar before
+morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot help that,&#8221; Gavin replied. &#8220;It is the will
+of God.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To ruin you for my sins?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If He thinks fit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The figure drew nearer, and with every step Babbie&#8217;s
+distress doubled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We are walking straight to him,&#8221; she whispered.
+&#8220;I implore you to wait here until he passes, if not for
+your own sake, for your mother&#8217;s.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that he wavered, and she heard his teeth sliding
+against each other, as if he could no longer clench them.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_202' name='page_202'></a>202</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But, no,&#8221; he said moving on again, &#8220;I will not be
+a skulker from any man. If it be God&#8217;s wish that I
+should suffer for this, I must suffer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, why,&#8221; cried Babbie, beating her hands together
+in grief, &#8220;should you suffer for me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are mine,&#8221; Gavin answered. Babbie gasped.
+&#8220;And if you act foolishly,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;it is right
+that I should bear the brunt of it. No, I will not let
+you go on alone; you are not fit to be alone. You need
+some one to watch over you and care for you and love
+you, and, if need be, to suffer with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Turn back, dear, before he sees us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He has seen us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Yes, I had seen them, for the figure on the hill was
+no other than the dominie of Glen Quharity. The
+park gate clicked as it swung to, and I looked up and
+saw Gavin and the Egyptian. My eyes should have
+found them sooner, but it was to gaze upon Margaret&#8217;s
+home, while no one saw me, that I had trudged into
+Thrums so late, and by that time, I suppose, my eyes
+were of little service for seeing through. Yet, when I
+knew that of these two people suddenly beside me on
+the hill one was the little minister and the other a
+strange woman, I fell back from their side with dread
+before I could step forward and cry &#8220;Gavin!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am Mr. Dishart,&#8221; he answered, with a composure
+that would not have served him for another sentence.
+He was more excited than I, for the &#8220;Gavin&#8221; fell harmlessly
+on him, while I had no sooner uttered it than
+there rushed through me the shame of being false to
+Margaret. It was the only time in my life that I forgot
+her in him, though he has ever stood next to her in
+my regard.</p>
+<p>I looked from Gavin to the gypsy woman, and again
+from her to him, and she began to tell a lie in his
+interest. But she got no farther than &#8220;I met Mr. Dishart
+accid&mdash;&mdash;&#8221; when she stopped, ashamed. It was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_203' name='page_203'></a>203</span>
+reverence for Gavin that checked the lie. Not every
+man has had such a compliment paid him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is natural,&#8221; Gavin said, slowly, &#8220;that you, sir,
+should wonder why I am here with this woman at such
+an hour, and you may know me so little as to think ill
+of me for it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I did not answer, and he misunderstood my silence.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he continued, in a harder voice, as if I had
+asked him a question, &#8220;I will explain nothing to you.
+You are not my judge. If you would do me harm, sir,
+you have it in your power.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was with these cruel words that Gavin addressed
+me. He did not know how cruel they were. The
+Egyptian, I think, must have seen that his suspicions
+hurt me, for she said, softly, with a look of appeal in
+her eyes&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are the schoolmaster in Glen Quharity? Then
+you will perhaps save Mr. Dishart the trouble of coming
+farther by showing me the way to old Nanny
+Webster&#8217;s house at Windyghoul?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have to pass the house at any rate,&#8221; I answered
+eagerly, and she came quickly to my side.</p>
+<p>I knew, though in the darkness I could see but
+vaguely, that Gavin was holding his head high and
+waiting for me to say my worst. I had not told him
+that I dared think no evil of him, and he still suspected
+me. Now I would not trust myself to speak lest I
+should betray Margaret, and yet I wanted him to know
+that base doubts about him could never find a shelter in
+me. I am a timid man who long ago lost the glory of
+my life by it, and I was again timid when I sought to
+let Gavin see that my faith in him was unshaken. I
+lifted my bonnet to the gypsy, and asked her to take
+my arm. It was done clumsily, I cannot doubt, but he
+read my meaning and held out his hand to me. I had
+not touched it since he was three years old, and I trembled
+too much to give it the grasp I owed it. He and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_204' name='page_204'></a>204</span>
+I parted without a word, but to the Egyptian he said,
+&#8220;To-morrow, dear, I will see you at Nanny&#8217;s,&#8221; and he
+was to kiss her, but I pulled her a step farther from
+him, and she put her hands over her face, crying, &#8220;No,
+no!&#8221;</p>
+<p>If I asked her some questions between the hill and
+Windyghoul you must not blame me, for this was my
+affair as well as theirs. She did not answer me; I know
+now that she did not hear me. But at the mud house
+she looked abruptly into my face, and said&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You love him, too!&#8221;</p>
+<p>I trudged to the school house with these words for
+company, and it was less her discovery than her confession
+that tortured me. How much I slept that night
+you may guess.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_205' name='page_205'></a>205</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYTHREE_CONTAINS_A_BIRTH_WHICH_IS_SUFFICIENT_FOR_ONE_CHAPTER' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYTHREE_CONTAINS_A_BIRTH_WHICH_IS_SUFFICIENT_FOR_ONE_CHAPTER'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Three.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />CONTAINS A BIRTH, WHICH IS SUFFICIENT FOR ONE CHAPTER.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;The kirk bell will soon be ringing,&#8221; Nanny said on
+the following morning, as she placed herself carefully
+on a stool, one hand holding her Bible and the other
+wandering complacently over her aged merino gown.
+&#8220;Ay, lassie, though you&#8217;re only an Egyptian I would
+hae ta&#8217;en you wi&#8217; me to hear Mr. Duthie, but it&#8217;s speiring
+ower muckle o&#8217; a woman to expect her to gang to
+the kirk in her ilka day claethes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Babbie of yesterday would have laughed at this,
+but the new Babbie sighed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder you don&#8217;t go to Mr. Dishart&#8217;s church now,
+Nanny,&#8221; she said, gently. &#8220;I am sure you prefer him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Babbie, Babbie,&#8221; exclaimed Nanny, with spirit,
+&#8220;may I never be so far left to mysel&#8217; as to change my
+kirk just because I like another minister better! It&#8217;s
+easy seen, lassie, that you ken little o&#8217; religious questions.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Very little,&#8221; Babbie admitted, sadly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But dinna be so waeful about it,&#8221; the old woman
+continued, kindly, &#8220;for that&#8217;s no nane like you. Ay,
+and if you see muckle mair o&#8217; Mr. Dishart he&#8217;ll soon
+cure your ignorance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall not see much more of him,&#8221; Babbie answered,
+with averted head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The like o&#8217; you couldna expect it,&#8221; Nanny said,
+simply, whereupon Babbie went to the window. &#8220;I
+had better be stepping,&#8221; Nanny said, rising, &#8220;for I am
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_206' name='page_206'></a>206</span>
+aye late unless I&#8217;m on the hill by the time the bell begins.
+Ay, Babbie, I&#8217;m doubting my merino&#8217;s no sair
+in the fashion?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She looked down at her dress half despondently, and
+yet with some pride.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was fowerpence the yard, and no less,&#8221; she went
+on, fondling the worn merino, &#8220;when we bocht it at
+Sam&#8217;l Curr&#8217;s. Ay, but it has been turned sax times
+since syne.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She sighed, and Babbie came to her and put her
+arms round her, saying, &#8220;Nanny, you are a dear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a gey auld-farrant-looking dear, I doubt,&#8221; said
+Nanny, ruefully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now, Nanny,&#8221; rejoined Babbie, &#8220;you are just wanting
+me to flatter you. You know the merino looks very
+nice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s a guid merino yet,&#8221; admitted the old woman,
+&#8220;but, oh, Babbie, what does the material matter if the
+cut isna fashionable? It&#8217;s fine, isn&#8217;t it, to be in the
+fashion?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She spoke so wistfully that, instead of smiling, Babbie
+kissed her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am afraid to lay hand on the merino, Nanny, but
+give me off your bonnet and I&#8217;ll make it ten years
+younger in as many minutes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Could you?&#8221; asked Nanny, eagerly, unloosening her
+bonnet-strings. &#8220;Mercy on me!&#8221; she had to add; &#8220;to
+think about altering bonnets on the Sabbath-day!
+Lassie, how could you propose sic a thing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Forgive me, Nanny,&#8221; Babbie replied, so meekly
+that the old woman looked at her curiously.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_18' id='linki_18'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus242.jpg' alt='' title='' width='500' height='339' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;IT&#8217;S A GUID MERINO YET.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna understand what has come ower you,&#8221; she
+said. &#8220;There&#8217;s an unca difference in you since last nicht.
+I used to think you were mair like a bird than a lassie,
+but you&#8217;ve lost a&#8217; your daft capers o&#8217; singing and lauching,
+and I take ill wi&#8217;t. Twa or three times I&#8217;ve catched
+you greeting. Babbie, what has come ower you?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_207' name='page_207'></a>207</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing, Nanny. I think I hear the bell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Down in Thrums two kirk-officers had let their bells
+loose, waking echoes in Windyghoul as one dog in
+country parts sets all the others barking, but Nanny
+did not hurry off to church. Such a surprising notion
+had filled her head suddenly that she even forgot to
+hold her dress off the floor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Babbie,&#8221; she cried, in consternation, &#8220;dinna tell
+me you&#8217;ve gotten ower fond o&#8217; Mr. Dishart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The like of me, Nanny!&#8221; the gypsy answered, with
+affected raillery, but there was a tear in her eye.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It would be a wild, presumptious thing,&#8221; Nanny
+said, &#8220;and him a grand minister, but&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie tried to look her in the face, but failed, and
+then all at once there came back to Nanny the days
+when she and her lover wandered the hill together.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, my dawtie,&#8221; she cried, so tenderly, &#8220;what does
+it matter wha he is when you canna help it!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Two frail arms went round the Egyptian, and Babbie
+rested her head on the old woman&#8217;s breast. But do
+you think it could have happened had not Nanny loved
+a weaver two-score years before?</p>
+<p>And now Nanny has set off for church and Babbie is
+alone in the mud house. Some will pity her not at all,
+this girl who was a dozen women in the hour, and all
+made of impulses that would scarce stand still to be
+photographed. To attempt to picture her at any time
+until now would have been like chasing a spirit that
+changes to something else as your arms clasp it; yet
+she has always seemed a pathetic little figure to me.
+If I understand Babbie at all, it is, I think, because I
+loved Margaret, the only woman I have ever known
+well, and one whose nature was not, like the Egyptian&#8217;s,
+complex, but most simple, as if God had told her only
+to be good. Throughout my life since she came into it
+she has been to me a glass in which many things are
+revealed that I could not have learned save through
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_208' name='page_208'></a>208</span>
+her, and something of all womankind, even of bewildering
+Babbie, I seem to know because I knew Margaret.</p>
+<p>No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her
+heart thrills to love, for then God has her by the hand.
+There is no love but this. She may dream of what
+love is, but it is only of a sudden that she knows.
+Babbie, who was without a guide from her baby days,
+had dreamed but little of it, hearing its name given to
+another thing. She had been born wild and known no
+home; no one had touched her heart except to strike it,
+she had been educated, but never tamed; her life had
+been thrown strangely among those who were great in
+the world&#8217;s possessions, but she was not of them. Her
+soul was in such darkness that she had never seen it;
+she would have danced away cynically from the belief
+that there is such a thing, and now all at once she had
+passed from disbelief to knowledge. Is not love God&#8217;s
+doing? To Gavin He had given something of Himself,
+and the moment she saw it the flash lit her own soul.</p>
+<p>It was but little of his Master that was in Gavin, but
+far smaller things have changed the current of human
+lives; the spider&#8217;s thread that strikes our brow on a
+country road may do that. Yet this I will say, though
+I have no wish to cast the little minister on my pages
+larger than he was, that he had some heroic hours in
+Thrums, of which one was when Babbie learned to love
+him. Until the moment when he kissed her she had
+only conceived him a quaint fellow whose life was a
+string of Sundays, but behold what she saw in him
+now. Evidently to his noble mind her mystery was
+only some misfortune, not of her making, and his was
+to be the part of leading her away from it into the happiness
+of the open life. He did not doubt her, for he
+loved, and to doubt is to dip love in the mire. She had
+been given to him by God, and he was so rich in her
+possession that the responsibility attached to the gift
+was not grievous. She was his, and no mortal man
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_209' name='page_209'></a>209</span>
+could part them. Those who looked askance at her
+were looking askance at him; in so far as she was wayward
+and wild, he was those things; so long as she remained
+strange to religion, the blame lay on him.</p>
+<p>All this Babbie read in the Gavin of the past night,
+and to her it was the book of love. What things she
+had known, said and done in that holy name! How
+shamefully have we all besmirched it! She had only
+known it as the most selfish of the passions, a brittle
+image that men consulted because it could only answer
+in the words they gave it to say. But here was a man
+to whom love was something better than his own desires
+leering on a pedestal. Such love as Babbie had seen
+hitherto made strong men weak, but this was a love
+that made a weak man strong. All her life, strength
+had been her idol, and the weakness that bent to her
+cajolery her scorn. But only now was it revealed to
+her that strength, instead of being the lusty child of
+passions, grows by grappling with and throwing them.</p>
+<p>So Babbie loved the little minister for the best that
+she had ever seen in man. I shall be told that she
+thought far more of him than he deserved, forgetting
+the mean in the worthy: but who that has had a glimpse
+of heaven will care to let his mind dwell henceforth on
+earth? Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind.
+It is an extra eye, which shows us what is most worthy
+of regard. To see the best is to see most clearly, and
+it is the lover&#8217;s privilege.</p>
+<p>Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon Gavin
+preached a sermon in praise of Woman, and up in the
+mudhouse in Windyghoul Babbie sat alone. But it was
+the Sabbath day to her: the first Sabbath in her life.
+Her discovery had frozen her mind for a time, so that
+she could only stare at it with eyes that would not shut;
+but that had been in the night. Already her love
+seemed a thing of years, for it was as old as herself, as
+old as the new Babbie. It was such a dear delight that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_210' name='page_210'></a>210</span>
+she clasped it to her, and exulted over it because it was
+hers, and then she cried over it because she must give
+it up.</p>
+<p>For Babbie must only look at this love and then turn
+from it. My heart aches for the little Egyptian, but
+the Promised Land would have remained invisible to
+her had she not realized that it was only for others.
+That was the condition of her seeing.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_211' name='page_211'></a>211</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYFOUR_THE_NEW_WORLD_AND_THE_WOMAN_WHO_MAY_NOT_DWELL_THEREIN' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYFOUR_THE_NEW_WORLD_AND_THE_WOMAN_WHO_MAY_NOT_DWELL_THEREIN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Four.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE NEW WORLD, AND THE WOMAN WHO MAY NOT DWELL THEREIN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Up here in the glen school-house after my pupils have
+straggled home, there comes to me at times, and so sudden
+that it may be while I am infusing my tea, a hot desire
+to write great books. Perhaps an hour afterwards
+I rise, beaten, from my desk, flinging all I have written
+into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on second thought),
+and curse myself as an ingle-nook man, for I see that
+one can only paint what he himself has felt, and in my
+passion I wish to have all the vices, even to being an
+impious man, that I may describe them better. For
+this may I be pardoned. It comes to nothing in the
+end, save that my tea is brackish.</p>
+<p>Yet though my solitary life in the glen is cheating
+me of many experiences, more helpful to a writer than
+to a Christian, it has not been so tame but that I can
+understand why Babbie cried when she went into
+Nanny&#8217;s garden and saw the new world. Let no one
+who loves be called altogether unhappy. Even love
+unreturned has its rainbow, and Babbie knew that
+Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff
+berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to
+Love and sees him looking for her, and knows she must
+shrink from the arms she would lie in, and only call to
+him in a voice he cannot hear. This is not a love that
+is always bitter. It grows sweet with age. But could
+that dry the tears of the little Egyptian, who had only
+been a woman for a day?</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_212' name='page_212'></a>212</span></div>
+<p>Much was still dark to her. Of one obstacle that
+must keep her and Gavin ever apart she knew, and he
+did not; but had it been removed she would have given
+herself to him humbly, not in her own longing, but because
+he wanted her. &#8220;Behold what I am,&#8221; she could
+have said to him then, and left the rest to him, believing
+that her unworthiness would not drag him down, it
+would lose itself so readily in his strength. That
+Thrums could rise against such a man if he defied it,
+she did not believe; but she was to learn the truth
+presently from a child.</p>
+<p>To most of us, I suppose, has come some shock that
+was to make us different men from that hour, and yet,
+how many days elapsed before something of the man
+we had been leapt up in us? Babbie thought she had
+buried her old impulsiveness, and then remembering
+that from the top of the field she might see Gavin returning
+from church, she hastened to the hill to look
+upon him from a distance. Before she reached the gate
+where I had met her and him, however, she stopped,
+distressed at her selfishness, and asked bitterly, &#8220;Why
+am I so different from other women; why should what
+is so easy to them be so hard to me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, my beloved!&#8221; the Egyptian cried in her
+agony, and the wind caught her words and flung them
+in the air, making sport of her.</p>
+<p>She wandered westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by
+came to a great slab called the Standing Stone,
+on which children often sit and muse until they see gay
+ladies riding by on palfreys&mdash;a kind of horse&mdash;and
+knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery
+dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged
+laddies dream, as well as boys in socks. The
+Standing Stone is in the dyke that separates the hill
+from a fir wood, and it is the fairy-book of Thrums. If
+you would be a knight yourself, you must sit on it and
+whisper to it your desire.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_213' name='page_213'></a>213</span></div>
+<p>Babbie came to the Standing Stone, and there was a
+little boy astride it. His hair stood up through holes
+in his bonnet, and he was very ragged and miserable.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why are you crying, little boy?&#8221; Babbie asked him,
+gently; but he did not look up, and the tongue was
+strange to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How are you greeting so sair?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m no greeting very sair,&#8221; he answered, turning
+his head from her that a woman might not see his tears.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m no greeting so sair but what I grat sairer when
+my mither died.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When did she die?&#8221; Babbie inquired.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lang syne,&#8221; he answered, still with averted face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is your name?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Micah is my name. Rob Dow&#8217;s my father.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And have you no brothers nor sisters?&#8221; asked Babbie,
+with a fellow-feeling for him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, juist my father,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You should be the better laddie to him then. Did
+your mither no tell you to be that afore she died?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;she telled me ay to hide the
+bottle frae him when I could get haed o&#8217;t. She took me
+into the bed to make me promise that, and syne she died.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Does your father drina?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He hauds mair than ony other man in Thrums,&#8221;
+Micah replied, almost proudly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And he strikes you?&#8221; Babbie asked, compassionately.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a lie,&#8221; retorted the boy, fiercely. &#8220;Leastwise,
+he doesna strike me except when he&#8217;s mortal, and
+syne I can jouk him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you doing there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m wishing. It&#8217;s a wishing stane.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are wishing your father wouldna drink.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m no,&#8221; answered Micah. &#8220;There was a lang
+time he didna drink, but the woman has sent him to it
+again. It&#8217;s about her I&#8217;m wishing. I&#8217;m wishing she
+was in hell.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_214' name='page_214'></a>214</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;What woman is it?&#8221; asked Babbie, shuddering.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna ken,&#8221; Micah said, &#8220;but she&#8217;s an ill ane.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you never see her at your father&#8217;s house?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na; if he could get grip o&#8217; her he would break her
+ower his knee. I hearken to him saying that, when he&#8217;s
+wild. He says she should be burned for a witch.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if he hates her,&#8221; asked Babbie, &#8220;how can she
+have sic power ower him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no him that she has haud o&#8217;,&#8221; replied Micah,
+still looking away from her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha is it then?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Mr. Dishart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie was struck as if by an arrow from the wood.
+It was so unexpected that she gave a cry, and then for
+the first time Micah looked at her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How should that send your father to the drink?&#8221;
+she asked, with an effort.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because my father&#8217;s michty fond o&#8217; him,&#8221; answered
+Micah, staring strangely at her; &#8220;and when the folk
+ken about the woman, they&#8217;ll stane the minister out o&#8217;
+Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The wood faded for a moment from the Egyptian&#8217;s
+sight. When it came back, the boy had slid off the
+Standing Stone and was stealing away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you run frae me?&#8221; Babbie asked, pathetically.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m fleid at you,&#8221; he gasped, coming to a standstill
+at a safe distance: &#8220;you&#8217;re the woman!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie cowered before her little judge, and he drew
+nearer her slowly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What makes you think that?&#8221; she said.</p>
+<p>It was a curious time for Babbie&#8217;s beauty to be paid
+its most princely compliment.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_19' id='linki_19'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus252.jpg' alt='' title='' width='501' height='689' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;I&#8217;M WISHING SHE WAS IN HELL.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;Because you&#8217;re so bonny,&#8221; Micah whispered across
+the dyke. Her tears gave him courage. &#8220;You micht
+gang awa,&#8221; he entreated. &#8220;If you kent what a differ
+Mr. Dishart made in my father till you came, you would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_215' name='page_215'></a>215</span>
+maybe gang awa. When he&#8217;s roaring fou I have to
+sleep in the wood, and it&#8217;s awfu&#8217; cauld. I&#8217;m doubting
+he&#8217;ll kill me, woman, if you dinna gang awa.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Poor Babbie put her hand to her heart, but the innocent
+lad continued mercilessly&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If ony shame comes to the minister, his auld
+mither&#8217;ll die. How have you sic an ill will at the
+minister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie held up her hands like a supplicant.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll gie you my rabbit,&#8221; Micah said, &#8220;if you&#8217;ll gang
+awa. I&#8217;ve juist the ane.&#8221; She shook her head, and,
+misunderstanding her, he cried, with his knuckles in
+his eye, &#8220;I&#8217;ll gie you them baith, though I&#8217;m michty
+sweer to part wi&#8217; Spotty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then at last Babbie found her voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep your rabbits, laddie,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and greet no
+more. I&#8217;m gaen awa.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you&#8217;ll never come back no more a&#8217; your life?&#8221;
+pleaded Micah.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never no more a&#8217; my life,&#8221; repeated Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And ye&#8217;ll leave the minister alane for ever and
+ever?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For ever and ever.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Micah rubbed his face dry, and said, &#8220;Will you let me
+stand on the Standing Stane and watch you gaen awa
+for ever and ever?&#8221;</p>
+<p>At that a sob broke from Babbie&#8217;s heart, and looking
+at her doubtfully Micah said&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Maybe you&#8217;re gey ill for what you&#8217;ve done?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; Babbie answered, &#8220;I&#8217;m gey ill for what I&#8217;ve
+done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A minute passed, and in her anguish she did not know
+that still she was standing at the dyke. Micah&#8217;s voice
+roused her:</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said you would gang awa, and you&#8217;re no gaen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then Babbie went away. The boy watched her across
+the hill. He climbed the Standing Stone and gazed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_216' name='page_216'></a>216</span>
+after her until she was but a coloured ribbon among the
+broom. When she disappeared into Windyghoul he
+ran home joyfully, and told his father what a good day&#8217;s
+work he had done. Rob struck him for a fool for taking
+a gypsy&#8217;s word, and warned him against speaking of
+the woman in Thrums.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_20' id='linki_20'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus256.jpg' alt='' title='' width='465' height='700' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;ROB STRUCK HIM FOR A FOOL FOR TAKING A GYPSY&#8217;S WORD.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>But though Dow believed that Gavin continued to
+meet the Egyptian secretly, he was wrong. A sum of
+money for Nanny was sent to the minister, but he could
+guess only from whom it came. In vain did he search
+for Babbie. Some months passed and he gave up the
+search, persuaded that he should see her no more. He
+went about his duties with a drawn face that made many
+folk uneasy when it was stern, and pained them when it
+tried to smile. But to Margaret, though the effort was
+terrible, he was as he had ever been, and so no thought
+of a woman crossed her loving breast.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_217' name='page_217'></a>217</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYFIVE_BEGINNING_OF_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYFIVE_BEGINNING_OF_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Five.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>I can tell still how the whole of the glen was engaged
+about the hour of noon on the fourth of August month;
+a day to be among the last forgotten by any of us,
+though it began as quietly as a roaring March. At the
+Spittal, between which and Thrums this is a halfway
+house, were gathered two hundred men in kilts, and
+many gentry from the neighboring glens, to celebrate
+the earl&#8217;s marriage, which was to take place on the
+morrow, and thither, too, had gone many of my pupils
+to gather gossip, at which girls of six are trustier hands
+than boys of twelve. Those of us, however, who were
+neither children nor of gentle blood, remained at home,
+the farmers more taken up with the want of rain, now
+become a calamity, than with an old man&#8217;s wedding,
+and their womenfolk wringing their hands for rain also,
+yet finding time to marvel at the marriage&#8217;s taking
+place at the Spittal instead of in England, of which the
+ignorant spoke vaguely as an estate of the bride&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>For my own part I could talk of the disastrous drought
+with Waster Lunny as I walked over his parched fields,
+but I had not such cause as he to brood upon it by day
+and night; and the ins and outs of the earl&#8217;s marriage
+were for discussing at a tea-table, where there were
+women to help one to conclusions, rather than for the
+reflections of a solitary dominie, who had seen neither
+bride nor bridegroom. So it must be confessed that
+when I might have been regarding the sky moodily, or
+at the Spittal, where a free table that day invited all, I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_218' name='page_218'></a>218</span>
+was sitting in the school-house, heeling my left boot,
+on which I have always been a little hard.</p>
+<p>I made small speed, not through lack of craft, but
+because one can no more drive in tackets properly than
+take cities unless he gives his whole mind to it; and
+half of mine was at the Auld Licht manse. Since our
+meeting six months earlier on the hill I had not seen
+Gavin, but I had heard much of him, and of a kind to
+trouble me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw nothing queer about Mr. Dishart,&#8221; was Waster
+Lunny&#8217;s frequent story, &#8220;till I hearkened to Elspeth
+speaking about it to the lasses (for I&#8217;m the last
+Elspeth would tell onything to, though I&#8217;m her man),
+and syne I minded I had been noticing it for months.
+Elspeth says,&#8221; he would go on, for he could no more
+forbear quoting his wife than complaining of her, &#8220;that
+the minister&#8217;ll listen to you nowadays wi&#8217; his een glaring
+at you as if he had a perfectly passionate interest
+in what you were telling him (though it may be only
+about a hen wi&#8217; the croup), and then, after all, he hasna
+heard a sylib. Ay, I listened to Elspeth saying that,
+when she thocht I was at the byre, and yet, would you
+believe it, when I says to her after lousing time, &#8216;I&#8217;ve
+been noticing of late that the minister loses what a body
+tells him,&#8217; all she answers is &#8216;Havers.&#8217; Tod, but
+women&#8217;s provoking.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I allow,&#8221; Birse said, &#8220;that on the first Sabbath o&#8217;
+June month, and again on the third Sabbath, he poured
+out the Word grandly, but I&#8217;ve ta&#8217;en note this curran
+Sabbaths that if he&#8217;s no michty magnificent he&#8217;s michty
+poor. There&#8217;s something damming up his mind, and
+when he gets by it he&#8217;s a roaring water, but when he
+doesna he&#8217;s a despizable trickle. The folk thinks it&#8217;s a
+woman that&#8217;s getting in his way, but dinna tell me
+that about sic a scholar; I tell you he would gang ower
+a toon o&#8217; women like a loaded cart ower new-laid
+stanes.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_219' name='page_219'></a>219</span></div>
+<p>Wearyworld hobbled after me up the Roods one day,
+pelting me with remarks, though I was doing my best
+to get away from him. &#8220;Even Rob Dow sees there&#8217;s
+something come ower the minister,&#8221; he bawled, &#8220;for
+Rob&#8217;s fou ilka Sabbath now. Ay, but this I will say
+for Mr. Dishart, that he aye gies me a civil word,&#8221;
+I thought I had left the policeman behind with this,
+but next minute he roared, &#8220;And whatever is the matter
+wi&#8217; him it has made him kindlier to me than ever.&#8221;
+He must have taken the short cut through Lunan&#8217;s close,
+for at the top of the Roods his voice again made up on
+me. &#8220;Dagone you, for a cruel pack to put your fingers
+to your lugs ilka time I open my mouth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>As for Waster Lunny&#8217;s daughter Easie, who got her
+schooling free for redding up the school-house and
+breaking my furniture, she would never have been off
+the gossip about the minister, for she was her mother
+in miniature, with a tongue that ran like a pump after
+the pans are full, not for use but for the mere pleasure
+of spilling.</p>
+<p>On that awful fourth of August I not only had all
+this confused talk in my head but reason for jumping
+my mind between it and the Egyptian (as if to catch
+them together unawares), and I was like one who, with
+the mechanism of a watch jumbled in his hand, could
+set it going if he had the art.</p>
+<p>Of the gypsy I knew nothing save what I had seen
+that night, yet what more was there to learn? I was
+aware that she loved Gavin and that he loved her. A
+moment had shown it to me. Now with the Auld
+Lichts, I have the smith&#8217;s acquaintance with his irons,
+and so I could not believe that they would suffer their
+minister to marry a vagrant. Had it not been for this
+knowledge, which made me fearful for Margaret, I
+would have done nothing to keep these two young people
+apart. Some to whom I have said this maintain
+that the Egyptian turned my head at our first meeting.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_220' name='page_220'></a>220</span>
+Such an argument is not perhaps worth controverting.
+I admit that even now I straighten under the fire of a
+bright eye, as a pensioner may salute when he sees a
+young officer. In the shooting season, should I chance
+to be leaning over my dyke while English sportsmen
+pass (as is usually the case if I have seen them approaching),
+I remember nought of them save that they call
+me &#8220;she,&#8221; and end their greetings with &#8220;whatever&#8221;
+(which Waster Lunny takes to be a southron mode of
+speech), but their ladies dwell pleasantly in my memory,
+from their engaging faces to the pretty crumpled thing
+dangling on their arms, that is a hat or a basket, I am
+seldom sure which. The Egyptian&#8217;s beauty, therefore,
+was a gladsome sight to me, and none the less so that
+I had come upon it as unexpectedly as some men step
+into a bog. Had she been alone when I met her I cannot
+deny that I would have been content to look on her
+face, without caring what was inside it; but she was
+with her lover, and that lover was Gavin, and so her
+face was to me as little for admiring as this glen in a
+thunderstorm, when I know that some fellow-creature
+is lost on the hills.</p>
+<p>If, however, it was no quick liking for the gypsy that
+almost tempted me to leave these two lovers to each
+other, what was it? It was the warning of my own
+life. Adam Dishart had torn my arm from Margaret&#8217;s,
+and I had not recovered the wrench in eighteen years.
+Rather than act his part between these two I felt tempted
+to tell them, &#8220;Deplorable as the result may be, if you
+who are a minister marry this vagabond, it will be still
+more deplorable if you do not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But there was Margaret to consider, and at thought
+of her I cursed the Egyptian aloud. What could I do
+to keep Gavin and the woman apart? I could tell him
+the secret of his mother&#8217;s life. Would that be sufficient?
+It would if he loved Margaret, as I did not doubt. Pity
+for her would make him undergo any torture rather
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_221' name='page_221'></a>221</span>
+than she should suffer again. But to divulge our old
+connection would entail her discovery of me, and I
+questioned if even the saving of Gavin could destroy
+the bitterness of that.</p>
+<p>I might appeal to the Egyptian. I might tell her
+even what I shuddered to tell him. She cared for him,
+I was sure, well enough to have the courage to give
+him up. But where was I to find her?</p>
+<p>Were she and Gavin meeting still? Perhaps the
+change which had come over the little minister meant
+that they had parted. Yet what I had heard him say
+to her on the hill warned me not to trust in any such
+solution of the trouble.</p>
+<p>Boys play at casting a humming-top into the midst
+of others on the ground, and if well aimed it scatters
+them prettily. I seemed to be playing such a game
+with my thoughts, for each new one sent the others
+here and there, and so what could I do in the end but
+fling my tops aside, and return to the heeling of my
+boot?</p>
+<p>I was thus engaged when the sudden waking of the
+glen into life took me to my window. There is seldom
+silence up here, for if the wind be not sweeping the
+heather, the Quharity, that I may not have heard for
+days, seems to have crept nearer to the school-house in
+the night, and if both wind and water be out of earshot,
+there is the crack of a gun, or Waster Lunny&#8217;s shepherd
+is on a stone near at hand whistling, or a lamb is
+scrambling through a fence, and kicking foolishly with
+its hind legs. These sounds I am unaware of until
+they stop, when I look up. Such a stillness was broken
+now by music.</p>
+<p>From my window I saw a string of people walking
+rapidly down the glen, and Waster Lunny crossing his
+potato-field to meet them. Remembering that, though
+I was in my stocking soles, the ground was dry, I hastened
+to join the farmer, for I like to miss nothing. I
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_222' name='page_222'></a>222</span>
+saw a curious sight. In front of the little procession
+coming down the glen road, and so much more impressive
+than his satellites that they may be put of mind as
+merely ploughman and the like following a show, was
+a Highlander that I knew to be Lauchlan Campbell,
+one of the pipers engaged to lend music to the earl&#8217;s
+marriage. He had the name of a thrawn man when
+sober, but pretty at the pipes at both times, and he
+came marching down the glen blowing gloriously, as if
+he had the clan of Campbell at his heels. I know no
+man who is so capable on occasion of looking like twenty
+as a Highland piper, and never have I seen a face in
+such a blaze of passion as was Lauchlan Campbell&#8217;s
+that day. His following were keeping out of his reach,
+jumping back every time he turned round to shake his
+fist in the direction of the Spittal. While this magnificent
+man was yet some yards from us, I saw Waster
+Lunny, who had been in the middle of the road to ask
+questions, fall back in fear, and not being a fighting
+man myself, I jumped the dyke. Lauchlan gave me a
+look that sent me farther into the field, and strutted
+past, shrieking defiance through his pipes, until I lost
+him and his followers in a bend of the road.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s a terrifying spectacle,&#8221; I heard Waster
+Lunny say when the music had become but a distant
+squeal. &#8220;You&#8217;re bonny at louping dykes, dominie,
+when there is a wild bull in front o&#8217; you. Na, I canna
+tell what has happened, but at the least Lauchlan maun
+hae dirked the earl. Thae loons cried out to me as
+they gaed by that he has been blawing awa&#8217; at that
+tune till he canna halt. What a wind&#8217;s in the crittur!
+I&#8217;m thinking there&#8217;s a hell in ilka Highlandman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Take care then, Waster Lunny, that you dinna licht
+it,&#8221; said an angry voice that made us jump, though it
+was only Duncan, the farmer&#8217;s shepherd, who spoke.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had forgotten you was a Highlandman yoursel&#8217;,
+Duncan,&#8221; Waster Lunny said nervously; but Elspeth,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_223' name='page_223'></a>223</span>
+who had come to us unnoticed, ordered the shepherd to
+return to the hillside, which he did haughtily.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did you no lay haud on that blast o&#8217; wind,
+Lauchlan Campbell,&#8221; asked Elspeth of her husband,
+&#8220;and speir at him what had happened at the Spittal?
+A quarrel afore a marriage brings ill luck.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking,&#8221; said the farmer, &#8220;that Rintoul&#8217;s
+making his ain ill luck by marrying on a young leddy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A man&#8217;s never ower auld to marry,&#8221; said Elspeth.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, nor a woman,&#8221; rejoined Waster Lunny, &#8220;when
+she gets the chance. But, Elspeth, I believe I can
+guess what has fired that fearsome piper. Depend upon
+it, somebody has been speaking disrespectful about the
+crittur&#8217;s ancestors.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;His ancestors!&#8221; exclaimed Elspeth, scornfully.
+&#8220;I&#8217;m thinking mine could hae bocht them at a crown
+the dozen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hoots,&#8221; said the farmer, &#8220;you&#8217;re o&#8217; a weaving
+stock, and dinna understand about ancestors. Take a
+stick to a Highland laddie, and it&#8217;s no him you hurt,
+but his ancestors. Likewise it&#8217;s his ancestors that
+stanes you for it. When Duncan stalked awa the now,
+what think you he saw? He saw a farmer&#8217;s wife dauring
+to order about his ancestors; and if that&#8217;s the way
+wi&#8217; a shepherd, what will it be wi&#8217; a piper that has the
+kilts on him a&#8217; day to mind him o&#8217; his ancestors ilka
+time he looks down?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Elspeth retired to discuss the probable disturbance at
+the Spittal with her family, giving Waster Lunny the
+opportunity of saying to me impressively&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Man, man, has it never crossed you that it&#8217;s a queer
+thing the like o&#8217; you and me having no ancestors? Ay,
+we had them in a manner o&#8217; speaking, no doubt, but
+they&#8217;re as completely lost sicht o&#8217; as a flagon lid that&#8217;s
+fallen ahint the dresser. Hech, sirs, but they would
+need a gey rubbing to get the rust off them now. I&#8217;ve
+been thinking that if I was to get my laddies to say
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_224' name='page_224'></a>224</span>
+their grandfather&#8217;s name a curran times ilka day, like
+the Catechism, and they were to do the same wi&#8217; their
+bairns, and it was continued in future generations, we
+micht raise a fell field o&#8217; ancestors in time. Ay, but
+Elspeth wouldna hear o&#8217;t. Nothing angers her mair
+than to hear me speak o&#8217; planting trees for the benefit
+o&#8217; them that&#8217;s to be farmers here after me; and as for
+ancestors, she would howk them up as quick as I could
+plant them. Losh, dominie, is that a boot in your
+hand?&#8221;</p>
+<p>To my mortification I saw that I had run out of the
+school-house with the boot on my hand as if it were a
+glove, and back I went straightway, blaming myself for
+a man wanting in dignity. It was but a minor trouble
+this, however, even at the time; and to recall it later in
+the day was to look back on happiness, for though I did
+not know it yet, Lauchlan&#8217;s playing raised the curtain
+on the great act of Gavin&#8217;s life, and the twenty-four
+hours had begun, to which all I have told as yet is no
+more than the prologue.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_225' name='page_225'></a>225</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYSIX_SCENE_AT_THE_SPITTAL' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYSIX_SCENE_AT_THE_SPITTAL'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Six.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />SCENE AT THE SPITTAL.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Within an hour after I had left him, Waster Lunny
+walked into the school-house and handed me his snuff-mull,
+which I declined politely. It was with this ceremony
+that we usually opened our conversations.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ve seen the post,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and he tells me there
+has been a queer ploy at the Spittal. It&#8217;s a wonder the
+marriage hasna been turned into a burial, and all because
+o&#8217; that Highland stirk, Lauchlan Campbell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Waster Lunny was a man who had to retrace his steps
+in telling a story if he tried short cuts, and so my custom
+was to wait patiently while he delved through the
+ploughed fields that always lay between him and his
+destination.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As you ken, Rintoul&#8217;s so little o&#8217; a Scotchman that
+he&#8217;s no muckle better than an Englisher. That maun
+be the reason he hadna mair sense than to tramp on a
+Highlandman&#8217;s ancestors, as he tried to tramp on
+Lauchlan&#8217;s this day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If Lord Rintoul insulted the piper,&#8221; I suggested,
+giving the farmer a helping hand cautiously, &#8220;it would
+be through inadvertence. Rintoul only bought the
+Spittal a year ago, and until then, I daresay, he had
+seldom been on our side of the Border.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was a foolish interruption, for it set Waster
+Lunny off in a new direction.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s what Elspeth says. Says she, &#8216;When the
+earl has grand estates in England, what for does he
+come to a barren place like the Spittal to be married?
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_226' name='page_226'></a>226</span>
+It&#8217;s gey like,&#8217; she says, &#8216;as if he wanted the marriage
+to be got by quietly; a thing,&#8217; says she, &#8216;that no woman
+can stand. Furthermore,&#8217; Elspeth says, &#8216;how has the
+marriage been postponed twice?&#8217; We ken what the
+servants at the Spittal says to that, namely, that the
+young lady is no keen to take him, but Elspeth winna
+listen to sic arguments. She says either the earl had
+grown timid (as mony a man does) when the wedding-day
+drew near, or else his sister that keeps his house is
+mad at the thocht o&#8217; losing her place; but as for the
+young leddy&#8217;s being sweer, says Elspeth, &#8216;an earl&#8217;s an
+earl however auld he is, and a lassie&#8217;s a lassie however
+young she is, and weel she kens you&#8217;re never sure o&#8217; a
+man&#8217;s no changing his mind about you till you&#8217;re tied
+to him by law, after which it doesna so muckle matter
+whether he changes his mind about you or no.&#8217; Ay,
+there&#8217;s a quirk in it some gait, dominie; but it&#8217;s a deep
+water Elspeth canna bottom.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is,&#8221; I agreed; &#8220;but you were to tell me what
+Birse told you of the disturbance at the Spittal.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, weel,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;the post puts the wite
+o&#8217;t on her little leddyship, as they call her, though she
+winna be a leddyship till the morn. All I can say is
+that if the earl was saft enough to do sic a thing out
+of fondness for her, it&#8217;s time he was married on her,
+so that he may come to his senses again. That&#8217;s what
+I say; but Elspeth conters me, of course, and says she,
+&#8216;If the young leddy was so careless o&#8217; insulting other
+folks&#8217; ancestors, it proves she has nane o&#8217; her ain; for
+them that has china plates themsel&#8217;s is the maist careful
+no to break the china plates of others.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But what was the insult? Was Lauchlan dismissed?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Na, faags! It was waur than that. Dominie, you&#8217;re
+dull in the uptake compared to Elspeth. I hadna telled
+her half the story afore she jaloused the rest. However,
+to begin again; there&#8217;s great feasting and rejoicings
+gaen on at the Spittal the now, and also a banquet,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_227' name='page_227'></a>227</span>
+which the post says is twa dinners in one. Weel,
+there&#8217;s a curran Ogilvys among the guests, and it was
+them that egged on her little leddyship to make the daring
+proposal to the earl. What was the proposal? It
+was no less than that the twa pipers should be ordered
+to play &#8216;The Bonny House o&#8217; Airlie.&#8217; Dominie, I
+wonder you can tak it so calm when you ken that&#8217;s the
+Ogilvy&#8217;s sang, and that it&#8217;s aimed at the clan o&#8217; Campbell.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pooh!&#8221; I said. &#8220;The Ogilvys and the Campbells
+used to be mortal enemies, but the feud has been long
+forgotten.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, I&#8217;ve heard tell,&#8221; Waster Lunny said sceptically,
+&#8220;that Airlie and Argyle shakes hands now like Christians;
+but I&#8217;m thinking that&#8217;s just afore the Queen.
+Dinna speak now, for I&#8217;m in the thick o&#8217;t. Her little
+leddyship was all hinging in gold and jewels, the which
+winna be her ain till the morn; and she leans ower to
+the earl and whispers to him to get the pipers to play
+&#8216;The Bonny House.&#8217; He wasna willing, for says he,
+&#8216;There&#8217;s Ogilvys at the table, and ane o&#8217; the pipers is
+a Campbell, and we&#8217;ll better let sleeping dogs lie.&#8217;
+However, the Ogilvys lauched at his caution; and he
+was so infatuated wi&#8217; her little leddyship that he gae
+in, and he cried out to the pipers to strike up &#8216;The
+Bonny House.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Waster Lunny pulled his chair nearer me and rested
+his hand on my knees.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dominie,&#8221; he said in a voice that fell now and again
+into a whisper, &#8220;them looking on swears that when
+Lauchlan Campbell heard these monstrous orders his
+face became ugly and black, so that they kent in a jiffy
+what he would do. It&#8217;s said a&#8217; body jumped back frae
+him in a sudden dread, except poor Angus, the other
+piper, wha was busy tuning up for &#8216;The Bonny House.&#8217;
+Weel, Angus had got no farther in the tune than the
+first skirl when Lauchlan louped at him, and ripped
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_228' name='page_228'></a>228</span>
+up the startled crittur&#8217;s pipes wi&#8217; his dirk. The pipes
+gae a roar o&#8217; agony like a stuck swine, and fell gasping
+on the floor. What happened next was that Lauchlan
+wi&#8217; his dirk handy for onybody that micht try to stop
+him, marched once round the table, playing &#8216;The Campbells
+are Coming,&#8217; and then straucht out o&#8217; the Spittal,
+his chest far afore him, and his head so weel back that
+he could see what was going on ahint. Frae the Spittal
+to here he never stopped that fearsome tune, and I&#8217;se
+warrant he&#8217;s blawing away at it at this moment through
+the streets o&#8217; Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Waster Lunny was not in his usual spirits, or he would
+have repeated his story before he left me, for he had
+usually as much difficulty in coming to an end as in
+finding a beginning. The drought was to him as serious
+a matter as death in the house, and as little to be
+forgotten for a lengthened period.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s to be a prayer-meeting for rain in the Auld
+Licht kirk the night,&#8221; he told me as I escorted him as
+far as my side of the Quharity, now almost a dead
+stream, pitiable to see, &#8220;and I&#8217;m gaen; though I&#8217;m
+sweer to leave thae puir cattle o&#8217; mine. You should
+see how they look at me when I gie them mair o&#8217; that
+rotten grass to eat. It&#8217;s eneuch to mak a man greet,
+for what richt hae I to keep kye when I canna meat
+them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Waster Lunny has said to me more than once that the
+great surprise of his life was when Elspeth was willing
+to take him. Many a time, however, I have seen that
+in him which might have made any weaver&#8217;s daughter
+proud of such a man, and I saw it again when we came
+to the river side.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m no ane o&#8217; thae farmers,&#8221; he said, truthfully,
+&#8220;that&#8217;s aye girding at the weather, and Elspeth and
+me kens that we hae been dealt wi&#8217; bountifully since we
+took this farm wi&#8217; gey anxious hearts. That woman,
+dominie, is eneuch to put a brave face on a coward, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_229' name='page_229'></a>229</span>
+it&#8217;s no langer syne than yestreen when I was sitting in
+the dumps, looking at the aurora borealis, which I
+canna but regard as a messenger o&#8217; woe, that she put her
+hand on my shoulder and she says, &#8216;Waster Lunny,
+twenty year syne we began life thegither wi&#8217; nothing
+but the claethes on our back, and an it please God we
+can begin it again, for I hae you and you hae me, and
+I&#8217;m no cast down if you&#8217;re no.&#8217; Dominie, is there
+mony sic women in the warld as that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Many a one,&#8221; I said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, man, it shamed me, for I hae a kind o&#8217; delight
+in angering Elspeth, just to see what she&#8217;ll say. I
+could hae ta&#8217;en her on my knee at that minute, but the
+bairns was there, and so it wouldna hae dune. But I
+cheered her up, for, after all, the drought canna put us
+so far back as we was twenty years syne, unless it&#8217;s true
+what my father said, that the aurora borealis is the
+devil&#8217;s rainbow. I saw it sax times in July month,
+and it made me shut my een. You was out admiring
+it, dominie, but I can never forget that it was seen in
+the year twelve just afore the great storm. I was only
+a laddie then, but I mind how that awful wind stripped
+a&#8217; the standing corn in the glen in less time than we&#8217;ve
+been here at the water&#8217;s edge. It was called the deil&#8217;s
+besom. My father&#8217;s hinmost words to me was, &#8216;It&#8217;s
+time eneuch to greet, laddie, when you see the aurora
+borealis.&#8217; I mind he was so complete ruined in an hour
+that he had to apply for relief frae the poor&#8217;s rates.
+Think o&#8217; that, and him a proud man. He would tak&#8217;
+nothing till one winter day when we was a&#8217; starving,
+and syne I gaed wi&#8217; him to speir for&#8217;t, and he telled
+me to grip his hand ticht, so that the cauldness o&#8217; mine
+micht gie him courage. They were doling out the
+charity in the Town&#8217;s House, and I had never been in&#8217;t
+afore. I canna look at it now without thinking o&#8217; that
+day when me and my father gaed up the stair thegither.
+Mr. Duthie was presiding at the time, and he wasna
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_230' name='page_230'></a>230</span>
+muckle older than Mr. Dishart is now. I mind he
+speired for proof that we was needing, and my father
+couldna speak. He just pointed at me. &#8216;But you
+have a good coat on your back yoursel&#8217;,&#8217; Mr. Duthie
+said, for there were mony waiting, sair needing. &#8216;It
+was lended him to come here,&#8217; I cried, and without a
+word my father opened the coat, and they saw he had
+nothing on aneath, and his skin blue wi &#8217;cauld. Dominie,
+Mr. Duthie handed him one shilling and saxpence,
+and my father&#8217;s fingers closed greedily on&#8217;t for a minute,
+and syne it fell to the ground. They put it back in his
+hand, and it slipped out again, and Mr. Duthie gave
+it back to him, saying, &#8216;Are you so cauld as that?&#8217; But,
+oh, man, it wasna cauld that did it, but shame o&#8217; being
+on the rates. The blood a&#8217; ran to my father&#8217;s head,
+and syne left it as quick, and he flung down the siller
+and walked out o&#8217; the Town House wi&#8217; me running
+after him. We warstled through that winter, God kens
+how, and it&#8217;s near a pleasure to me to think o&#8217;t now, for,
+rain or no rain, I can never be reduced to sic straits
+again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The farmer crossed the water without using the stilts
+which were no longer necessary, and I little thought,
+as I returned to the school-house, what terrible things
+were to happen before he could offer me his snuff-mull
+again. Serious as his talk had been it was neither of
+drought nor of the incident at the Spittal that I sat
+down to think. My anxiety about Gavin came back to
+me until I was like a man imprisoned between walls of
+his own building. It may be that my presentiments
+of that afternoon look gloomier now than they were,
+because I cannot return to them save over a night of
+agony, black enough to darken any time connected with
+it. Perhaps my spirits only fell as the wind rose, for
+wind ever takes me back to Harvie, and when I think
+of Harvie my thoughts are of the saddest. I know that
+I sat for some hours, now seeing Gavin pay the penalty
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_231' name='page_231'></a>231</span>
+of marrying the Egyptian, and again drifting back to
+my days with Margaret, until the wind took to playing
+tricks with me, so that I heard Adam Dishart enter
+our home by the sea every time the school-house door
+shook.</p>
+<p>I became used to the illusion after starting several
+times, and thus when the door did open, about seven
+o&#8217;clock, it was only the wind rushing to my fire like a
+shivering dog that made me turn my head. Then I
+saw the Egyptian staring at me, and though her sudden
+appearance on my threshold was a strange thing, I forgot
+it in the whiteness of her face. She was looking
+at me like one who has asked a question of life or
+death, and stopped her heart for the reply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What is it?&#8221; I cried, and for a moment I believe I
+was glad she did not answer. She seemed to have told
+me already as much as I could bear.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He has not heard,&#8221; she said aloud in an expressionless
+voice, and, turning, would have slipped away without
+another word.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is any one dead?&#8221; I asked, seizing her hands and
+letting them fall, they were so clammy. She nodded,
+and trying to speak could not.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is dead,&#8221; she said at last in a whisper. &#8220;Mr.
+Dishart is dead,&#8221; and she sat down quietly.</p>
+<p>At that I covered my face, crying, &#8220;God help Margaret!&#8221;
+and then she rose, saying fiercely, so that I drew
+back from her, &#8220;There is no Margaret; he only cared
+for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is his mother,&#8221; I said hoarsely, and then she
+smiled to me, so that I thought her a harmless mad
+thing. &#8220;He was killed by a piper called Lauchlan
+Campbell,&#8221; she said, looking up at me suddenly. &#8220;It
+was my fault.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Poor Margaret!&#8221; I wailed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And poor Babbie,&#8221; she entreated pathetically; &#8220;will
+no one say, &#8216;Poor Babbie&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_232' name='page_232'></a>232</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYSEVEN_FIRST_JOURNEY_OF_THE_DOMINIE_TO_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYSEVEN_FIRST_JOURNEY_OF_THE_DOMINIE_TO_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Seven.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />FIRST JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;How did it happen?&#8221; I asked more than once, but
+the Egyptian was only with me in the body, and she
+did not hear. I might have been talking to some one a
+mile away whom a telescope had drawn near my eyes.</p>
+<p>When I put on my bonnet, however, she knew that I
+was going to Thrums, and she rose and walked to the
+door, looking behind to see that I followed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must not come,&#8221; I said harshly, but her hand
+started to her heart as if I had shot her, and I added
+quickly, &#8220;Come.&#8221; We were already some distance on
+our way before I repeated my question.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What matter how it happened?&#8221; she answered piteously,
+and they were words of which I felt the force.
+But when she said a little later, &#8220;I thought you would
+say it is not true,&#8221; I took courage, and forced her to
+tell me all she knew. She sobbed while she spoke, if
+one may sob without tears.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard of it at the Spittal,&#8221; she said. &#8220;The news
+broke out suddenly there that the piper had quarrelled
+with some one in Thrums, and that in trying to separate
+them Mr. Dishart was stabbed. There is no doubt of
+its truth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We should have heard of it here,&#8221; I said hopefully,
+&#8220;before the news reached the Spittal. It cannot be
+true.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was brought to the Spittal,&#8221; she answered, &#8220;by
+the hill road.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_233' name='page_233'></a>233</span></div>
+<p>Then my spirits sank again, for I knew that this was
+possible. There is a path, steep but short, across the
+hills between Thrums and the top of the glen, which
+Mr. Glendinning took frequently when he had to preach
+at both places on the same Sabbath. It is still called
+the Minister&#8217;s Road.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yet if the earl had believed it he would have sent
+some one into Thrums for particulars,&#8221; I said, grasping
+at such comfort as I could make.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He does believe it,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;He told me
+of it himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>You see the Egyptian was careless of her secret now;
+but what was that secret to me? An hour ago it would
+have been much, and already it was not worth listening
+to. If she had begun to tell me why Lord Rintoul took
+a gypsy girl into his confidence I should not have heard
+her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ran quickly,&#8221; she said. &#8220;Even if a messenger was
+sent he might be behind me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Was it her words or the tramp of a horse that made
+us turn our heads at that moment? I know not. But
+far back in a twist of the road we saw a horseman approaching
+at such a reckless pace that I thought he was
+on a runaway. We stopped instinctively, and waited
+for him, and twice he disappeared in hollows of the
+road, and then was suddenly tearing down upon us.
+I recognised in him young Mr. McKenzie, a relative of
+Rintoul, and I stretched out my arms to compel him to
+draw up. He misunderstood my motive, and was raising
+his whip threateningly, when he saw the Egyptian.
+It is not too much to say that he swayed in the saddle.
+The horse galloped on, though he had lost hold of the
+reins. He looked behind until he rounded a corner,
+and I never saw such amazement mixed with incredulity
+on a human face. For some minutes I expected to see
+him coming back, but when he did not I said wonderingly
+to the Egyptian&mdash;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_234' name='page_234'></a>234</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;He knew you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did he?&#8221; she answered indifferently, and I think we
+spoke no more until we were in Windyghoul. Soon
+we were barely conscious of each other&#8217;s presence.
+Never since have I walked between the school-house and
+Thrums in so short a time, nor seen so little on the way.</p>
+<p>In the Egyptian&#8217;s eyes, I suppose, was a picture of
+Gavin lying dead; but if her grief had killed her thinking
+faculties, mine, that was only less keen because I
+had been struck down once before, had set all the
+wheels of my brain in action. For it seemed to me
+that the hour had come when I must disclose myself
+to Margaret.</p>
+<p>I had realised always that if such a necessity did arise
+it could only be caused by Gavin&#8217;s premature death, or
+by his proving a bad son to her. Some may wonder
+that I could have looked calmly thus far into the possible,
+but I reply that the night of Adam Dishart&#8217;s homecoming
+had made of me a man whom the future could
+not surprise again. Though I saw Gavin and his
+mother happy in our Auld Licht manse, that did not
+prevent my considering the contingencies which might
+leave her without a son. In the school-house I had
+brooded over them as one may think over moves on a
+draught-board. It may have been idle, but it was done
+that I might know how to act best for Margaret if anything
+untoward occurred. The time for such action
+had come. Gavin&#8217;s death had struck me hard, but it
+did not crush me. I was not unprepared. I was going
+to Margaret now.</p>
+<p>What did I see as I walked quickly along the glen
+road, with Babbie silent by my side, and I doubt not
+pods of the broom cracking all around us? I saw myself
+entering the Auld Licht manse, where Margaret sat
+weeping over the body of Gavin, and there was none to
+break my coming to her, for none but she and I knew
+what had been.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_235' name='page_235'></a>235</span></div>
+<p>I saw my Margaret again, so fragile now, so thin the
+wrists, her hair turned grey. No nearer could I go,
+but stopped at the door, grieving for her, and at last
+saying her name aloud.</p>
+<p>I saw her raise her face, and look upon me for the
+first time for eighteen years. She did not scream at
+sight of me, for the body of her son lay between us, and
+bridged the gulf that Adam Dishart had made.</p>
+<p>I saw myself draw near her reverently and say,
+&#8220;Margaret, he is dead, and that is why I have come
+back,&#8221; and I saw her put her arms around my neck as
+she often did long ago.</p>
+<p>But it was not to be. Never since that night at
+Harvie have I spoken to Margaret.</p>
+<p>The Egyptian and I were to come to Windyghoul before
+I heard her speak. She was not addressing me.
+Here Gavin and she had met first, and she was talking
+of that meeting to herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was there,&#8221; I heard her say softly, as she gazed
+at the bush beneath which she had seen him shaking
+his fist at her on the night of the riots. A little farther
+on she stopped where a path from Windyghoul sets off
+for the well in the wood. She looked up it wistfully,
+and there I left her behind, and pressed on to the mudhouse
+to ask Nanny Webster if the minister was dead.
+Nanny&#8217;s gate was swinging in the wind, but her door
+was shut, and for a moment I stood at it like a coward,
+afraid to enter and hear the worst.</p>
+<p>The house was empty. I turned from it relieved,
+as if I had got a respite, and while I stood in the garden
+the Egyptian came to me shuddering, her twitching
+face asking the question that would not leave her lips.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is no one in the house,&#8221; I said. &#8220;Nanny is
+perhaps at the well.&#8221;</p>
+<p>But the gypsy went inside, and pointing to the fire
+said, &#8220;It has been out for hours. Do you not see? The
+murder has drawn every one into Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_236' name='page_236'></a>236</span></div>
+<p>So I feared. A dreadful night was to pass before I
+knew that this was the day of the release of Sanders
+Webster, and that frail Nanny had walked into Tilliedrum
+to meet him at the prison gate.</p>
+<p>Babbie sank upon a stool, so weak that I doubt
+whether she heard me tell her to wait there until my
+return. I hurried into Thrums, not by the hill, though
+it is the shorter way, but by the Roods, for I must hear
+all before I ventured to approach the manse. From
+Windyghoul to the top of the Roods it is a climb and
+then a steep descent. The road has no sooner reached
+its highest point than it begins to fall in the straight
+line of houses called the Roods, and thus I came upon
+a full view of the street at once. A cart was laboring
+up it. There were women sitting on stones at their
+doors, and girls playing at palaulays, and out of the
+house nearest me came a black figure. My eyes failed
+me; I was asking so much from them. They made
+him tall and short, and spare and stout, so that I knew
+it was Gavin, and yet, looking again, feared, but all
+the time, I think, I knew it was he.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_237' name='page_237'></a>237</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYEIGHT_THE_HILL_BEFORE_DARKNESS_FELLSCENE_OF_THE_IMPENDING_CATASTROPHE' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYEIGHT_THE_HILL_BEFORE_DARKNESS_FELLSCENE_OF_THE_IMPENDING_CATASTROPHE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Eight.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE HILL BEFORE DARKNESS FELL&mdash;SCENE OF THE IMPENDING CATASTROPHE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;You are better now?&#8221; I heard Gavin ask, presently.</p>
+<p>He thought that having been taken ill suddenly I had
+waved to him for help because he chanced to be near.
+With all my wits about me I might have left him in
+that belief, for rather would I have deceived him than
+had him wonder why his welfare seemed so vital to me.
+But I, who thought the capacity for being taken aback
+had gone from me, clung to his arm and thanked God
+audibly that he still lived. He did not tell me then
+how my agitation puzzled him, but led me kindly to
+the hill, where we could talk without listeners. By the
+time we reached it I was again wary, and I had told
+him what had brought me to Thrums, without mentioning
+how the story of his death reached my ears, or
+through whom.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. McKenzie,&#8221; he said, interrupting me, &#8220;galloped
+all the way from the Spittal on the same errand. However,
+no one has been hurt much, except the piper himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then he told me how the rumor arose.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know of the incident at the Spittal, and that
+Campbell marched off in high dudgeon? I understand
+that he spoke to no one between the Spittal and Thrums,
+but by the time he arrived here he was more communicative;
+yes, and thirstier. He was treated to drink in
+several public-houses by persons who wanted to hear
+his story, and by-and-by he began to drop hints of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_238' name='page_238'></a>238</span>
+knowing something against the earl&#8217;s bride. Do you
+know Rob Dow?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;and what you have done for
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, sir!&#8221; he said, sighing, &#8220;for a long time I thought
+I was to be God&#8217;s instrument in making a better man
+of Rob, but my power over him went long ago. Ten
+short months of the ministry takes some of the vanity
+out of a man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Looking sideways at him I was startled by the unnatural
+brightness of his eyes. Unconsciously he had
+acquired the habit of pressing his teeth together in the
+pauses of his talk, shutting them on some woe that
+would proclaim itself, as men do who keep their misery
+to themselves.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A few hours ago,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;I heard Rob&#8217;s voice
+in altercation as I passed the Bull tavern, and I had
+a feeling that if I failed with him so should I fail
+always throughout my ministry. I walked into the
+public-house, and stopped at the door of a room in
+which Dow and the piper were sitting drinking. I
+heard Rob saying, fiercely, &#8217;If what you say about her
+is true, Highlandman, she&#8217;s the woman I&#8217;ve been looking
+for this half year and mair; what is she like?&#8217; I
+guessed, from what I had been told of the piper, that
+they were speaking of the earl&#8217;s bride; but Rob saw me
+and came to an abrupt stop, saying to his companion,
+&#8216;Dinna say another word about her afore the minister.&#8217;
+Rob would have come away at once in answer to my
+appeal, but the piper was drunk and would not be
+silenced. &#8216;I&#8217;ll tell the minister about her, too,&#8217; he
+began. &#8216;You dinna ken what you&#8217;re doing,&#8217; Rob
+roared, and then, as if to save my ears from scandal at
+any cost, he struck Campbell a heavy blow on the
+mouth. I tried to intercept the blow, with the result
+that I fell, and then some one ran out of the tavern
+crying, &#8216;He&#8217;s killed!&#8217; The piper had been stunned,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_239' name='page_239'></a>239</span>
+but the story went abroad that he had stabbed me for
+interfering with him. That is really all. Nothing, as
+you know, can overtake an untruth if it has a minute&#8217;s
+start.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where is Campbell now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sleeping off the effect of the blow: but Dow has
+fled. He was terrified at the shouts of murder, and ran
+off up the West Town end. The doctor&#8217;s dogcart was
+standing at a door there and Rob jumped into it and
+drove off. They did not chase him far, because he is
+sure to hear the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will
+come back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Though in a few hours we were to wonder at our
+denseness, neither Gavin nor I saw why Dow had struck
+the Highlander down rather than let him tell his story
+in the minister&#8217;s presence. One moment&#8217;s suspicion
+would have lit our way to the whole truth, but of the
+spring to all Rob&#8217;s behavior in the past eight months
+we were ignorant, and so to Gavin the Bull had only
+been the scene of a drunken brawl, while I forgot to
+think in the joy of finding him alive.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have a prayer-meeting for rain presently,&#8221; Gavin
+said, breaking a picture that had just appeared unpleasantly
+before me of Babbie still in agony at Nanny&#8217;s,
+&#8220;but before I leave you tell me why this rumor caused
+you such distress.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The question troubled me, and I tried to avoid it.
+Crossing the hill we had by this time drawn near a
+hollow called the Toad&#8217;s-hole, then gay and noisy with
+a caravan of gypsies. They were those same wild
+Lindsays, for whom Gavin had searched Caddam one
+eventful night, and as I saw them crowding round their
+king, a man well known to me, I guessed what they
+were at.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart,&#8221; I said abruptly, &#8220;would you like to
+see a gypsy marriage? One is taking place there just
+now. That big fellow is the king, and he is about to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_240' name='page_240'></a>240</span>
+marry two of his people over the tongs. The ceremony
+will not detain us five minutes, though the rejoicings
+will go on all night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I have been present at more than one gypsy wedding
+in my time, and at the wild, weird orgies that followed
+them, but what is interesting to such as I may not be
+for a minister&#8217;s eyes, and, frowning at my proposal,
+Gavin turned his back upon the Toad&#8217;s-hole. Then,
+as we recrossed the hill, to get away from the din of
+the camp, I pointed out to him that the report of his
+death had brought McKenzie to Thrums, as well as me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As soon as McKenzie heard I was not dead,&#8221; he
+answered, &#8220;he galloped off to the Spittal, without even
+seeing me. I suppose he posted back to be in time for
+the night&#8217;s rejoicings there. So you see, it was not
+solicitude for me that brought him. He came because
+a servant at the Spittal was supposed to have done the
+deed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; I had to say, &#8220;why should I
+deny that I have a warm regard for you? You have
+done brave work in our town.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It has been little,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;With God&#8217;s help
+it will be more in future.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He meant that he had given time to his sad love
+affair that he owed to his people. Of seeing Babbie
+again I saw that he had given up hope. Instead of repining,
+he was devoting his whole soul to God&#8217;s work.
+I was proud of him, and yet I grieved, for I could not
+think that God wanted him to bury his youth so soon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had thought,&#8221; he confessed to me, &#8220;that you were
+one of those who did not like my preaching.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You were mistaken,&#8221; I said, gravely. I dared not
+tell him that, except his mother, none would have sat
+under him so eagerly as I.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nevertheless,&#8221; he said, &#8220;you were a member of the
+Auld Licht church in Mr. Carfrae&#8217;s time, and you left
+it when I came.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_241' name='page_241'></a>241</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I heard your first sermon,&#8221; I said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;I had not been long in Thrums
+before I discovered that if I took tea with any of my
+congregation and declined a second cup, they thought
+it a reflection on their brewing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must not look upon my absence in that light,&#8221;
+was all I could say. &#8220;There are reasons why I cannot
+come.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He did not press me further, thinking I meant that
+the distance was too great, though frailer folk than I
+walked twenty miles to hear him. We might have
+parted thus had we not wandered by chance to the very
+spot where I had met him and Babbie. There is a seat
+there now for those who lose their breath on the climb
+up, and so I have two reasons nowadays for not passing
+the place by.</p>
+<p>We read each other&#8217;s thoughts, and Gavin said
+calmly, &#8220;I have not seen her since that night. She
+disappeared as into a grave.&#8221;</p>
+<p>How could I answer when I knew that Babbie was
+dying for want of him, not half a mile away?</p>
+<p>&#8220;You seemed to understand everything that night,&#8221;
+he went on; &#8220;or if you did not, your thoughts were very
+generous to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In my sorrow for him I did not notice that we were
+moving on again, this time in the direction of Windyghoul.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was only a gypsy girl,&#8221; he said, abruptly, and
+I nodded. &#8220;But I hoped,&#8221; he continued, &#8220;that she
+would be my wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I understood that,&#8221; I said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was nothing monstrous to you,&#8221; he asked,
+looking me in the face, &#8220;in a minister&#8217;s marrying a
+gypsy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>I own that if I had loved a girl, however far below
+or above me in degree, I would have married her had
+she been willing to take me. But to Gavin I only
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_242' name='page_242'></a>242</span>
+answered, &#8220;These are matters a man must decide for
+himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had decided for myself,&#8221; he said, emphatically.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yet,&#8221; I said, wanting him to talk to me of Margaret,
+&#8220;in such a case one might have others to consider besides
+himself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A man&#8217;s marriage,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;is his own affair,
+I would have brooked no interference from my congregation.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I thought, &#8220;There is some obstinacy left in him still;&#8221;
+but aloud I said, &#8220;It was of your mother I was thinking.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She would have taken Babbie to her heart,&#8221; he said,
+with the fond conviction of a lover.</p>
+<p>I doubted it, but I only asked, &#8220;Your mother knows
+nothing of her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing,&#8221; he rejoined. &#8220;It would be cruelty to tell
+my mother of her now that she is gone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin&#8217;s calmness had left him, and he was striding
+quickly nearer to Windyghoul. I was in dread lest he
+should see the Egyptian at Nanny&#8217;s door, yet to have
+turned him in another direction might have roused his
+suspicions. When we were within a hundred yards of
+the mudhouse, I knew that there was no Babbie in
+sight. We halved the distance and then I saw her at
+the open window. Gavin&#8217;s eyes were on the ground,
+but she saw him. I held my breath, fearing that she
+would run out to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have never seen her since that night?&#8221; Gavin
+asked me, without hope in his voice.</p>
+<p>Had he been less hopeless he would have wondered
+why I did not reply immediately. I was looking covertly
+at the mudhouse, of which we were now within a few
+yards. Babbie&#8217;s face had gone from the window, and
+the door remained shut. That she could hear every
+word we uttered now, I could not doubt. But she was
+hiding from the man for whom her soul longed. She
+was sacrificing herself for him.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_243' name='page_243'></a>243</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Never,&#8221; I answered, notwithstanding my pity of
+the brave girl, and then while I was shaking lest he
+should go in to visit Nanny, I heard the echo of the
+Auld Licht bell.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That calls me to the meeting for rain,&#8221; Gavin said,
+bidding me good-night. I had acted for Margaret, and
+yet I had hardly the effrontery to take his hand. I
+suppose he saw sympathy in my face, for suddenly the
+cry broke from him&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I could only know that nothing evil had befallen
+her!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie heard him and could not restrain a heart-breaking
+sob.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What was that?&#8221; he said, starting.</p>
+<p>A moment I waited, to let her show herself if she
+chose. But the mudhouse was silent again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was some boy in the wood,&#8221; I answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-bye,&#8221; he said, trying to smile.</p>
+<p>Had I let him go, here would have been the end of
+his love story, but that piteous smile unmanned me, and
+I could not keep the words back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is in Nanny&#8217;s house,&#8221; I cried.</p>
+<p>In another moment these two were together for weal
+or woe, and I had set off dizzily for the school-house,
+feeling now that I had been false to Margaret, and again
+exulting in what I had done. By and by the bell
+stopped, and Gavin and Babbie regarded it as little as
+I heeded the burns now crossing the glen road noisily
+at places that had been dry two hours before.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_244' name='page_244'></a>244</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_TWENTYNINE_STORY_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN' id='CHAPTER_TWENTYNINE_STORY_OF_THE_EGYPTIAN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Twenty-Nine.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />STORY OF THE EGYPTIAN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>God gives us more than, were we not overbold, we
+should dare to ask for, and yet how often (perhaps after
+saying &#8220;Thank God&#8221; so curtly that it is only a form of
+swearing) we are suppliants again within the hour.
+Gavin was to be satisfied if he were told that no evil had
+befallen her he loved, and all the way between the
+school-house and Windyghoul Babbie craved for no
+more than Gavin&#8217;s life. Now they had got their desires;
+but do you think they were content?</p>
+<p>The Egyptian had gone on her knees when she heard
+Gavin speak of her. It was her way of preventing herself
+from running to him. Then, when she thought him
+gone, he opened the door. She rose and shrank back,
+but first she had stepped toward him with a glad cry.
+His disappointed arms met on nothing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You, too, heard that I was dead?&#8221; he said, thinking
+her strangeness but grief too sharply turned to joy.</p>
+<p>There were tears in the word with which she answered
+him, and he would have kissed her, but she defended
+her face with her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Babbie,&#8221; he asked, beginning to fear that he
+had not sounded her deepest woe, &#8220;why have you
+left me all this time? You are not glad to see me
+now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was glad,&#8221; she answered in a low voice, &#8220;to see
+you from the window, but I prayed to God not to let
+you see me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She even pulled away her hand when he would have
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_245' name='page_245'></a>245</span>
+taken it. &#8220;No, no, I am to tell you everything now,
+and then&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Say that you love me first,&#8221; he broke in, when a
+sob checked her speaking.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she said, &#8220;I must tell you first what I have
+done, and then you will not ask me to say that. I am
+not a gypsy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What of that?&#8221; cried Gavin. &#8220;It was not because
+you were a gypsy that I loved you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is the last time you will say you love me,&#8221; said
+Babbie. &#8220;Mr. Dishart, I am to be married to-morrow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stopped, afraid to say more lest he should fall,
+but except that his arms twitched he did not move.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am to be married to Lord Rintoul,&#8221; she went on.
+&#8220;Now you know who I am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She turned from him, for his piercing eyes frightened
+her. Never again, she knew, would she see the love-light
+in them. He plucked himself from the spot
+where he had stood looking at her and walked to the
+window. When he wheeled round there was no anger on
+his face, only a pathetic wonder that he had been deceived
+so easily. It was at himself that he was smiling
+grimly rather than at her, and the change pained
+Babbie as no words could have hurt her. He sat down
+on a chair and waited for her to go on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t look at me,&#8221; she said, &#8220;and I will tell you
+everything.&#8221; He dropped his eyes listlessly, and had
+he not asked her a question from time to time, she would
+have doubted whether he heard her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;After all,&#8221; she said, &#8220;a gypsy dress is my birth-right,
+and so the Thrums people were scarcely wrong in
+calling me an Egyptian. It is a pity any one insisted
+on making me something different. I believe I could
+have been a good gypsy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who were your parents?&#8221; Gavin asked, without
+looking up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You ask that,&#8221; she said, &#8220;because you have a good
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_246' name='page_246'></a>246</span>
+mother. It is not a question that would occur to me.
+My mother&mdash;If she was bad, may not that be some
+excuse for me? Ah, but I have no wish to excuse myself.
+Have you seen a gypsy cart with a sort of hammock
+swung beneath it in which gypsy children are
+carried about the country? If there are no children,
+the pots and pans are stored in it. Unless the roads
+are rough it makes a comfortable cradle, and it was the
+only one I ever knew. Well, one day I suppose the
+road was rough, for I was capsized. I remember picking
+myself up after a little and running after the cart,
+but they did not hear my cries. I sat down by the roadside
+and stared after the cart until I lost sight of it.
+That was in England, and I was not three years old.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But surely,&#8221; Gavin said, &#8220;they came back to look
+for you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So far as I know,&#8221; Babbie answered hardly, &#8220;they
+did not come back. I have never seen them since. I
+think they were drunk. My only recollection of my
+mother is that she once took me to see the dead body
+of some gypsy who had been murdered. She told me
+to dip my hand in the blood, so that I could say I had
+done so when I became a woman. It was meant as a
+treat to me, and is the one kindness I am sure I got from
+her. Curiously enough, I felt the shame of her deserting
+me for many years afterwards. As a child I cried
+hysterically at thought of it; it pained me when I was
+at school in Edinburgh every time I saw the other girls
+writing home; I cannot think of it without a shudder
+even now. It is what makes me worse than other
+women.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her voice had altered, and she was speaking passionately.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes,&#8221; she continued, more gently, &#8220;I try to
+think that my mother did come back for me, and then
+went away because she heard I was in better hands than
+hers. It was Lord Rintoul who found me, and I owe
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_247' name='page_247'></a>247</span>
+everything to him. You will say that he has no need to
+be proud of me. He took me home on his horse, and
+paid his gardener&#8217;s wife to rear me. She was Scotch,
+and that is why I can speak two languages. It was he,
+too, who sent me to school in Edinburgh.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He has been very kind to you,&#8221; said Gavin, who
+would have preferred to dislike the earl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;So kind,&#8221; answered Babbie, &#8220;that now he is to
+marry me. But do you know why he has done all
+this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now again she was agitated, and spoke indignantly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is all because I have a pretty face,&#8221; she said, her
+bosom rising and falling. &#8220;Men think of nothing else.
+He had no pity for the deserted child. I knew that
+while I was yet on his horse. When he came to the
+gardener&#8217;s afterwards, it was not to give me some one
+to love, it was only to look upon what was called my
+beauty; I was merely a picture to him, and even the
+gardener&#8217;s children knew it and sought to terrify me
+by saying, &#8216;You are losing your looks; the earl will not
+care for you any more.&#8217; Sometimes he brought his
+friends to see me, &#8216;because I was such a lovely child,&#8217;
+and if they did not agree with him on that point he
+left without kissing me. Throughout my whole girlhood
+I was taught nothing but to please him, and the
+only way to do that was to be pretty. It was the only
+virtue worth striving for; the others were never thought
+of when he asked how I was getting on. Once I had
+fever and nearly died, yet this knowledge that my face
+was everything was implanted in me so that my fear
+lest he should think me ugly when I recovered terrified
+me into hysterics. I dream still that I am in that fever
+and all my fears return. He did think me ugly when
+he saw me next. I remember the incident so well still.
+I had run to him, and he was lifting me up to kiss me
+when he saw that my face had changed. &#8216;What a cruel
+disappointment,&#8217; he said, and turned his back on me.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_248' name='page_248'></a>248</span>
+I had given him a child&#8217;s love until then, but from that
+day I was hard and callous.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And when was it you became beautiful again?&#8221;
+Gavin asked, by no means in the mind to pay compliments.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A year passed,&#8221; she continued, &#8220;before I saw him
+again. In that time he had not asked for me once, and
+the gardener had kept me out of charity. It was by an
+accident that we met, and at first he did not know me.
+Then he said, &#8216;Why, Babbie, I believe you are to be a
+beauty, after all!&#8217; I hated him for that, and stalked
+away from him, but he called after me, &#8216;Bravo! she
+walks like a queen&#8217;; and it was because I walked like a
+queen that he sent me to an Edinburgh school. He
+used to come to see me every year, and as I grew up
+the girls called me Lady Rintoul. He was not fond of
+me; he is not fond of me now. He would as soon think
+of looking at the back of a picture as at what I am
+apart from my face, but he dotes on it, and is to marry
+it. Is that love? Long before I left school, which was
+shortly before you came to Thrums, he had told his sister
+that he was determined to marry me, and she hated
+me for it, making me as uncomfortable as she could, so
+that I almost looked forward to the marriage because it
+would be such a humiliation to her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In admitting this she looked shamefacedly at Gavin,
+and then went on:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is humiliating him too. I understand him. He
+would like not to want to marry me, for he is ashamed
+of my origin, but he cannot help it. It is this feeling
+that has brought him here, so that the marriage may
+take place where my history is not known.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The secret has been well kept,&#8221; Gavin said, &#8220;for
+they have failed to discover it even in Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some of the Spittal servants suspect it, nevertheless,&#8221;
+Babbie answered, &#8220;though how much they know
+I cannot say. He has not a servant now, either here or
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_249' name='page_249'></a>249</span>
+in England, who knew me as a child. The gardener
+who befriended me was sent away long ago. Lord
+Rintoul looks upon me as a disgrace to him that he
+cannot live without.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dare say he cares for you more than you think,&#8221;
+Gavin said gravely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is infatuated about my face, or the pose of my
+head, or something of that sort,&#8221; Babbie said bitterly,
+&#8220;or he would not have endured me so long. I have
+twice had the wedding postponed, chiefly, I believe, to
+enrage my natural enemy, his sister, who is as much aggravated
+by my reluctance to marry him as by his desire
+to marry me. However, I also felt that imprisonment
+for life was approaching as the day drew near, and I
+told him that if he did not defer the wedding I should
+run away. He knows I am capable of it, for twice I
+ran away from school. If his sister only knew that!&#8221;</p>
+<p>For a moment it was the old Babbie Gavin saw; but
+her glee was short-lived, and she resumed sedately:</p>
+<p>&#8220;They were kind to me at school, but the life was so
+dull and prim that I ran off in a gypsy dress of my
+own making. That is what it is to have gypsy blood
+in one. I was away for a week the first time, wandering
+the country alone, telling fortunes, dancing and
+singing in woods, and sleeping in barns. I am the only
+woman in the world well brought up who is not afraid
+of mice or rats. That is my gypsy blood again. After
+that wild week I went back to the school of my own
+will, and no one knows of the escapade but my schoolmistress
+and Lord Rintoul. The second time, however,
+I was detected singing in the street, and then my future
+husband was asked to take me away. Yet Miss
+Feversham cried when I left, and told me that I was
+the nicest girl she knew, as well as the nastiest. She
+said she should love me as soon as I was not one of her
+boarders.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And then you came to the Spittal?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_250' name='page_250'></a>250</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; and Lord Rintoul wanted me to say I was
+sorry for what I had done, but I told him I need not
+say that, for I was sure to do it again. As you know,
+I have done it several times since then; and though I
+am a different woman since I knew you, I dare say I
+shall go on doing it at times all my life. You shake
+your head because you do not understand. It is not
+that I make up my mind to break out in that way; I
+may not have had the least desire to do it for weeks,
+and then suddenly, when I am out riding, or at dinner,
+or at a dance, the craving to be a gypsy again is so
+strong that I never think of resisting it; I would risk
+my life to gratify it. Yes, whatever my life in the
+future is to be, I know that must be a part of it. I used
+to pretend at the Spittal that I had gone to bed, and
+then escape by the window. I was mad with glee at
+those times, but I always returned before morning, except
+once, the last time I saw you, when I was away
+for nearly twenty-four hours. Lord Rintoul was so
+glad to see me come back then that he almost forgave
+me for going away. There is nothing more to tell except
+that on the night of the riot it was not my gypsy
+nature that brought me to Thrums, but a desire to save
+the poor weavers. I had heard Lord Rintoul and the
+sheriff discussing the contemplated raid. I have hidden
+nothing from you. In time, perhaps, I shall have
+suffered sufficiently for all my wickedness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin rose weariedly, and walked through the mudhouse
+looking at her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the end of it all,&#8221; he said harshly, coming
+to a standstill. &#8220;I loved you, Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she answered, shaking her head. &#8220;You never
+knew me until now, and so it was not me you loved.
+I know what you thought I was, and I will try to be it
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you had only told me this before,&#8221; the minister
+said sadly, &#8220;it might not have been too late.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_251' name='page_251'></a>251</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;I only thought you like all the other men I knew,&#8221;
+she replied, &#8220;until the night I came to the manse. It
+was only my face you admired at first.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it was never that,&#8221; Gavin said with such conviction
+that her mouth opened in alarm to ask him if
+he did not think her pretty. She did not speak, however,
+and he continued, &#8220;You must have known that I
+loved you from the first night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; you only amused me,&#8221; she said, like one determined
+to stint nothing of the truth. &#8220;Even at the
+well I laughed at your vows.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This wounded Gavin afresh, wretched as her story
+had made him, and he said tragically, &#8220;You have
+never cared for me at all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, always, always,&#8221; she answered, &#8220;since I knew
+what love was; and it was you who taught me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Even in his misery he held his head high with pride.
+At least she did love him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And then,&#8221; Babbie said, hiding her face, &#8220;I could
+not tell you what I was because I knew you would
+loathe me. I could only go away.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She looked at him forlornly through her tears, and
+then moved toward the door. He had sunk upon a
+stool, his face resting on the table, and it was her intention
+to slip away unnoticed. But he heard the latch
+rise, and jumping up, said sharply, &#8220;Babbie, I cannot
+give you up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stood in tears, swinging the door unconsciously
+with her hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Don&#8217;t say that you love me still,&#8221; she cried; and
+then, letting her hand fall from the door, added imploringly,
+&#8220;Oh, Gavin, do you?&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_252' name='page_252'></a>252</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTY_THE_MEETING_FOR_RAIN' id='CHAPTER_THIRTY_THE_MEETING_FOR_RAIN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE MEETING FOR RAIN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Meanwhile the Auld Lichts were in church, waiting
+for their minister, and it was a full meeting, because
+nearly every well in Thrums had been scooped dry by
+anxious palms. Yet not all were there to ask God&#8217;s
+rain for themselves. Old Charles Yuill was in his pew,
+after dreaming thrice that he would break up with the
+drought; and Bell Christison had come, though her
+man lay dead at home, and she thought it could matter
+no more to her how things went in the world.</p>
+<p>You, who do not love that little congregation, would
+have said that they were waiting placidly. But probably
+so simple a woman as Meggy Rattray could have
+deceived you into believing that because her eyes were
+downcast she did not notice who put the three-penny-bit
+in the plate. A few men were unaware that the
+bell was working overtime, most of them farmers with
+their eyes on the windows, but all the women at least
+were wondering. They knew better, however, than
+to bring their thoughts to their faces, and none sought
+to catch another&#8217;s eye. The men-folk looked heavily
+at their hats in the seats in front. Even when Hendry
+Munn, instead of marching to the pulpit with the big
+Bible in his hands, came as far as the plate and signed
+to Peter Tosh, elder, that he was wanted in the vestry,
+you could not have guessed how every woman there,
+except Bell Christison, wished she was Peter Tosh.
+Peter was so taken aback that he merely gaped at
+Hendry, until suddenly he knew that his five daughters
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_253' name='page_253'></a>253</span>
+were furious with him, when he dived for his hat and
+staggered to the vestry with his mouth open. His
+boots cheeped all the way, but no one looked up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hadna noticed the minister was lang in coming,&#8221;
+Waster Lunny told me afterward, &#8220;but Elspeth noticed
+it, and with a quickness that baffles me she saw I
+was thinking o&#8217; other things. So she let out her foot
+at me. I gae a low cough to let her ken I wasna sleeping,
+but in a minute out goes her foot again. Ay,
+syne I thocht I micht hae dropped my hanky into
+Snecky Hobart&#8217;s pew, but no, it was in my tails. Yet
+her hand was on the board, and she was working her
+fingers in a way that I kent meant she would like to
+shake me. Next I looked to see if I was sitting on her
+frock, the which tries a woman sair, but I wasna.
+&#8216;Does she want to change Bibles wi&#8217; me?&#8217; I wondered;
+&#8216;or is she sliding yont a peppermint to me?&#8217; It was
+neither, so I edged as far frae her as I could gang.
+Weel, would you credit it, I saw her body coming
+nearer me inch by inch, though she was looking
+straucht afore her, till she was within kick o&#8217; me, and
+then out again goes her foot. At that, dominie, I lost
+patience, and I whispered, fierce-like, &#8216;Keep your foot
+to yoursel&#8217;, you limmer!&#8217; Ay, her intent, you see, was
+to waken me to what was gaen on, but I couldna be
+expected to ken that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the vestry Hendry Munn was now holding counsel
+with three elders, of whom the chief was Lang
+Tammas.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The laddie I sent to the manse,&#8221; Hendry said,
+&#8220;canna be back this five minutes, and the question is
+how we&#8217;re to fill up that time. I&#8217;ll ring no langer, for
+the bell has been in a passion ever since a quarter-past
+eight. It&#8217;s as sweer to clang past the quarter as a
+horse to gallop by its stable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You could gang to your box and gie out a psalm,
+Tammas,&#8221; suggested John Spens.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_254' name='page_254'></a>254</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;And would a psalm sung wi&#8217; sic an object,&#8221; retorted
+the precentor, &#8220;mount higher, think you, than a
+bairn&#8217;s kite? I&#8217;ll insult the Almighty to screen no
+minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re screening him better by standing whaur you
+are,&#8221; said the imperturbable Hendry; &#8220;for as lang as
+you dinna show your face they&#8217;ll think it may be you
+that&#8217;s missing instead o&#8217; Mr. Dishart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Indeed, Gavin&#8217;s appearance in church without the
+precentor would have been as surprising as Tammas&#8217;s
+without the minister. As certainly as the shutting of
+a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did
+the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a
+toll of the bell in front of the minister. Tammas&#8217;s
+halfpenny rang in the plate as Gavin passed T&#8217;nowhead&#8217;s
+pew, and Gavin&#8217;s sixpence with the snapping-to
+of the precentor&#8217;s door. The two men might have been
+connected by a string that tightened at ten yards.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The congregation ken me ower weel,&#8221; Tammas said,
+&#8220;to believe I would keep the Lord waiting.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And they are as sure o&#8217; Mr. Dishart,&#8221; rejoined
+Spens, with spirit, though he feared the precentor on
+Sabbaths and at prayer-meetings. &#8220;You&#8217;re a hard
+man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I speak the blunt truth,&#8221; Whamond answered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Spens, &#8220;and to tak&#8217; credit for that may
+be like blawing that you&#8217;re ower honest to wear
+claethes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hendry, who had gone to the door, returned now
+with the information that Mr. Dishart had left the
+manse two hours ago to pay visits, meaning to come to
+the prayer-meeting before he returned home.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s a quirk in this, Hendry,&#8221; said Tosh.
+&#8220;Was it Mistress Dishart the laddie saw?&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_21' id='linki_21'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus296.jpg' alt='' title='' width='692' height='587' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;THE CONSULTATION OF THE ELDERS.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; Hendry replied. &#8220;It was Jean. She canna
+get to the meeting because the mistress is nervous in
+the manse by herself; and Jean didna like to tell her
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_255' name='page_255'></a>255</span>
+that he&#8217;s missing, for fear o&#8217; alarming her. What are
+we to do now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s an unfaithful shepherd,&#8221; cried the precentor,
+while Hendry again went out. &#8220;I see it written on the
+walls.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna,&#8221; said Spens doggedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because,&#8221; retorted Tammas, &#8220;having eyes you see
+not.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tammas, I aye thocht you was fond o&#8217; Mr. Dishart.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If my right eye were to offend me,&#8221; answered the
+precentor, &#8220;I would pluck it out. I suppose you think,
+and baith o&#8217; you farmers too, that there&#8217;s no necessity
+for praying for rain the nicht? You&#8217;ll be content, will
+ye, if Mr. Dishart just drops in to the kirk some day,
+accidental-like, and offers up a bit prayer?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;As for the rain,&#8221; Spens said, triumphantly, &#8220;I
+wouldna wonder though it&#8217;s here afore the minister.
+You canna deny, Peter Tosh, that there&#8217;s been a smell
+o&#8217; rain in the air this twa hours back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;John,&#8221; Peter said agitatedly, &#8220;dinna speak so confidently.
+I&#8217;ve kent it,&#8221; he whispered, &#8220;since the day
+turned; but it wants to tak&#8217; us by surprise, lad, and so
+I&#8217;m no letting on.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;See that you dinna make an idol o&#8217; the rain,&#8221; thundered
+Whamond. &#8220;Your thochts is no wi&#8217; Him, but
+wi&#8217; the clouds; and whaur your thochts are, there will
+your prayers stick also.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you saw my lambs,&#8221; Tosh began; and then,
+ashamed of himself, said, looking upward, &#8220;He holds
+the rain in the hollow of His hand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And He&#8217;s closing His neive ticht on&#8217;t again,&#8221; said
+the precentor solemnly. &#8220;Hearken to the wind rising!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;God help me!&#8221; cried Tosh, wringing his hands.
+&#8220;Is it fair, think you,&#8221; he said, passionately addressing
+the sky, &#8220;to show your wrath wi&#8217; Mr. Dishart by ruining
+my neeps?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You were richt, Tammas Whamond,&#8221; Spens said,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_256' name='page_256'></a>256</span>
+growing hard as he listened to the wind, &#8220;the sanctuary
+o&#8217; the Lord has been profaned this nicht by him wha
+should be the chief pillar o&#8217; the building.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were lowering brows that greeted Hendry when
+he returned to say that Mr. Dishart had been seen last
+on the hill with the Glen Quharity dominie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some thinks,&#8221; said the kirk officer, &#8220;that he&#8217;s awa
+hunting for Rob Dow.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing&#8217;ll excuse him,&#8221; replied Spens, &#8220;short o&#8217;
+his having fallen over the quarry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hendry&#8217;s was usually a blank face, but it must have
+looked troubled now, for Tosh was about to say,
+&#8220;Hendry, you&#8217;re keeping something back,&#8221; when the
+precentor said it before him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wi&#8217; that story o&#8217; Mr. Dishart&#8217;s murder, no many
+hours auld yet,&#8221; the kirk officer replied evasively, &#8220;we
+should be wary o&#8217; trusting gossip.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What hae you heard?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s through the town,&#8221; Hendry answered, &#8220;that a
+woman was wi&#8217; the dominie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A woman!&#8221; cried Tosh. &#8220;The woman there&#8217;s been
+sic talk about in connection wi&#8217; the minister? Whaur
+are they now?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no kent, but&mdash;the dominie was seen goin&#8217; hame
+by himsel&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leaving the minister and her thegither!&#8221; cried the
+three men at once.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry Munn,&#8221; Tammas said sternly, &#8220;there&#8217;s
+mair about this; wha is the woman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They are liars,&#8221; Hendry answered, and shut his
+mouth tight.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gie her a name, I say,&#8221; the precentor ordered, &#8220;or,
+as chief elder of this kirk, supported by mair than
+half o&#8217; the Session, I command you to lift your hat
+and go.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hendry gave an appealing look to Tosh and Spens,
+but the precentor&#8217;s solemnity had cowed them.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_257' name='page_257'></a>257</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;They say, then,&#8221; he answered sullenly, &#8220;that it&#8217;s
+the Egyptian. Yes, and I believe they ken.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The two farmers drew back from this statement incredulously;
+but Tammas Whamond jumped at the
+kirk officer&#8217;s throat, and some who were in the church
+that night say they heard Hendry scream. Then the
+precentor&#8217;s fingers relaxed their grip, and he tottered
+into the middle of the room.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry,&#8221; he pleaded, holding out his arms pathetically,
+&#8220;tak&#8217; back these words. Oh, man, have pity,
+and tak&#8217; them back!&#8221;</p>
+<p>But Hendry would not, and then Lang Tammas&#8217;s
+mouth worked convulsively, and he sobbed, crying,
+&#8220;Nobody kent it, but mair than mortal son, O God, I
+did love the lad!&#8221;</p>
+<p>So seldom in a lifetime had any one seen into this
+man&#8217;s heart that Spens said, amazed:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tammas, Tammas Whamond, it&#8217;s no like you to
+break down.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The rusty door of Whamond&#8217;s heart swung to.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who broke down?&#8221; he asked fiercely. &#8220;Let no
+member of this Session dare to break down till his
+work be done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What work?&#8221; Tosh said uneasily. &#8220;We canna interfere.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would rather resign,&#8221; Spens said, but shook when
+Whamond hurled these words at him:</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his
+hand to the plough and looking back, is fit for the kingdom
+of God.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It mayna be true,&#8221; Hendry said eagerly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ll soon see.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He would gie her up,&#8221; said Tosh.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Peter Tosh,&#8221; answered Whamond sternly, &#8220;I call
+upon you to dismiss the congregation.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Should we no rather haud the meeting oursel&#8217;s?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We have other work afore us,&#8221; replied the precentor.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_258' name='page_258'></a>258</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But what can I say?&#8221; Tosh asked nervously.
+&#8220;Should I offer up a prayer?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I warn you all,&#8221; broke in Hendry, &#8220;that though the
+congregation is sitting there quietly, they&#8217;ll be tigers
+for the meaning o&#8217; this as soon as they&#8217;re in the street.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let no ontruth be telled them,&#8221; said the precentor.
+&#8220;Peter Tosh, do your duty. John Spens, remain wi&#8217;
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The church emptied silently, but a buzz of excitement
+arose outside. Many persons tried to enter the
+vestry, but were ordered away, and when Tosh joined
+his fellow-elders the people were collecting in animated
+groups in the square, or scattering through the wynds
+for news.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And now,&#8221; said the precentor, &#8220;I call upon the
+three o&#8217; you to come wi&#8217; me. Hendry Munn, you gang
+first.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I maun bide ahint,&#8221; Hendry said, with a sudden
+fear, &#8220;to lock up the kirk.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll lock up the kirk,&#8221; Whamond answered harshly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You maun gie me the keys, though,&#8221; entreated the
+kirk officer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll take care o&#8217; the keys,&#8221; said Whamond.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I maun hae them,&#8221; Hendry said, &#8220;to open the kirk
+on Sabbath.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The precentor locked the doors, and buttoned up the
+keys in his trousers pockets.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha kens,&#8221; he said, in a voice of steel, &#8220;that the
+kirk&#8217;ll be open next Sabbath?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hae some mercy on him, Tammas,&#8221; Spens implored.
+&#8220;He&#8217;s no twa-and-twenty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha kens,&#8221; continued the precentor, &#8220;but that the
+next time this kirk is opened will be to preach it toom?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What road do we tak&#8217;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The road to the hill, whaur he was seen last.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_259' name='page_259'></a>259</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYONE_VARIOUS_BODIES_CONVERGING_ON_THE_HILL' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYONE_VARIOUS_BODIES_CONVERGING_ON_THE_HILL'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-One.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />VARIOUS BODIES CONVERGING ON THE HILL.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>It would be coming on for a quarter-past nine, and
+a misty night, when I reached the school-house, and I
+was so weary of mind and body that I sat down without
+taking off my bonnet. I had left the door open, and I
+remember listlessly watching the wind making a target
+of my candle, but never taking a sufficiently big breath
+to do more than frighten it. From this lethargy I was
+roused by the sound of wheels.</p>
+<p>In the daytime our glen road leads to many parts,
+but in the night only to the doctor&#8217;s. Then the gallop
+of a horse makes farmers start up in bed and cry,
+&#8220;Who&#8217;s ill?&#8221; I went to my door and listened to the
+trap coming swiftly down the lonely glen, but I could
+not see it, for there was a trailing scarf of mist between
+the school-house and the road. Presently I heard the
+swish of the wheels in water, and so learned that they
+were crossing the ford to come to me. I had been unstrung
+by the events of the evening, and fear at once
+pressed thick upon me that this might be a sequel to
+them, as indeed it was.</p>
+<p>While still out of sight the trap stopped, and I heard
+some one jump from it. Then came this conversation,
+as distinct as though it had been spoken into my ear:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can you see the school-house now, McKenzie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am groping for it, Rintoul. The mist seems to
+have made off with the path.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are you, McKenzie? I have lost sight of
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_260' name='page_260'></a>260</span></div>
+<p>It was but a ribbon of mist, and as these words were
+spoken McKenzie broke through it. I saw him, though
+to him I was only a stone at my door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have found the house, Rintoul,&#8221; he shouted, &#8220;and
+there is a light in it, so that the fellow has doubtless
+returned.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then wait a moment for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stay where you are, Rintoul, I entreat you, and
+leave him to me. He may recognize you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no, McKenzie, I am sure he never saw me before.
+I insist on accompanying you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your excitement, Rintoul, will betray you. Let
+me go alone. I can question him without rousing his
+suspicions. Remember, she is only a gypsy to him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He will learn nothing from me. I am quite calm
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rintoul, I warn you your manner will betray you,
+and to-morrow it will be roared through the countryside
+that your bride ran away from the Spittal in a
+gypsy dress, and had to be brought back by force.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The altercation may have lasted another minute, but
+the suddenness with which I learned Babbie&#8217;s secret
+had left my ears incapable of learning more. I daresay
+the two men started when they found me at my door,
+but they did not remember, as few do remember who
+have the noisy day to forget it in, how far the voice
+carries in the night.</p>
+<p>They came as suddenly on me as I on them, for
+though they had given unintentional notice of their
+approach, I had lost sight of the speakers in their amazing
+words. Only a moment did young McKenzie&#8217;s
+anxiety to be spokesman give me to regard Lord Rintoul.
+I saw that he was a thin man and tall, straight
+in the figure, but his head began to sink into his shoulders
+and not very steady on them. His teeth had grip
+of his under-lip, as if this was a method of controlling
+his agitation, and he was opening and shutting his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_261' name='page_261'></a>261</span>
+hands restlessly. He had a dog with him which I was
+to meet again.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well met, Mr. Ogilvy,&#8221; said McKenzie, who knew
+me slightly, having once acted as judge at a cock-fight
+in the school-house. &#8220;We were afraid we should have
+to rouse you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will step inside?&#8221; I asked awkwardly, and
+while I spoke I was wondering how long it would be
+before the earl&#8217;s excitement broke out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is not necessary,&#8221; McKenzie answered hurriedly.
+&#8220;My friend and I (this is Mr. McClure) have been
+caught in the mist without a lamp, and we thought you
+could perhaps favor us with one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Unfortunately I have nothing of the kind,&#8221; I said,
+and the state of mind I was in is shown by my answering
+seriously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then we must wish you a good-night and manage
+as best we can,&#8221; he said; and then before he could
+touch, with affected indifference, on the real object of
+their visit, the alarmed earl said angrily, &#8220;McKenzie,
+no more of this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No more of this delay, do you mean, McClure?&#8221;
+asked McKenzie, and then, turning to me said, &#8220;By
+the way, Mr. Ogilvy, I think this is our second meeting
+to-night. I met you on the road a few hours ago with
+your wife. Or was it your daughter?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was neither, Mr. McKenzie,&#8221; I answered, with
+the calmness of one not yet recovered from a shock.
+&#8220;It was a gypsy girl.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where is she now?&#8221; cried Rintoul feverishly; but
+McKenzie, speaking loudly at the same time, tried to
+drown his interference as one obliterates writing by
+writing over it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A strange companion for a schoolmaster,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;What became of her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I left her near Caddam Wood,&#8221; I replied, &#8220;but she
+is probably not there now.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_262' name='page_262'></a>262</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, they are strange creatures, these gypsies!&#8221; he
+said, casting a warning look at the earl. &#8220;Now I wonder
+where she had been bound for.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is a gypsy encampment on the hill,&#8221; I answered,
+though I cannot say why.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She is there!&#8221; exclaimed Rintoul, and was done
+with me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I daresay,&#8221; McKenzie said indifferently. &#8220;However,
+it is nothing to us. Good-night, sir.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The earl had started for the trap, but McKenzie&#8217;s
+salute reminded him of a forgotten courtesy, and, despite
+his agitation, he came back to apologize. I admired
+him for this. Then my thoughtlessness must
+needs mar all.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-night, Mr. McKenzie,&#8221; I said. &#8220;Good-night,
+Lord Rintoul.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I had addressed him by his real name. Never a turnip
+fell from a bumping, laden cart, and the driver
+more unconscious of it, than I that I had dropped that
+word. I re-entered the house, but had not reached my
+chair when McKenzie&#8217;s hand fell roughly on me, and I
+was swung round.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Ogilvy,&#8221; he said, the more savagely I doubt
+not because his passions had been chained so long,
+&#8220;you know more than you would have us think. Beware,
+sir, of recognising that gypsy should you ever
+see her again in different attire. I advise you to have
+forgotten this night when you waken to-morrow morning.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With a menacing gesture he left me, and I sank into
+a chair, glad to lose sight of the glowering eyes with
+which he had pinned me to the wall. I did not hear
+the trap cross the ford and renew its journey. When I
+looked out next, the night had fallen very dark, and the
+glen was so deathly in its drowsiness that I thought
+not even the cry of murder could tear its eyes open.</p>
+<p>The earl and McKenzie would be some distance still
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_263' name='page_263'></a>263</span>
+from the hill when the office-bearers had scoured it in
+vain for their minister. The gypsies, now dancing
+round their fires to music that, on ordinary occasions,
+Lang Tammas would have stopped by using his fists to
+the glory of God, had seen no minister, they said, and
+disbelieved in the existence of the mysterious Egyptian.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Liars they are to trade,&#8221; Spens declared to his companions,
+&#8220;but now and again they speak truth, like a
+standing clock, and I&#8217;m beginning to think the minister&#8217;s
+lassie was invented in the square.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not so,&#8221; said the precentor, &#8220;for we saw her oursel&#8217;s
+a short year syne, and Hendry Munn there allows
+there&#8217;s townsfolk that hae passed her in the glen mair
+recently.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I only allowed,&#8221; Hendry said cautiously, &#8220;that some
+sic talk had shot up sudden-like in the town. Them
+that pretends they saw her says that she joukit quick
+out o&#8217; sicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, and there&#8217;s another quirk in that,&#8221; responded
+the suspicious precentor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;se uphaud the minister&#8217;s sitting in the manse in
+his slippers by this time,&#8221; Hendry said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m willing,&#8221; replied Whamond, &#8220;to gang back and
+speir, or to search Caddam next; but let the matter
+drop I winna, though I ken you&#8217;re a&#8217; awid to be hame
+now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And naturally,&#8221; retorted Tosh, &#8220;for the nicht&#8217;s
+coming on as black as pick, and by the time we&#8217;re at
+Caddam we&#8217;ll no even see the trees.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Toward Caddam, nevertheless, they advanced, hearing
+nothing but a distant wind and the whish of their
+legs in the broom.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur&#8217;s John Spens?&#8221; Hendry said suddenly.</p>
+<p>They turned back and found Spens rooted to the
+ground, as a boy becomes motionless when he thinks
+he is within arm&#8217;s reach of a nest and the bird sitting
+on the eggs.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_264' name='page_264'></a>264</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;What do you see, man?&#8221; Hendry whispered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;As sure as death,&#8221; answered Spens, awe-struck, &#8220;I
+felt a drap o&#8217; rain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s no rain we&#8217;re here to look for,&#8221; said the precentor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Peter Tosh,&#8221; cried Spens, &#8220;it was a drap! Oh,
+Peter! how are you looking at me so queer, Peter,
+when you should be thanking the Lord for the promise
+that&#8217;s in that drap?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Come away,&#8221; Whamond said, impatiently; but
+Spens answered, &#8220;No till I&#8217;ve offered up a prayer for
+the promise that&#8217;s in that drap. Peter Tosh, you&#8217;ve
+forgotten to take off your bonnet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Think twice, John Spens,&#8221; gasped Tosh, &#8220;afore you
+pray for rain this nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The others thought him crazy, but he went on, with
+a catch in his voice:</p>
+<p>&#8220;I felt a drap o&#8217; rain mysel&#8217;, just afore it came on
+dark so hurried, and my first impulse was to wish that
+I could carry that drap about wi&#8217; me and look at it.
+But, John Spens, when I looked up I saw sic a change
+running ower the sky that I thocht hell had taen the
+place o&#8217; heaven, and that there was waterspouts gathering
+therein for the drowning o&#8217; the world.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s no water in hell,&#8221; the precentor said grimly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Genesis ix.,&#8221; said Spens, &#8220;verses 8 to 17. Ay, but,
+Peter, you&#8217;ve startled me, and I&#8217;m thinking we should
+be stepping hame. Is that a licht?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;ll be in Nanny Webster&#8217;s,&#8221; Hendry said, after
+they had all regarded the light.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never heard that Nanny needed a candle to licht
+her to her bed,&#8221; the precentor muttered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was awa to meet Sanders the day as he came
+out o&#8217; the Tilliedrum gaol,&#8221; Spens remembered, &#8220;and
+I daresay the licht means they&#8217;re hame again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s well kent&mdash;&#8221; began Hendry, and would have
+recalled his words.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_265' name='page_265'></a>265</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry Munn,&#8221; cried the precentor, &#8220;if you hae
+minded onything that may help us, out wi&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I was just minding,&#8221; the kirk officer answered reluctantly,
+&#8220;that Nanny allows it&#8217;s Mr. Dishart that has
+been keeping her frae the poorhouse. You canna censure
+him for that, Tammas.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Can I no?&#8221; retorted Whamond. &#8220;What business
+has he to befriend a woman that belongs to another
+denomination? I&#8217;ll see to the bottom o&#8217; that this
+nicht. Lads, follow me to Nanny&#8217;s, and dinna be
+surprised if we find baith the minister and the Egyptian
+there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They had not advanced many yards when Spens
+jumped to the side, crying, &#8220;Be wary, that&#8217;s no the
+wind; it&#8217;s a machine!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Immediately the doctor&#8217;s dogcart was close to them,
+with Rob Dow for its only occupant. He was driving
+slowly, or Whamond could not have escaped the horse&#8217;s
+hoofs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that you, Rob Dow?&#8221; said the precentor sourly.
+&#8220;I tell you, you&#8217;ll be gaoled for stealing the doctor&#8217;s
+machine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Hielandman wasna muckle hurt, Rob,&#8221; Hendry
+said, more good-naturedly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ken that,&#8221; replied Rob, scowling at the four of
+them. &#8220;What are you doing here on sic a nicht?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you see anything strange in the nicht, Rob?&#8221;
+Tosh asked apprehensively.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s setting to rain,&#8221; Dow replied. &#8220;I dinna see it,
+but I feel it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; said Tosh, eagerly, &#8220;but will it be a saft,
+cowdie sweet ding-on?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let the heavens open if they will,&#8221; interposed
+Spens recklessly. &#8220;I would swap the drought for rain,
+though it comes down in a sheet as in the year twelve.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And like a sheet it&#8217;ll come,&#8221; replied Dow, &#8220;and the
+deil&#8217;ll blaw it about wi&#8217; his biggest bellowses.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_266' name='page_266'></a>266</span></div>
+<p>Tosh shivered, but Whamond shook him roughly,
+saying&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Keep your oaths to yoursel&#8217;, Rob Dow, and tell me,
+hae you seen Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hinna,&#8221; Rob answered curtly, preparing to drive
+on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nor the lassie they call the Egyptian?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rob leaped from the dogcart, crying, &#8220;What does
+that mean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hands off,&#8221; said the precentor, retreating from him.
+&#8220;It means that Mr. Dishart neglected the prayer-meeting
+this nicht to philander after that heathen woman.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re no sure o&#8217;t, Tammas,&#8221; remonstrated the kirk
+officer. Dow stood quite still. &#8220;I believe Rob kens
+it&#8217;s true,&#8221; Hendry added sadly, &#8220;or he would hae flown
+at your throat, Tammas Whamond, for saying these
+words.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Even this did not rouse Dow.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rob doesna worship the minister as he used to do,&#8221;
+said Spens.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what for no?&#8221; cried the precentor. &#8220;Rob Dow,
+is it because you&#8217;ve found out about this woman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re a pack o&#8217; liars,&#8221; roared Rob, desperately,
+&#8220;and if you say again that ony wandering hussy has
+haud o&#8217; the minister, I&#8217;ll let you see whether I can loup
+at throats.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;ll swear by the Book,&#8221; asked Whamond, relentlessly,
+&#8220;that you&#8217;ve seen neither o&#8217; them this
+nicht, nor them thegither at any time?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I so swear by the Book,&#8221; answered poor loyal Rob.
+&#8220;But what makes you look for Mr. Dishart here?&#8221; he
+demanded, with an uneasy look at the light in the mudhouse.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go hame,&#8221; replied the precentor, &#8220;and deliver up
+the machine you stole, and leave this Session to do its
+duty. John, we maun fathom the meaning o&#8217; that
+licht.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_267' name='page_267'></a>267</span></div>
+<p>Dow started, and was probably at that moment within
+an ace of felling Whamond.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll come wi&#8217; you,&#8221; he said, hunting in his mind
+for a better way of helping Gavin.</p>
+<p>They were at Nanny&#8217;s garden, but in the darkness
+Whamond could not find the gate. Rob climbed the
+paling, and was at once lost sight of. Then they saw
+his head obscure the window. They did not, however,
+hear the groan that startled Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There&#8217;s nobody there,&#8221; he said, coming back, &#8220;but
+Nanny and Sanders. You&#8217;ll mind Sanders was to be
+freed the day.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll go in and see Sanders,&#8221; said Hendry, but the
+precentor pulled him back, saying, &#8220;You&#8217;ll do nothing
+o&#8217; the kind, Hendry Munn; you&#8217;ll come awa wi&#8217; me
+now to the manse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s mair than me and Peter&#8217;ll do, then,&#8221; said
+Spens, who had been consulting with the other farmer.
+&#8220;We&#8217;re gaun as straucht hame as the darkness&#8217;ll let
+us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With few more words the Session parted, Spens and
+Tosh setting off for their farms, and Hendry accompanying
+the precentor. No one will ever know where
+Dow went. I can fancy him, however, returning to
+the wood, and there drawing rein. I can fancy his
+mind made up to watch the mudhouse until Gavin and
+the gypsy separated, and then pounce upon her. I
+daresay his whole plot could be condensed into a sentence,
+&#8220;If she&#8217;s got rid o&#8217; this nicht, we may cheat the
+Session yet.&#8221; But this is mere surmise. All I know
+is that he waited near Nanny&#8217;s house, and by and by
+heard another trap coming up Windyghoul. That was
+just before the ten o&#8217;clock bell began to ring.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_268' name='page_268'></a>268</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYTWO_LEADING_SWIFTLY_TO_THE_APPALLING_MARRIAGE' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYTWO_LEADING_SWIFTLY_TO_THE_APPALLING_MARRIAGE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Two.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />LEADING SWIFTLY TO THE APPALLING MARRIAGE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>The little minister bowed his head in assent when
+Babbie&#8217;s cry, &#8220;Oh, Gavin, do you?&#8221; leapt in front of
+her unselfish wish that he should care for her no more.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But that matters very little now,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>She was his to do with as he willed; and, perhaps, the
+joy of knowing herself loved still, begot a wild hope
+that he would refuse to give her up. If so, these words
+laid it low, but even the sentence they passed upon her
+could not kill the self-respect that would be hers henceforth.
+&#8220;That matters very little now,&#8221; the man said,
+but to the woman it seemed to matter more than anything
+else in the world.</p>
+<p>Throughout the remainder of this interview until the
+end came, Gavin never faltered. His duty and hers lay
+so plainly before him that there could be no straying
+from it. Did Babbie think him strangely calm? At
+the Glen Quharity gathering I once saw Rob Angus
+lift a boulder with such apparent ease that its weight
+was discredited, until the cry arose that the effort had
+dislocated his arm. Perhaps Gavin&#8217;s quietness deceived
+the Egyptian similarly. Had he stamped, she
+might have understood better what he suffered, standing
+there on the hot embers of his passion.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We must try to make amends now,&#8221; he said
+gravely, &#8220;for the wrong we have done.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The wrong I have done,&#8221; she said, correcting him.
+&#8220;You will make it harder for me if you blame yourself.
+How vile I was in those days!&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_269' name='page_269'></a>269</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Those days,&#8221; she called them, they seemed so far
+away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do not cry, Babbie,&#8221; Gavin replied, gently. &#8220;He
+knew what you were, and why, and He pities you.
+&#8216;For His anger endureth but a moment: in His favor
+is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh
+in the morning.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, to you,&#8221; he answered. &#8220;Babbie, you will return
+to the Spittal now, and tell Lord Rintoul everything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you wish it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not because I wish it, but because it is right. He
+must be told that you do not love him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never pretended to him that I did,&#8221; Babbie said,
+looking up. &#8220;Oh,&#8221; she added, with emphasis, &#8220;he
+knows that. He thinks me incapable of caring for any
+one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And that is why he must be told of me,&#8221; Gavin replied.
+&#8220;You are no longer the woman you were, Babbie,
+and you know it, and I know it, but he does not
+know it. He shall know it before he decides whether
+he is to marry you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie looked at Gavin, and wondered he did not see
+that this decision lay with him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nevertheless,&#8221; she said, &#8220;the wedding will take
+place to-morrow; if it did not, Lord Rintoul would be
+the scorn of his friends.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If it does,&#8221; the minister answered, &#8220;he will be the
+scorn of himself. Babbie, there is a chance.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is no chance,&#8221; she told him. &#8220;I shall be
+back at the Spittal without any one&#8217;s knowing of my
+absence, and when I begin to tell him of you, he will
+tremble, lest it means my refusal to marry him; when
+he knows it does not, he will wonder only why I told
+him anything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He will ask you to take time&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_270' name='page_270'></a>270</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;No, he will ask me to put on my wedding-dress.
+You must not think anything else possible.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So be it, then,&#8221; Gavin said firmly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it will be better so,&#8221; Babbie answered, and
+then, seeing him misunderstand her meaning, exclaimed
+reproachfully, &#8220;I was not thinking of myself. In the
+time to come, whatever be my lot, I shall have the one
+consolation, that this is best for you. Think of your
+mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She will love you,&#8221; Gavin said, &#8220;when I tell her of
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; said Babbie, wringing her hands; &#8220;she will
+almost love me, but for what? For not marrying you.
+That is the only reason any one in Thrums will have
+for wishing me well.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No others,&#8221; Gavin answered, &#8220;will ever know why
+I remained unmarried.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will you never marry?&#8221; Babbie asked, exultingly.
+&#8220;Ah!&#8221; she cried, ashamed, &#8220;but you must.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Well, many a man and many a woman has made that
+vow in similar circumstances, and not all have kept it.
+But shall we who are old smile cynically at the brief
+and burning passion of the young? &#8220;The day,&#8221; you
+say, &#8220;will come when&mdash;&#8221; Good sir, hold your peace.
+Their agony was great and now is dead, and, maybe,
+they have forgotten where it lies buried; but dare you
+answer lightly when I ask you which of these things is
+saddest?</p>
+<p>Babbie believed his &#8220;Never,&#8221; and, doubtless, thought
+no worse of him for it; but she saw no way of comforting
+him save by disparagement of herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must think of your congregation,&#8221; she said.
+&#8220;A minister with a gypsy wife&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would have knocked them about with a flail,&#8221; Gavin
+interposed, showing his teeth at the thought of the precentor,
+&#8220;until they did her reverence.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_271' name='page_271'></a>271</span></div>
+<p>She shook her head, and told him of her meeting
+with Micah Dow. It silenced him; not, however, on
+account of its pathos, as she thought, but because it interpreted
+the riddle of Rob&#8217;s behavior.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nevertheless,&#8221; he said ultimately, &#8220;my duty is not
+to do what is right in my people&#8217;s eyes, but what seems
+right in my own.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie had not heard him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw a face at the window just now,&#8221; she whispered,
+drawing closer to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was no face there; the very thought of Rob
+Dow raises him before you,&#8221; Gavin answered reassuringly,
+though Rob was nearer at that moment than
+either of them thought.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must go away at once,&#8221; she said, still with her
+eyes on the window. &#8220;No, no, you shall not come or
+stay with me; it is you who are in danger.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do not fear for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must, if you will not. Before you came in, did I
+not hear you speak of a meeting you had to attend
+to-night?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My pray&mdash;&#8221; His teeth met on the word; so
+abruptly did it conjure up the forgotten prayer-meeting
+that before the shock could reach his mind
+he stood motionless, listening for the bell. For one
+instant all that had taken place since he last heard
+it might have happened between two of its tinkles;
+Babbie passed from before him like a figure in a
+panorama, and he saw, instead, a congregation in their
+pews.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you see?&#8221; Babbie cried in alarm, for he
+seemed to be gazing at the window.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only you,&#8221; he replied, himself again; &#8220;I am coming
+with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must let me go alone,&#8221; she entreated; &#8220;if not
+for your own safety&#8221;&mdash;but it was only him she considered&mdash;&#8220;then
+for the sake of Lord Rintoul. Were you
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_272' name='page_272'></a>272</span>
+and I to be seen together now, his name and mine
+might suffer.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was an argument the minister could not answer
+save by putting his hands over his face; his distress
+made Babbie strong; she moved to the door, trying to
+smile.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go, Babbie!&#8221; Gavin said, controlling his voice,
+though it had been a smile more pitiful than her tears.
+&#8220;God has you in His keeping; it is not His will to give
+me this to bear for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were now in the garden.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do not think of me as unhappy,&#8221; she said; &#8220;it will
+be happiness to me to try to be all you would have me
+be.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He ought to have corrected her. &#8220;All that God
+would have me be,&#8221; is what she should have said. But
+he only replied, &#8220;You will be a good woman, and none
+such can be altogether unhappy; God sees to that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He might have kissed her, and perhaps she thought
+so.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am&mdash;I am going now, dear,&#8221; she said, and came
+back a step because he did not answer; then she went
+on, and was out of his sight at three yards&#8217; distance.
+Neither of them heard the approaching dogcart.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You see, I am bearing it quite cheerfully,&#8221; she said.
+&#8220;I shall have everything a woman loves; do not grieve
+for me so much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin dared not speak nor move. Never had he
+found life so hard; but he was fighting with the ignoble
+in himself, and winning. She opened the gate, and it
+might have been a signal to the dogcart to stop. They
+both heard a dog barking, and then the voice of Lord
+Rintoul:</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is a light in the window. Jump down, McKenzie,
+and inquire.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin took one step nearer Babbie and stopped.
+He did not see how all her courage went from her, so
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_273' name='page_273'></a>273</span>
+that her knees yielded, and she held out her arms to
+him, but he heard a great sob and then his name.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, I am afraid.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin understood now, and I say he would have been
+no man to leave her after that; only a moment was
+allowed him, and it was their last chance on earth. He
+took it. His arm went round his beloved, and he drew
+her away from Nanny&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>McKenzie found both house and garden empty.
+&#8220;And yet,&#8221; he said, &#8220;I swear some one passed the window
+as we sighted it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Waste no more time,&#8221; cried the impatient earl.
+&#8220;We must be very near the hill now. You will have
+to lead the horse, McKenzie, in this darkness; the dog
+may find the way through the broom for us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The dog has run on,&#8221; McKenzie replied, now in an
+evil temper. &#8220;Who knows, it may be with her now?
+So we must feel our way cautiously; there is no call for
+capsizing the trap in our haste.&#8221; But there was call
+for haste if they were to reach the gypsy encampment
+before Gavin and Babbie were made man and wife over
+the tongs.</p>
+<p>The Spittal dogcart rocked as it dragged its way
+through the broom. Rob Dow followed. The ten
+o&#8217;clock bell began to ring.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_274' name='page_274'></a>274</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYTHREE_WHILE_THE_TEN_OCLOCK_BELL_WAS_RINGING' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYTHREE_WHILE_THE_TEN_OCLOCK_BELL_WAS_RINGING'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Three.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />WHILE THE TEN O&#8217;CLOCK BELL WAS RINGING.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p class='center'><i>In the square and wynds&mdash;weavers in groups</i>:</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, no, Davit, Mr. Dishart hadna felt the blow the
+piper gave him till he ascended the pulpit to conduct
+the prayer-meeting for rain, and then he fainted awa.
+Tammas Whamond and Peter Tosh carried him to the
+Session-house. Ay, an awful scene.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did the minister no come to the meeting? I
+wonder how you could expect it, Snecky, and his mother
+taen so suddenly ill; he&#8217;s at her bedside, but the doctor
+has little hope.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is what has occurred, Tailor: Mr. Dishart
+never got the length of the pulpit. He fell in a swound
+on the vestry floor. What caused it? Oh, nothing but
+the heat. Thrums is so dry that one spark would set it
+in a blaze.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I canna get at the richts o&#8217; what keeped him frae
+the meeting, Femie, but it had something to do wi&#8217; an
+Egyptian on the hill. Very like he had been trying to
+stop the gypsy marriage there. I gaed to the manse to
+speir at Jean what was wrang, but I&#8217;m thinking I telled
+her mair than she could tell me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Man, man, Andrew, the wite o&#8217;t lies wi&#8217; Peter
+Tosh. He thocht we was to hae sic a terrible rain that
+he implored the minister no to pray for it, and so angry
+was Mr. Dishart that he ordered the whole Session out
+o&#8217; the kirk. I saw them in Couthie&#8217;s close, and michty
+dour they looked.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_275' name='page_275'></a>275</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, as sure as death, Tammas Whamond locked
+the kirk-door in Mr. Dishart&#8217;s face.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m a&#8217; shaking! And small wonder, Marget, when
+I&#8217;ve heard this minute that Mr. Dishart&#8217;s been struck
+by lichtning while looking for Rob Dow. He&#8217;s no
+killed, but, woe&#8217;s me! they say he&#8217;ll never preach
+again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing o&#8217; the kind. It was Rob that the lichtning
+struck dead in the doctor&#8217;s machine. The horse wasna
+touched; it came tearing down the Roods wi&#8217; the corpse
+sitting in the machine like a living man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you listening to, woman? Is it to a dog
+barking? I&#8217;ve heard it this while, but it&#8217;s far awa.&#8221;</p>
+<p class='center'><i>In the manse kitchen</i>:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean, did you not hear me ring? I want you to&mdash;Why
+are you staring out at the window, Jean?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I was just hearkening to the ten o&#8217;clock bell,
+ma&#8217;am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I never saw you doing nothing before! Put the
+heater in the fire, Jean. I want to iron the minister&#8217;s
+neckcloths. The prayer-meeting is long in coming out,
+is it not?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The&mdash;the drouth, ma&#8217;am, has been so cruel hard.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And, to my shame, I am so comfortable that I
+almost forgot how others are suffering. But my son
+never forgets, Jean. You are not crying, are you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, ma&#8217;am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Bring the iron to the parlor, then. And if the
+minis&mdash;Why did you start, Jean? I only heard a dog
+barking.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thocht, ma&#8217;am&mdash;at first I thocht it was Mr. Dishart
+opening the door. Ay, it&#8217;s just a dog; some gypsy dog
+on the hill, I&#8217;m thinking, for sound would carry far the
+nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even you, Jean, are nervous at nights, I see, if
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_276' name='page_276'></a>276</span>
+there is no man in the house. We shall hear no more
+distant dogs barking, I warrant, when the minister
+comes home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;When he comes home, ma&#8217;am.&#8221;</p>
+<p class='center'><i>On the middle of a hill&mdash;a man and a woman</i>:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Courage, beloved; we are nearly there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, Gavin, I cannot see the encampment.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The night is too dark.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the gypsy fires?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;They are in the Toad&#8217;s-hole.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen to that dog barking.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There are several dogs at the encampment, Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is one behind us. See, there it is!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have driven it away, dear. You are trembling.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What we are doing frightens me, Gavin. It is at
+your heels again!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems to know you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Gavin, it is Lord Rintoul&#8217;s collie Snap. It will
+bite you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I have driven it back again. Probably the earl
+is following us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, I cannot go on with this.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quicker, Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Leave me, dear, and save yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lean on me, Babbie.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, Gavin, is there no way but this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No sure way.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Even though we are married to-night&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We shall be <ins title='Was maried'>married</ins> in five minutes, and then,
+whatever befall, he cannot have you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But after?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will take you straight to the manse, to my
+mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Were it not for that dog, I should think we were
+alone on the hill.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_277' name='page_277'></a>277</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;But we are not. See, there are the gypsy fires.&#8221;</p>
+<p class='center'><i>On the west side of the hill&mdash;two figures</i>:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tammas, Tammas Whamond, I&#8217;ve lost you. Should
+we gang to the manse down the fields?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wheesht, Hendry!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you listening for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard a dog barking.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only a gypsy dog, Tammas, barking at the coming
+storm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;The gypsy dogs are all tied up, and this one&#8217;s atween
+us and the Toad&#8217;s-hole. What was that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was nothing but the rubbing of the branches in
+the cemetery on ane another. It&#8217;s said, trees mak&#8217;
+that fearsome sound when they&#8217;re terrified.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was a dog barking at somebody that&#8217;s stoning it.
+I ken that sound, Hendry Munn.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;May I die the death, Tammas Whamond, if a great
+drap o&#8217; rain didna strike me the now, and I swear it
+was warm. I&#8217;m for running hame.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m for seeing who drove awa that dog. Come back
+wi&#8217; me, Hendry.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I winna. There&#8217;s no a soul on the hill but you and
+me and thae daffing and drinking gypsies. How do
+you no answer me, Tammas? Hie, Tammas Whamond,
+whaur are you? He&#8217;s gone! Ay, then I&#8217;ll mak&#8217; tracks
+hame.&#8221;</p>
+<p class='center'><i>In the broom&mdash;a dogcart</i>:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you see nothing yet, McKenzie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Scarce the broom at my knees, Rintoul. There is
+not a light on the hill.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;McKenzie, can that schoolmaster have deceived us?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is probable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Urge on the horse, however. There is a road
+through the broom, I know. Have we stuck again?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_278' name='page_278'></a>278</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Rintoul, she is not here. I promised to help you to
+bring her back to the Spittal before this escapade became
+known, but we have failed to find her. If she is
+to be saved, it must be by herself. I daresay she has
+returned already. Let me turn the horse&#8217;s head.
+There is a storm brewing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will search this gypsy encampment first, if it is on
+the hill. Hark! that was a dog&#8217;s bark. Yes, it is
+Snap; but he would not bark at nothing. Why do you
+look behind you so often, McKenzie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For some time, Rintoul, it has seemed to me that
+we are being followed. Listen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hear nothing. At last, McKenzie, at last, we are
+out of the broom.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And as I live, Rintoul, I see the gypsy lights!&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>It might have been a lantern that was flashed across
+the hill. Then all that part of the world went suddenly
+on fire. Everything was horribly distinct in that white
+light. The firs of Caddam were so near that it seemed
+to have arrested them in a silent march upon the hill.
+The grass would not hide a pebble. The ground was
+scored with shadows of men and things. Twice the
+light flickered and recovered itself. A red serpent shot
+across it, and then again black night fell.</p>
+<p>The hill had been illumined thus for nearly half a
+minute. During that time not even a dog stirred.
+The shadows of human beings lay on the ground as
+motionless as logs. What had been revealed seemed
+less a gypsy marriage than a picture. Or was it that
+during the ceremony every person on the hill had been
+turned into stone? The gypsy king, with his arm upraised,
+had not had time to let it fall. The men and
+women behind him had their mouths open, as if struck
+when on the point of calling out. Lord Rintoul had
+risen in the dogcart and was leaning forward. One of
+McKenzie&#8217;s feet was on the shaft. The man crouching
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_279' name='page_279'></a>279</span>
+in the dogcart&#8217;s wake had flung up his hands to protect
+his face. The precentor, his neck outstretched, had a
+hand on each knee. All eyes were fixed, as in the death
+glare, on Gavin and Babbie, who stood before the king,
+their hands clasped over the tongs. Fear was petrified
+on the woman&#8217;s face, determination on the man&#8217;s.</p>
+<p>They were all released by the crack of the thunder,
+but for another moment none could have swaggered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was Lord Rintoul in the dogcart,&#8221; Babbie
+whispered, drawing in her breath.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, dear,&#8221; Gavin answered resolutely, &#8220;and now is
+the time for me to have my first and last talk with him.
+Remain here, Babbie. Do not move till I come back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, Gavin, he has seen. I fear him still.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He cannot touch you now, Babbie. You are my
+wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the vivid light Gavin had thought the dogcart
+much nearer than it was. He called Lord Rintoul&#8217;s
+name, but got no answer. There were shouts behind,
+gypsies running from the coming rain, dogs whining,
+but silence in front. The minister moved on some
+paces. Away to the left he heard voices&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who was the man, McKenzie?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;My lord, I have lost sight of you. This is not the
+way to the camp.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me, McKenzie, that you did not see what I saw.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rintoul, I beseech you to turn back. We are too
+late.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We are not too late.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin broke through the darkness between them and
+him, but they were gone. He called to them, and
+stopped to listen to their feet.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is that you, Gavin?&#8221; Babbie asked just then.</p>
+<p>For reply, the man who had crept up to her clapped
+his hand upon her mouth. Only the beginning of a
+scream escaped from her. A strong arm drove her
+quickly southward.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_280' name='page_280'></a>280</span></div>
+<p>Gavin heard her cry, and ran back to the encampment.
+Babbie was gone. None of the gypsies had seen
+her since the darkness came back. He rushed hither
+and thither with a torch that only showed his distracted
+face to others. He flung up his arms in appeal for another
+moment of light; then he heard Babbie scream
+again, and this time it was from a distance. He dashed
+after her; he heard a trap speeding down the green
+sward through the broom.</p>
+<p>Lord Rintoul had kidnapped Babbie. Gavin had no
+other thought as he ran after the dogcart from which
+the cry had come. The earl&#8217;s dog followed him, snapping
+at his heels. The rain began.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_281' name='page_281'></a>281</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYFOUR_THE_GREAT_RAIN' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYFOUR_THE_GREAT_RAIN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Four.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE GREAT RAIN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Gavin passed on through Windyghoul, thinking in
+his frenzy that he still heard the trap. In a rain that
+came down like iron rods every other sound was beaten
+dead. He slipped, and before he could regain his feet
+the dog bit him. To protect himself from dikes and
+trees and other horrors of the darkness he held his arm
+before him, but soon it was driven to his side. Wet
+whips cut his brow so that he had to protect it with his
+hands, until it had to bear the lash again, for they
+would not. Now he had forced up his knees, and would
+have succumbed but for a dread of being pinned to the
+earth. This fight between the man and the rain went
+on all night, and long before it ended the man was
+past the power of thinking.</p>
+<p>In the ringing of the ten o&#8217;clock bell Gavin had lived
+the seventh part of a man&#8217;s natural life. Only action
+was required of him. That accomplished, his mind
+had begun to work again, when suddenly the loss of
+Babbie stopped it, as we may put out a fire with a great
+coal. The last thing he had reflected about was a dogcart
+in motion, and, consequently, this idea clung to
+him. His church, his mother, were lost knowledge of,
+but still he seemed to hear the trap in front.</p>
+<p>The rain increased in violence, appalling even those
+who heard it from under cover. However rain may
+storm, though it be an army of archers battering roofs
+and windows, it is only terrifying when the noise swells
+every instant. In those hours of darkness it again and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_282' name='page_282'></a>282</span>
+again grew in force and doubled its fury, and was louder,
+louder, and louder, until its next attack was to be more
+than men and women could listen to. They held each
+other&#8217;s hands and stood waiting. Then abruptly it
+abated, and people could speak. I believe a rain that
+became heavier every second for ten minutes would drive
+many listeners mad. Gavin was in it on a night that
+tried us repeatedly for quite half that time.</p>
+<p>By and by even the vision of Babbie in the dogcart
+was blotted out. If nothing had taken its place, he
+would not have gone on probably; and had he turned
+back objectless, his strength would have succumbed to
+the rain. Now he saw Babbie and Rintoul being married
+by a minister who was himself, and there was a
+fair company looking on, and always when he was on
+the point of shouting to himself, whom he could see
+clearly, that this woman was already married, the rain
+obscured his words and the light went out. Presently
+the ceremony began again, always to stop at the same
+point. He saw it in the lightning-flash that had startled
+the hill. It gave him courage to fight his way onward,
+because he thought he must be heard if he could draw
+nearer to the company.</p>
+<p>A regiment of cavalry began to trouble him. He
+heard it advancing from the Spittal, but was not dismayed,
+for it was, as yet, far distant. The horsemen
+came thundering on, filling the whole glen of Quharity.
+Now he knew that they had been sent out to ride him
+down. He paused in dread, until they had swept past
+him. They came back to look for him, riding more
+furiously than ever, and always missed him, yet his
+fears of the next time were not lessened. They were
+only the rain.</p>
+<p>All through the night the dog followed him. He
+would forget it for a time, and then it would be so close
+that he could see it dimly. He never heard it bark,
+but it snapped at him, and a grin had become the expression
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_283' name='page_283'></a>283</span>
+of its face. He stoned it, he even flung himself
+at it, he addressed it in caressing tones, and always with
+the result that it disappeared, to come back presently.</p>
+<p>He found himself walking in a lake, and now even
+the instinct of self-preservation must have been flickering,
+for he waded on, rejoicing merely in getting rid of
+the dog. Something in the water rose and struck him.
+Instead of stupefying him, the blow brought him to his
+senses, and he struggled for his life. The ground
+slipped beneath his feet many times, but at last he was
+out of the water. That he was out in a flood he did not
+realize; yet he now acted like one in full possession of
+his faculties. When his feet sank in water, he drew
+back; and many times he sought shelter behind banks
+and rocks, first testing their firmness with his hands.
+Once a torrent of stones, earth, and heather carried him
+down a hillside until he struck against a tree. He
+twined his arms round it, and had just done so when it
+fell with him. After that, when he touched trees
+growing in water, he fled from them, thus probably
+saving himself from death.</p>
+<p>What he heard now might have been the roll and
+crack of the thunder. It sounded in his ear like nothing
+else. But it was really something that swept down
+the hill in roaring spouts of water, and it passed on
+both sides of him so that at one moment, had he
+paused, it would have crashed into him, and at another
+he was only saved by stopping. He felt that the struggle
+in the dark was to go on till the crack of doom.</p>
+<p>Then he cast himself upon the ground. It moved
+beneath him like some great animal, and he rose and
+stole away from it. Several times did this happen.
+The stones against which his feet struck seemed to acquire
+life from his touch. So strong had he become, or
+so weak all other things, that whatever clump he laid
+hands on by which to pull himself out of the water was
+at once rooted up.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_284' name='page_284'></a>284</span></div>
+<p>The daylight would not come. He longed passionately
+for it. He tried to remember what it was like,
+and could not; he had been blind so long. It was away
+in front somewhere, and he was struggling to overtake
+it. He expected to see it from a dark place, when he
+would rush forward to bathe his arms in it, and then the
+elements that were searching the world for him would
+see him and he would perish. But death did not seem
+too great a penalty to pay for light.</p>
+<p>And at last day did come back, gray and drear. He
+saw suddenly once more. I think he must have been
+wandering the glen with his eyes shut, as one does shut
+them involuntarily against the hidden dangers of black
+night. How different was daylight from what he had
+expected! He looked, and then shut his dazed eyes
+again, for the darkness was less horrible than the day.
+Had he indeed seen, or only dreamed that he saw?
+Once more he looked to see what the world was like;
+and the sight that met his eyes was so mournful that
+he who had fought through the long night now sank
+hopeless and helpless among the heather. The dog
+was not far away, and it, too, lost heart. Gavin held
+out his hand, and Snap crept timidly toward him. He
+unloosened his coat, and the dog nestled against him,
+cowed and shivering, hiding its head from the day.
+Thus they lay, and the rain beat upon them.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_285' name='page_285'></a>285</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYFIVE_THE_GLEN_AT_BREAK_OF_DAY' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYFIVE_THE_GLEN_AT_BREAK_OF_DAY'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Five.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THE GLEN AT BREAK OF DAY.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>My first intimation that the burns were in flood came
+from Waster Lunny, close on the strike of ten o&#8217;clock.
+This was some minutes before they had any rain in
+Thrums. I was in the school-house, now piecing together
+the puzzle Lord Rintoul had left with me, and
+anon starting upright as McKenzie&#8217;s hand seemed to
+tighten on my arm. Waster Lunny had been whistling
+to me (with his fingers in his mouth) for some time before
+I heard him and hurried out. I was surprised and
+pleased, knowing no better, to be met on the threshold
+by a whisk of rain.</p>
+<p>The night was not then so dark but that when I
+reached the Quharity I could see the farmer take shape
+on the other side of it. He wanted me to exult with
+him, I thought, in the end of the drought, and I shouted
+that I would fling him the stilts.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s yoursel&#8217; that wants them,&#8221; he answered excitedly,
+&#8220;if you&#8217;re fleid to be left alone in the school-house
+the nicht. Do you hear me, dominie? There has been
+frichtsome rain among the hills, and the Bog burn is
+coming down like a sea. It has carried awa the miller&#8217;s
+brig, and the steading o&#8217; Muckle Pirley is standing
+three feet in water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re dreaming, man,&#8221; I roared back, but beside
+his news he held my doubts of no account.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Retery&#8217;s in flood,&#8221; he went on, &#8220;and running
+wild through Hazel Wood; T&#8217;nowdunnie&#8217;s tattie field&#8217;s
+out o&#8217; sicht, and at the Kirkton they&#8217;re fleid they&#8217;ve
+lost twa kye.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_286' name='page_286'></a>286</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;There has been no rain here,&#8221; I stammered, incredulously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s coming now,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;And listen: the
+story&#8217;s out that the Backbone has fallen into the loch.
+You had better cross, dominie, and thole out the nicht
+wi&#8217; us.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Backbone was a piece of mountain-side overhanging
+a loch among the hills, and legend said that it
+would one day fall forward and squirt all the water into
+the glen. Something of the kind had happened, but I
+did not believe it then; with little wit I pointed to the
+shallow Quharity.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It may come down at any minute,&#8221; the farmer answered,
+&#8220;and syne, mind you, you&#8217;ll be five miles frae
+Waster Lunny, for there&#8217;ll be no crossing but by the
+Brig o&#8217; March. If you winna come, I maun awa back.
+I mauna bide langer on the wrang side o&#8217; the Moss
+ditch, though it has been as dry this month back as a
+rabbit&#8217;s roady. But if you&mdash;&#8221; His voice changed.
+&#8220;God&#8217;s sake, man,&#8221; he cried, &#8220;you&#8217;re ower late. Look
+at that! Dinna look&mdash;run, run!&#8221;</p>
+<p>If I had not run before he bade me, I might never
+have run again on earth. I had seen a great shadowy
+yellow river come riding down the Quharity. I sprang
+from it for my life; and when next I looked behind, it
+was upon a turbulent loch, the further bank lost in
+darkness. I was about to shout to Waster Lunny, when
+a monster rose in the torrent between me and the spot
+where he had stood. It frightened me to silence until
+it fell, when I knew it was but a tree that had been
+flung on end by the flood. For a time there was no
+answer to my cries, and I thought the farmer had been
+swept away. Then I heard his whistle, and back I ran
+recklessly through the thickening darkness to the
+school-house. When I saw the tree rise, I had been on
+ground hardly wet as yet with the rain; but by the time
+Waster Lunny sent that reassuring whistle to me I was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_287' name='page_287'></a>287</span>
+ankle-deep in water, and the rain was coming down like
+hail. I saw no lightning.</p>
+<p>For the rest of the night I was only out once, when I
+succeeded in reaching the hen-house and brought all
+my fowls safely to the kitchen, except a hen which
+would not rise off her young. Between us we had the
+kitchen floor, a pool of water; and the rain had put out
+my fires already, as effectually as if it had been an
+overturned broth-pot. That I never took off my clothes
+that night I need not say, though of what was happening
+in the glen I could only guess. A flutter against
+my window now and again, when the rain had abated,
+told me of another bird that had flown there to die; and
+with Waster Lunny, I kept up communication by waving
+a light, to which he replied in a similar manner.
+Before morning, however, he ceased to answer my signals,
+and I feared some catastrophe had occurred at the
+farm. As it turned out, the family was fighting with
+the flood for the year&#8217;s shearing of wool, half of which
+eventually went down the waters, with the wool-shed
+on top of it.</p>
+<p>The school-house stands too high to fear any flood,
+but there were moments when I thought the rain would
+master it. Not only the windows and the roof were
+rattling then, but all the walls, and I was like one in a
+great drum. When the rain was doing its utmost, I
+heard no other sound; but when the lull came, there
+was the wash of a heavy river, or a crack as of artillery
+that told of landslips, or the plaintive cry of the peesweep
+as it rose in the air, trying to entice the waters
+away from its nest.</p>
+<p>It was a dreary scene that met my gaze at break of
+day. Already the Quharity had risen six feet, and in
+many parts of the glen it was two hundred yards wide.
+Waster Lunny&#8217;s cornfield looked like a bog grown over
+with rushes, and what had been his turnips had become
+a lake with small islands in it. No dike stood whole
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_288' name='page_288'></a>288</span>
+except one that the farmer, unaided, had built in a
+straight line from the road to the top of Mount Bare,
+and my own, the further end of which dipped in water.
+Of the plot of firs planted fifty years earlier to help on
+Waster Lunny&#8217;s crops, only a triangle had withstood
+the night.</p>
+<p>Even with the aid of my field-glass I could not estimate
+the damage on more distant farms, for the rain,
+though now thin and soft, as it continued for six days,
+was still heavy and of a brown color. After breakfast&mdash;which
+was interrupted by my bantam cock&#8217;s twice
+spilling my milk&mdash;I saw Waster Lunny and his son,
+Matthew, running towards the shepherd&#8217;s house with
+ropes in their hands. The house, I thought, must be
+in the midst beyond; and then I sickened, knowing all
+at once that it should be on this side of the mist. When
+I had nerve to look again, I saw that though the roof
+had fallen in, the shepherd was astride one of the walls,
+from which he was dragged presently through the water
+by the help of the ropes. I remember noticing that he
+returned to his house with the rope still about him, and
+concluded that he had gone back to save some of his
+furniture. I was wrong, however. There was too
+much to be done at the farm to allow this, but Waster
+Lunny had consented to Duncan&#8217;s forcing his way back
+to the shieling to stop the clock. To both men it
+seemed horrible to let a clock go on ticking in a deserted
+house.</p>
+<p>Having seen this rescue accomplished, I was letting
+my glass roam in the opposite direction, when one of
+its shakes brought into view something on my own side
+of the river. I looked at it long, and saw it move
+slightly. Was it a human being? No, it was a dog.
+No, it was a dog and something else. I hurried out to
+see more clearly, and after a first glance the glass shook
+so in my hands that I had to rest it on the dike. For
+a full minute, I daresay, did I look through the glass
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_289' name='page_289'></a>289</span>
+without blinking, and then I needed to look no more.
+That black patch was, indeed, Gavin.</p>
+<p>He lay quite near the school-house, but I had to make
+a circuit of half a mile to reach him. It was pitiful to
+see the dog doing its best to come to me, and falling
+every few steps. The poor brute was discolored
+almost beyond recognition; and when at last it reached
+me, it lay down at my feet and licked them. I stepped
+over it and ran on recklessly to Gavin. At first I
+thought he was dead. If tears rolled down my cheeks,
+they were not for him.</p>
+<p>I was no strong man even in those days, but I carried
+him to the school-house, the dog crawling after us.
+Gavin I put upon my bed, and I lay down beside him,
+holding him close to me, that some of the heat of my
+body might be taken in by his. When he was able to
+look at me, however, it was not with understanding,
+and in vain did my anxiety press him with questions.
+Only now and again would some word in my speech
+strike upon his brain and produce at least an echo. To
+&#8220;Did you meet Lord Rintoul&#8217;s dogcart?&#8221; he sat up,
+saying quickly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen, the dogcart!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Egyptian&#8221; was not that forenoon among the words
+he knew, and I did not think of mentioning &#8220;hill.&#8221; At
+&#8220;rain&#8221; he shivered; but &#8220;Spittal&#8221; was what told me
+most.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He has taken her back,&#8221; he replied at once, from
+which I learned that Gavin now knew as much of Babbie
+as I did.</p>
+<p>I made him as comfortable as possible, and despairing
+of learning anything from him in his present state,
+I let him sleep. Then I went out into the rain, very
+anxious, and dreading what he might have to tell me
+when he woke. I waded and jumped my way as near
+to the farm as I dared go, and Waster Lunny, seeing
+me, came to the water&#8217;s edge. At this part the breadth
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_290' name='page_290'></a>290</span>
+of the flood was not forty yards, yet for a time our
+voices could no more cross its roar than one may send a
+snowball through a stone wall. I know not whether
+the river then quieted for a space, or if it was only that
+the ears grow used to dins as the eyes distinguish the
+objects in a room that is at first black to them; but after
+a little we were able to shout our remarks across, much
+as boys fling pebbles, many to fall into the water, but
+one occasionally to reach the other side. Waster Lunny
+would have talked of the flood, but I had not come here
+for that.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How were you home so early from the prayer-meeting
+last night?&#8221; I bawled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;No meeting ... I came straucht hame ... but
+terrible stories ... Mr. Dishart,&#8221; was all I caught
+after Waster Lunny had flung his words across a dozen
+times.</p>
+<p>I could not decide whether it would be wise to tell
+him that Gavin was in the school-house, and while I
+hesitated he continued to shout:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Some woman ... the Session ... Lang Tammas ...
+God forbid ... maun back to the farm ...
+byre running like a mill-dam.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He signed to me that he must be off, but my signals
+delayed him, and after much trouble he got my question,
+&#8220;Any news about Lord Rintoul?&#8221; My curiosity
+about the earl must have surprised him, but he
+answered:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Marriage is to be the day ... cannon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I signed that I did not grasp his meaning.</p>
+<p>&#8220;A cannon is to be fired as soon as they&#8217;re man and
+wife,&#8221; he bellowed. &#8220;We&#8217;ll hear it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>With that we parted. On my way home, I remember,
+I stepped on a brood of drowned partridge. I was
+only out half an hour, but I had to wring my clothes as
+if they were fresh from the tub.</p>
+<p>The day wore on, and I did not disturb the sleeper.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_291' name='page_291'></a>291</span>
+A dozen times, I suppose, I had to relight my fire of
+wet peats and roots; but I had plenty of time to stare
+out at the window, plenty of time to think. Probably
+Gavin&#8217;s life depended on his sleeping, but that was not
+what kept my hands off him. Knowing so little of
+what had happened in Thrums since I left it, I was
+forced to guess, and my conclusion was that the earl had
+gone off with his own, and that Gavin in a frenzy had
+followed them. My wisest course, I thought, was to
+let him sleep until I heard the cannon, when his struggle
+for a wife must end. Fifty times at least did I
+stand regarding him as he slept; and if I did not pity
+his plight sufficiently, you know the reason. What
+were Margaret&#8217;s sufferings at this moment? Was she
+wringing her hands for her son lost in the flood, her
+son in disgrace with the congregation? By one o&#8217;clock
+no cannon had sounded, and my suspense had become
+intolerable. I shook Gavin awake, and even as I shook
+him demanded a knowledge of all that had happened
+since we parted at Nanny&#8217;s gate.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How long ago is that?&#8221; he asked, with bewilderment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was last night,&#8221; I answered. &#8220;This morning I
+found you senseless on the hillside, and brought you
+here, to the Glen Quharity school-house. That dog
+was with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He looked at the dog, but I kept my eyes on him,
+and I saw intelligence creep back, like a blush, into his
+face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now I remember,&#8221; he said, shuddering. &#8220;You
+have proved yourself my friend, sir, twice in the four
+and twenty hours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only once, I fear,&#8221; I replied gloomily. &#8220;I was no
+friend when I sent you to the earl&#8217;s bride last night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You know who she is?&#8221; he cried, clutching me, and
+finding it agony to move his limbs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know now,&#8221; I said, and had to tell him how I knew
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_292' name='page_292'></a>292</span>
+before he would answer another question. Then I became
+listener, and you who read know to what alarming
+story.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And all that time,&#8221; I cried reproachfully, when he
+had done, &#8220;you gave your mother not a thought.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not a thought,&#8221; he answered; and I saw that he
+pronounced a harsher sentence on himself than could
+have come from me. &#8220;All that time!&#8221; he repeated,
+after a moment. &#8220;It was only a few minutes, while
+the ten o&#8217;clock bell was ringing.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Only a few minutes,&#8221; I said, &#8220;but they changed the
+channel of the Quharity, and perhaps they have done
+not less to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That may be,&#8221; he answered gravely, &#8220;but it is of
+the present I must think just now. Mr. Ogilvy, what
+assurance have I, while lying here helpless, that the
+marriage at the Spittal is not going on?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;None, I hope,&#8221; I said to myself, and listened longingly
+for the cannon. But to him I only pointed out
+that no woman need go through a form of marriage
+against her will.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rintoul carried her off with no possible purport,&#8221; he
+said, &#8220;but to set my marriage at defiance, and she has
+had a conviction always that to marry me would be to
+ruin me. It was only in the shiver Lord Rintoul&#8217;s
+voice in the darkness sent through her that she yielded
+to my wishes. If she thought that marriage last night
+could be annulled by another to-day, she would consent
+to the second, I believe, to save me from the effects of
+the first. You are incredulous, sir; but you do not
+know of what sacrifices love is capable.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Something of that I knew, but I did not tell him. I
+had seen from his manner rather than his words that
+he doubted the validity of the gypsy marriage, which
+the king had only consented to celebrate because Babbie
+was herself an Egyptian. The ceremony had been
+interrupted in the middle.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_293' name='page_293'></a>293</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It was no marriage,&#8221; I said, with a confidence I was
+far from feeling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In the sight of God,&#8221; he replied excitedly, &#8220;we took
+each other for man and wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I had to hold him down in bed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are too weak to stand, man,&#8221; I said, &#8220;and yet
+you think you could start off this minute for the
+Spittal.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I must go,&#8221; he cried. &#8220;She is my wife. That impious
+marriage may have taken place already.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, that it had!&#8221; was my prayer. &#8220;It has not,&#8221; I
+said to him. &#8220;A cannon is to be fired immediately
+after the ceremony, and all the glen will hear it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I spoke on the impulse, thinking to allay his desire
+to be off; but he said, &#8220;Then I may yet be in time.&#8221;
+Somewhat cruelly I let him rise, that he might realize
+his weakness. Every bone in him cried out at his first
+step, and he sank into a chair.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will go to the Spittal for me?&#8221; he implored.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will not,&#8221; I told him. &#8220;You are asking me to
+fling away my life.&#8221;</p>
+<p>To prove my words I opened the door, and he saw
+what the flood was doing. Nevertheless, he rose and
+tottered several times across the room, trying to revive
+his strength. Though every bit of him was aching, I
+saw that he would make the attempt.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Listen to me,&#8221; I said. &#8220;Lord Rintoul can maintain
+with some reason that it was you rather than he who
+abducted Babbie. Nevertheless, there will not, I am
+convinced, be any marriage at the Spittal to-day.
+When he carried her off from the Toad&#8217;s-hole, he acted
+under impulses not dissimilar to those that took you to
+it. Then, I doubt not, he thought possession was all
+the law, but that scene on the hill has staggered him
+by this morning. Even though she thinks to save you
+by marrying him, he will defer his wedding until he
+learns the import of yours.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_294' name='page_294'></a>294</span></div>
+<p>I did not believe in my own reasoning, but I would
+have said anything to detain him until that cannon was
+fired. He seemed to read my purpose, for he pushed
+my arguments from him with his hands, and continued
+to walk painfully to and fro.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To defer the wedding,&#8221; he said, &#8220;would be to tell
+all his friends of her gypsy origin, and of me. He will
+risk much to avoid that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;In any case,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;you must now give some
+thought to those you have forgotten, your mother and
+your church.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That must come afterwards,&#8221; he said firmly. &#8220;My
+first duty is to my wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The door swung to sharply just then, and he started.
+He thought it was the cannon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wish to God it had been!&#8221; I cried, interpreting
+his thoughts.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you wish me ill?&#8221; he asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart,&#8221; I said solemnly, rising and facing
+him, and disregarding his question, &#8220;if that woman is
+to be your wife, it will be at a cost you cannot estimate
+till you return to Thrums. Do you think that if your
+congregation knew of this gypsy marriage they would
+have you for their minister for another day? Do you
+enjoy the prospect of taking one who might be an earl&#8217;s
+wife into poverty&mdash;ay, and disgraceful poverty? Do
+you know your mother so little as to think she could
+survive your shame? Let me warn you, sir, of what I
+see. I see another minister in the Auld Licht kirk,
+I see you and your wife stoned through our wynds,
+stoned from Thrums, as malefactors have been chased
+out of it ere now; and as certainly as I see these things
+I see a hearse standing at the manse door, and stern
+men denying a son&#8217;s right to help to carry his mother&#8217;s
+coffin to it. Go your way, sir; but first count the cost.&#8221;</p>
+<p>His face quivered before these blows, but all he said
+was, &#8220;I must dree my dreed.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_295' name='page_295'></a>295</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;God is merciful,&#8221; I went on, &#8220;and these things need
+not be. He is more merciful to you, sir, than to some,
+for the storm that He sent to save you is ruining them.
+And yet the farmers are to-day thanking Him for every
+pound of wool, every blade of corn He has left them,
+while you turn from Him because He would save you,
+not in your way, but in His. It was His hand that
+stayed your marriage. He meant Babbie for the earl;
+and if it is on her part a loveless match, she only suffers
+for her own sins. Of that scene on the hill no one in
+Thrums, or in the glen, need ever know. Rintoul will
+see to it that the gypsies vanish from these parts forever,
+and you may be sure the Spittal will soon be shut
+up. He and McKenzie have as much reason as yourself
+to be silent. You, sir, must go back to your congregation,
+who have heard as yet only vague rumors
+that your presence will dispel. Even your mother will
+remain ignorant of what has happened. Your absence
+from the prayer-meeting you can leave to me to explain.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was so silent that I thought him mine, but his
+first words undeceived me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought I had nowhere so keen a friend,&#8221; he said;
+&#8220;but, Mr. Ogilvy, it is devil&#8217;s work you are pleading.
+Am I to return to my people to act a living lie before
+them to the end of my days? Do you really think that
+God devastated a glen to give me a chance of becoming
+a villain? No, sir, I am in His hands, and I will do
+what I think right.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will be dishonored,&#8221; I said, &#8220;in the sight of
+God and man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not in God&#8217;s sight,&#8221; he replied. &#8220;It was a sinless
+marriage, Mr. Ogilvy, and I do not regret it. God
+ordained that she and I should love each other, and He
+put it into my power to save her from that man. I
+took her as my wife before Him, and in His eyes I am
+her husband. Knowing that, sir, how could I return
+to Thrums without her?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_296' name='page_296'></a>296</span></div>
+<p>I had no answer ready for him. I knew that in my
+grief for Margaret I had been advocating an unworthy
+course, but I would not say so. I went gloomily to the
+door, and there, presently, his hand fell on my shoulder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your advice came too late, at any rate,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;You forget that the precentor was on the hill and saw
+everything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was he who had forgotten to tell me this, and to
+me it was the most direful news of all.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My God!&#8221; I cried. &#8220;He will have gone to your
+mother and told her.&#8221; And straightway I began to
+lace my boots.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where are you going?&#8221; he asked, staring at me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To Thrums,&#8221; I answered harshly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said that to venture out into the glen was to
+court death,&#8221; he reminded me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What of that?&#8221; I said, and hastily put on my coat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Ogilvy,&#8221; he cried, &#8220;I will not allow you to do
+this for me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For you?&#8221; I said bitterly. &#8220;It is not for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I would have gone at once, but he got in front of me,
+asking, &#8220;Did you ever know my mother?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Long ago,&#8221; I answered shortly, and he said no
+more, thinking, I suppose, that he knew all. He
+limped to the door with me, and I had only advanced a
+few steps when I understood better than before what
+were the dangers I was to venture into. Since I spoke
+to Waster Lunny the river had risen several feet, and
+even the hillocks in his turnip-field were now submerged.
+The mist was creeping down the hills. But
+what warned me most sharply that the flood was not
+satisfied yet was the top of the school-house dike; it
+was lined with field-mice. I turned back, and Gavin,
+mistaking my meaning, said I did wisely.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have not changed my mind,&#8221; I told him, and then
+had some difficulty in continuing. &#8220;I expect,&#8221; I said,
+&#8220;to reach Thrums safely, even though I should be
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_297' name='page_297'></a>297</span>
+caught in the mist, but I shall have to go round by the
+Kelpie brig in order to get across the river, and it is
+possible that&mdash;that something may befall me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I have all my life been something of a coward, and
+my voice shook when I said this, so that Gavin again
+entreated me to remain at the school-house, saying that
+if I did not he would accompany me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;And so increase my danger tenfold?&#8221; I pointed out.
+&#8220;No, no, Mr. Dishart, I go alone; and if I can do nothing
+with the congregation, I can at least send your
+mother word that you still live. But if anything should
+happen to me, I want you&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>But I could not say what I had come back to say. I
+had meant to ask him, in the event of my death, to
+take a hundred pounds which were the savings of my
+life; but now I saw that this might lead to Margaret&#8217;s
+hearing of me, and so I stayed my words. It was bitter
+to me this, and yet, after all, a little thing when put
+beside the rest.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Good-by, Mr. Dishart,&#8221; I said abruptly. I then
+looked at my desk, which contained some trifles that
+were once Margaret&#8217;s. &#8220;Should anything happen to
+me,&#8221; I said, &#8220;I want that old desk to be destroyed unopened.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Ogilvy,&#8221; he answered gently, &#8220;you are venturing
+this because you loved my mother. If anything
+does befall you, be assured that I will tell her what
+you attempted for her sake.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I believe he thought it was to make some such request
+that I had turned back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You must tell her nothing about me,&#8221; I exclaimed,
+in consternation. &#8220;Swear that my name will never
+cross your lips before her. No, that is not enough.
+You must forget me utterly, whether I live or die, lest
+some time you should think of me and she should read
+your thoughts. Swear, man!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Must this be?&#8221; he said, gazing at me.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_298' name='page_298'></a>298</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I answered more calmly, &#8220;it must be. For
+nearly a score of years I have been blotted out of your
+mother&#8217;s life, and since she came to Thrums my one care
+has been to keep my existence from her. I have
+changed my burying-ground even from Thrums to the
+glen, lest I should die before her, and she, seeing the
+hearse go by the Tenements, might ask, &#8216;Whose funeral
+is this?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>In my anxiety to warn him, I had said too much.
+His face grew haggard, and there was fear to speak on
+it; and I saw, I knew, that some damnable suspicion of
+Margaret&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was my wife!&#8221; I cried sharply. &#8220;We were
+married by the minister of Harvie. You are my son.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_299' name='page_299'></a>299</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYSIX_STORY_OF_THE_DOMINIE' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYSIX_STORY_OF_THE_DOMINIE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Six.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />STORY OF THE DOMINIE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>When I spoke next, I was back in the school-house,
+sitting there with my bonnet on my head, Gavin looking
+at me. We had forgotten the cannon at last.</p>
+<p>In that chair I had anticipated this scene more than
+once of late. I had seen that a time might come when
+Gavin would have to be told all, and I had even said
+the words aloud, as if he were indeed opposite me. So
+now I was only repeating the tale, and I could tell it
+without emotion, because it was nigh nineteen years
+old; and I did not look at Gavin, for I knew that his
+manner of taking it could bring no change to me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did you never ask your mother,&#8221; I said, addressing
+the fire rather than him, &#8220;why you were called Gavin?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; he answered, &#8220;it was because she thought
+Gavin a prettier name than Adam.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; I said slowly, &#8220;it was because Gavin is my
+name. You were called after your father. Do you not
+remember my taking you one day to the shore at Harvie
+to see the fishermen carried to their boats upon their
+wives&#8217; backs, that they might start dry on their
+journey?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; he had to reply. &#8220;I remember the women
+carrying the men through the water to the boats, but I
+thought it was my father who&mdash;I mean&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know whom you mean,&#8221; I said. &#8220;That was our
+last day together, but you were not three years old.
+Yet you remembered me when you came to Thrums.
+You shake your head, but it is true. Between the diets
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_300' name='page_300'></a>300</span>
+of worship that first Sabbath I was introduced to you,
+and you must have had some shadowy recollection of
+my face, for you asked, &#8216;Surely I saw you in church in
+the forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?&#8217; I said &#8216;Yes,&#8217; but I had
+not been in the church in the forenoon. You have forgotten
+even that, and yet I treasured it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I could hear that he was growing impatient, though
+so far he had been more indulgent than I had any right
+to expect.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It can all be put into a sentence,&#8221; I said calmly.
+&#8220;Margaret married Adam Dishart, and afterwards, believing
+herself a widow, she married me. You were
+born, and then Adam Dishart came back.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That is my whole story, and here was I telling it to
+my son, and not a tear between us. It ended abruptly,
+and I fell to mending the fire.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I knew your mother first,&#8221; I went on, after
+Gavin had said some boyish things that were of no avail
+to me, &#8220;I did not think to end my days as a dominie.
+I was a student at Aberdeen, with the ministry in my
+eye, and sometimes on Saturdays I walked forty miles
+to Harvie to go to church with her. She had another
+lover, Adam Dishart, a sailor turned fisherman; and
+while I lingered at corners, wondering if I could dare
+to meet her and her mother on their way to church, he
+would walk past with them. He was accompanied
+always by a lanky black dog, which he had brought
+from a foreign country. He never signed for any ship
+without first getting permission to take it with him, and
+in Harvie they said it did not know the language of the
+native dogs. I have never known a man and dog so
+attached to each other.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I remember that black dog,&#8221; Gavin said. &#8220;I have
+spoken of it to my mother, and she shuddered, as if it
+had once bitten her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;While Adam strutted by with them,&#8221; I continued,
+&#8220;I would hang back, raging at his assurance or my own
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_301' name='page_301'></a>301</span>
+timidity; but I lost my next chance in the same way.
+In Margaret&#8217;s presence something came over me, a kind
+of dryness in the throat, that made me dumb. I have
+known divinity students stricken in the same way, just
+as they were giving out their first text. It is no aid in
+getting a kirk or wooing a woman.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If any one in Harvie recalls me now, it is as a
+hobbledehoy who strode along the cliffs, shouting
+Homer at the sea-mews. With all my learning, I, who
+gave Margaret the name of Lalage, understood women
+less than any fisherman who bandied words with them
+across a boat. I remember a Yule night when both
+Adam and I were at her mother&#8217;s cottage, and, as we
+were leaving, he had the audacity to kiss Margaret.
+She ran out of the room, and Adam swaggered off, and
+when I recovered from my horror, I apologized for
+what he had done. I shall never forget how her mother
+looked at me, and said, &#8216;Ay, Gavin, I see they dinna
+teach everything at Aberdeen.&#8217; You will not believe
+it, but I walked away doubting her meaning. I thought
+more of scholarship then than I do now. Adam Dishart
+taught me its proper place.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well, that is the dull man I was; and yet, though
+Adam was always saying and doing the things I was
+making up my mind to say and do, I think Margaret
+cared more for me. Nevertheless, there was something
+about him that all women seemed to find lovable, a
+dash that made them send him away and then well-nigh
+run after him. At any rate, I could have got her after
+her mother&#8217;s death if I had been half a man. But I
+went back to Aberdeen to write a poem about her, and
+while I was at it Adam married her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I opened my desk and took from it a yellow manuscript.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Here,&#8221; I said, &#8220;is the poem. You see, I never finished
+it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I was fingering the thing grimly when Gavin&#8217;s eye
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_302' name='page_302'></a>302</span>
+fell on something else in the desk. It was an ungainly
+clasp-knife, as rusty as if it had spent a winter beneath
+a hedge.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I seem to remember that knife,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;you should remember it. Well,
+after three months Adam tired of his wife.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I stopped again. This was a story in which only the
+pauses were eloquent.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps I have no right to say he tired of her. One
+day, however, he sauntered away from Harvie whistling,
+his dog at his heels as ever, and was not seen again for
+nearly six years. When I heard of his disappearance
+I packed my books in that kist and went to Harvie,
+where I opened a school. You see, every one but Margaret
+believed that Adam had fallen over the cliffs and
+been drowned.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the dog?&#8221; said Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;We were all sure that, if he had fallen over, it had
+jumped after him. The fisher-folk said that he could
+have left his shadow behind as easily as it. Yet Margaret
+thought for long that he had tired of Harvie
+merely and gone back to sea, and not until two years
+had passed would she marry me. We lived in Adam&#8217;s
+house. It was so near the little school that when I
+opened the window in summer-time she could hear the
+drone of our voices. During the weeks before you were
+born I kept that window open all day long, and often I
+went to it and waved my hand to her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sometimes, when she was washing or baking, I
+brought you to the school. The only quarrel she and I
+ever had was about my teaching you the Lord&#8217;s Prayer
+in Greek as soon as you could say father and mother.
+It was to be a surprise for her on your second birthday.
+On that day, while she was ironing, you took hold of
+her gown to steady yourself, and began,
+&#8216;<span lang="el" title="Pater êmôn ho en tois ouranois">&#928;&#8049;&#964;&#949;&#961; &#7969;&#956;&#8182;&#957; &#8001; &#7952;&#957; &#964;&#959;&#8150;&#962; &#959;&#8016;&#961;&#945;&#957;&#959;&#8150;&#962;</span>&#8217;
+and to me, behind the door, it was music.
+But at
+<span lang="el" title="agiasthêtô">&#7937;&#947;&#953;&#945;&#963;&#952;&#7968;&#964;&#969;</span>,
+of which you made two syllables, you
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_303' name='page_303'></a>303</span>
+cried, and Margaret snatched you up, thinking this was
+some new ailment. After I had explained to her that
+it was the Lord&#8217;s Prayer in Greek, she would let me
+take you to the school-house no more.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not much longer could I have taken you in any
+case, for already we are at the day when Adam Dishart
+came back. It was the 7th of September, and all the
+week most of the women in Harvie had been setting
+off at dawn to the harvest fields and straggling home at
+nights, merry and with yellow corn in their hair. I
+had sat on in the school-house that day after my pupils
+were gone. I still meant to be a minister, and I was
+studying Hebrew, and so absorbed in my book that as
+the daylight went, I followed it step by step as far as
+my window, and there I read, without knowing, until I
+chanced to look up, that I had left my desk. I have
+not opened that book since.</p>
+<p>&#8220;From the window I saw you on the waste ground
+that separated the school from our home. You were
+coming to me on your hands and feet, and stopping now
+and again to look back at your mother, who was at the
+door, laughing and shaking her fist at you. I beckoned
+to you, and took the book back to my desk to lock it up.
+While my head was inside the desk I heard the school-house
+door pushed open, and thinking it was you I
+smiled, without looking up. Then something touched
+my hand, and I still thought it was you; but I looked
+down, and I saw Adam Dishart&#8217;s black dog.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I did not move. It looked up at me and wagged its
+tail. Then it drew back&mdash;I suppose because I had no
+words for it. I watched it run half-round the room
+and stop and look at me again. Then it slunk out.</p>
+<p>&#8220;All that time one of my hands had been holding the
+desk open. Now the lid fell. I put on my bonnet and
+went to the door. You were only a few yards away,
+with flowers in your fist. Margaret was laughing still.
+I walked round the school and there was no dog visible.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_304' name='page_304'></a>304</span>
+Margaret nodded to me, meaning that I should bring
+you home. You thrust the flowers into my hand, but
+they fell. I stood there, dazed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think I walked with you some way across the
+waste ground. Then I dropped your hand and strode
+back to the school. I went down on my knees, looking
+for marks of a dog&#8217;s paws, and I found them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I came out again your mother was no longer
+at our door, and you were crying because I had left
+you. I passed you and walked straight to the house.
+Margaret was skinning rushes for wicks. There must
+have been fear in my face, for as soon as she saw it she
+ran to the door to see if you were still alive. She
+brought you in with her, and so had strength to cry,
+&#8216;What is it? Speak!&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Come away,&#8217; I said, &#8216;come away,&#8217; and I was drawing
+her to the door, but she pressed me into a chair.
+I was up again at once.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Margaret,&#8217; I said, &#8216;ask no questions. Put on your
+bonnet, give me the boy, and let us away.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could not take my eyes off the door, and she was
+walking to it to look out when I barred the way with
+my arm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;What have you seen?&#8217; she cried; and then, as I
+only pointed to her bonnet, she turned to you, and you
+said, &#8216;Was it the black dog, father?&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Gavin, then she knew; and I stood helpless and
+watched my wife grow old. In that moment she lost
+the sprightliness I loved the more because I had none
+of it myself, and the bloom went from her face never to
+return.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;He has come back,&#8217; she said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I told her what I had seen, and while I spoke she
+put on her bonnet, and I exulted, thinking&mdash;and then
+she took off her bonnet, and I knew she would not go
+away with me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Margaret,&#8217; I cried, &#8216;I am that bairn&#8217;s father.&#8217;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_305' name='page_305'></a>305</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Adam&#8217;s my man,&#8217; she said, and at that I gave her
+a look for which God might have struck me dead.
+But instead of blaming me she put her arms round my
+neck.</p>
+<p>&#8220;After that we said very little. We sat at opposite
+sides of the fire, waiting for him, and you played on
+the floor. The harvesters trooped by, and there was a
+fiddle; and when it stopped, long stillness, and then a
+step. It was not Adam. You fell asleep, and we
+could hear nothing but the sea. There was a harvest
+moon.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Once a dog ran past the door, and we both rose.
+Margaret pressed her hands on her breast. Sometimes
+she looked furtively at me, and I knew her thoughts.
+To me it was only misery that had come, but to her it
+was shame, so that when you woke and climbed into
+her lap she shivered at your touch. I could not look
+at her after that, for there was a horror of me growing
+in her face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ten o&#8217;clock struck, and then again there was no
+sound but the sea pouring itself out on the beach. It
+was long after this, when to me there was still no other
+sound, that Margaret screamed, and you hid behind
+her. Then I heard it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Gavin,&#8217; Margaret said to me, &#8216;be a good man all
+your life.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was louder now, and then it stopped. Above the
+wash of the sea we heard another sound&mdash;a sharp tap,
+tap. You said, &#8216;I know what sound that is; it&#8217;s a man
+knocking the ashes out of his pipe against his boot.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then the dog pushed the door off the latch, and
+Adam lurched in. He was not drunk, but he brought
+the smell of drink into the room with him. He was
+grinning like one bringing rare news, and before she
+could shrink back or I could strike him he had Margaret
+in his arms.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Lord, lass,&#8217; he said, with many jovial oaths, &#8216;to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_306' name='page_306'></a>306</span>
+think I&#8217;m back again! There, she&#8217;s swounded. What
+folks be women, to be sure.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;We thought you were dead, Adam,&#8221; she said,
+coming to.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Bless your blue eyes,&#8217; he answered gleefully;
+&#8216;often I says to myself, &#8220;Meggy will be thinking I&#8217;m
+with the fishes,&#8221; and then I chuckles.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Where have you been all this time?&#8217; I demanded
+sternly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Gavin,&#8217; he said effusively, &#8216;your hand. And don&#8217;t
+look so feared, man; I bear no malice for what you&#8217;ve
+done. I heard all about it at the Cross Anchors.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Where have you been these five years and a half?&#8217;
+I repeated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Where have I no been, lad?&#8217; he replied.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;At Harvie,&#8217; I said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Right you are,&#8217; said he good-naturedly. &#8216;Meggie,
+I had no intention of leaving you that day, though
+I was yawning myself to death in Harvie; but I sees a
+whaler, and I thinks, &#8220;That&#8217;s a tidy boat, and I&#8217;m a
+tidy man, and if they&#8217;ll take me and the dog, off we
+go.&#8221;&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;You never wrote to me,&#8217; Margaret said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I meant to send you some scrapes,&#8217; he answered,
+&#8216;but it wasna till I changed ships that I had the chance,
+and then I minds, &#8220;Meggy kens I&#8217;m no hand with the
+pen.&#8221; But I swear I often thought of you, lass; and
+look you here, that&#8217;s better than letters, and so is this
+and every penny of it is yours.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He flung two bags of gold upon the table, and the
+chink brought you out from behind your mother.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Hallo!&#8217; Adam cried.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;He is mine,&#8217; I said. &#8216;Gavin, come here.&#8217; But
+Margaret held you back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Here&#8217;s a go,&#8217; Adam muttered, and scratched his
+head. Then he slapped his thigh. &#8216;Gavin,&#8217; he said,
+in his friendliest way, &#8216;we&#8217;ll toss for him.&#8217;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_307' name='page_307'></a>307</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;He pulled the knife that is now in my desk from
+his pocket, spat on it, and flung it up. &#8216;Dry, the kid&#8217;s
+ours, Meggy,&#8217; he explained; &#8216;wet, he goes to Gavin.&#8217;
+I clinched my fist to&mdash;&mdash;But what was the use? He
+caught the knife, and showed it to me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Dry,&#8217; he said triumphantly; &#8216;so he is ours, Meggy.
+Kiddy, catch the knife. It is yours; and, mind, you
+have changed dads. And now that we have settled
+that, Gavin, there&#8217;s my hand again.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I went away and left them, and I never saw Margaret
+again until the day you brought her to Thrums.
+But I saw you once, a few days after Adam came back.
+I was in the school-house, packing my books, and you
+were playing on the waste ground. I asked you how
+your mother was, and you said, &#8216;She&#8217;s fleid to come to the
+door till you gang awa, and my father&#8217;s buying a boat.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;m your father,&#8217; I said; but you answered confidently:</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;You&#8217;re no a living man. You&#8217;re just a man I
+dreamed about; and I promised my mother no to dream
+about you again.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I am your father,&#8217; I repeated.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;My father&#8217;s awa buying a fishing-boat,&#8217; you insisted;
+&#8216;and when I speir at my mother whaur my first father
+is, she says I&#8217;m havering.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Gavin Ogilvy is your name,&#8217; I said. &#8216;No,&#8217; you answered,
+&#8216;I have a new name. My mother telled me my
+name is aye to be Gavin Dishart now. She telled me,
+too, to fling awa this knife my father gave me, and I&#8217;ve
+flung it awa a lot o&#8217; times, but I aye pick it up again.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Give it to me,&#8217; I said, with the wicked thoughts of
+a fool in my head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is how your knife came into my possession. I
+left Harvie that night in the carrier&#8217;s cart, but I had not
+the heart to return to college. Accident brought me
+here, and I thought it a fitting place in which to bury
+myself from Margaret.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_308' name='page_308'></a>308</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYSEVEN_SECOND_JOURNEY_OF_THE_DOMINIE_TO_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYSEVEN_SECOND_JOURNEY_OF_THE_DOMINIE_TO_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Seven.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />SECOND JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Here was a nauseous draught for me. Having finished
+my tale, I turned to Gavin for sympathy; and,
+behold, he had been listening for the cannon instead of
+to my final words. So, like an old woman at her hearth,
+we warm our hands at our sorrows and drop in faggots,
+and each thinks his own fire a sun, in presence of which
+all other fires should go out. I was soured to see Gavin
+prove this, and then I could have laughed without
+mirth, for had not my bitterness proved it too?</p>
+<p>&#8220;And now,&#8221; I said, rising, &#8220;whether Margaret is to
+hold up her head henceforth lies no longer with me, but
+with you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was not to that he replied.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You have suffered long, Mr. Ogilvy,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;Father,&#8221; he added, wringing my hand. I called him
+son; but it was only an exchange of musty words that
+we had found too late. A father is a poor estate to
+come into at two and twenty.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I should have been told of this,&#8221; he said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your mother did right, sir,&#8221; I answered slowly, but
+he shook his head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I think you have misjudged her,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Doubtless
+while my fa&mdash;, while Adam Dishart lived, she
+could only think of you with pain; but after his
+death&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;After his death,&#8221; I said quietly, &#8220;I was still so horrible
+to her that she left Harvie without letting a soul
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_309' name='page_309'></a>309</span>
+know whither she was bound. She dreaded my following
+her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Stranger to me,&#8221; he said, after a pause, &#8220;than even
+your story is her being able to keep it from me. I believed
+no thought ever crossed her mind that she did not
+let me share.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And none, I am sure, ever did,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;save
+that, and such thoughts as a woman has with God only.
+It was my lot to bring disgrace on her. She thought it
+nothing less, and she has hidden it all these years for
+your sake, until now it is not burdensome. I suppose
+she feels that God has taken the weight off her. Now
+you are to put a heavier burden in its place.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He faced me boldly, and I admire him for it now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I cannot admit,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that I did wrong in forgetting
+my mother for that fateful quarter of an hour.
+Babbie and I loved each other, and I was given the
+opportunity of making her mine or losing her forever.
+Have you forgotten that all this tragedy you have told
+me of only grew out of your own indecision? I took
+the chance that you let slip by.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I had not forgotten,&#8221; I replied. &#8220;What else made
+me tell you last night that Babbie was in Nanny&#8217;s
+house?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But now you are afraid&mdash;now when the deed is done,
+when for me there can be no turning back. Whatever
+be the issue, I should be a cur to return to Thrums
+without my wife. Every minute I feel my strength
+returning, and before you reach Thrums I will have set
+out to the Spittal.&#8221;</p>
+<p>There was nothing to say after that. He came with
+me in the rain as far as the dike, warning me against
+telling his people what was not true.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My first part,&#8221; I answered, &#8220;will be to send word to
+your mother that you are in safety. After that I must
+see Whamond. Much depends on him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You will not go to my mother?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_310' name='page_310'></a>310</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Not so long as she has a roof over her head,&#8221; I said,
+&#8220;but that may not be for long.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So, I think, we parted&mdash;each soon to forget the other
+in a woman.</p>
+<p>But I had not gone far when I heard something that
+stopped me as sharply as if it had been McKenzie&#8217;s
+hand once more on my shoulder. For a second the
+noise appalled me, and then, before the echo began, I
+knew it must be the Spittal cannon. My only thought
+was one of thankfulness. Now Gavin must see the wisdom
+of my reasoning. I would wait for him until he was
+able to come with me to Thrums. I turned back, and
+in my haste I ran through water I had gone round before.</p>
+<p>I was too late. He was gone, and into the rain I
+shouted his name in vain. That he had started for the
+Spittal there could be no doubt; that he would ever
+reach it was less certain. The earl&#8217;s collie was still
+crouching by the fire, and, thinking it might be a guide
+to him, I drove the brute to the door, and chased it
+in the direction he probably had taken. Not until it
+had run from me did I resume my own journey. I do
+not need to be told that you who read would follow
+Gavin now rather than me; but you must bear with the
+dominie for a little while yet, as I see no other way
+of making things clear.</p>
+<p>In some ways I was not ill-equipped for my attempt.
+I do not know any one of our hillsides as it is known to
+the shepherd, to whom every rabbit-hole and glimmer
+of mica is a landmark; but he, like his flock, has only
+to cross a dike to find himself in a strange land, while
+I have been everywhere in the glen.</p>
+<p>In the foreground the rain slanted, transparent till it
+reached the ground, where a mist seemed to blow it
+along as wind ruffles grass. In the distance all was a
+driving mist. I have been out for perhaps an hour in
+rains as wetting, and I have watched floods from my
+window, but never since have I known the fifth part of
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_311' name='page_311'></a>311</span>
+a season&#8217;s rainfall in eighteen hours; and if there
+should be the like here again, we shall be found better
+prepared for it. Men have been lost in the glen
+in mists so thick that they could plunge their fingers
+out of sight in it as into a meal girnel; but this mist
+never came within twenty yards of me. I was surrounded
+by it, however, as if I was in a round tent; and
+out of this tent I could not walk, for it advanced with
+me. On the other side of this screen were horrible
+noises, at whose cause I could only guess, save now and
+again when a tongue of water was shot at my feet, or
+great stones came crashing through the canvas of mist.
+Then I ran wherever safety prompted, and thus tangled
+my bearings until I was like that one in the child&#8217;s
+game who is blindfolded and turned round three times
+that he may not know east from west.</p>
+<p>Once I stumbled over a dead sheep and a living
+lamb; and in a clump of trees which puzzled me&mdash;for
+they were where I thought no trees should be&mdash;a wood-pigeon
+flew to me, but struck my breast with such force
+that I picked it up dead. I saw no other living thing,
+though half a dozen times I must have passed within
+cry of farmhouses. At one time I was in a cornfield,
+where I had to lift my hands to keep them out of water,
+and a dread filled me that I had wandered in a circle, and
+was still on Waster Lunny&#8217;s land. I plucked some corn
+and held it to my eyes to see if it was green; but it was
+yellow, and so I knew that at last I was out of the glen.</p>
+<p>People up here will complain if I do not tell how I
+found the farmer of Green Brae&#8217;s fifty pounds. It is
+one of the best-remembered incidents of the flood, and
+happened shortly after I got out of the cornfield. A
+house rose suddenly before me, and I was hastening to
+it when as suddenly three of its walls fell. Before my
+mind could give a meaning to what my eyes told it, the
+water that had brought down the house had lifted me
+off my feet and flung me among waves. That would
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_312' name='page_312'></a>312</span>
+have been the last of the dominie had I not struck
+against a chest, then halfway on its voyage to the sea.
+I think the lid gave way under me; but that is surmise,
+for from the time the house fell till I was on the
+river in a kist that was like to be my coffin, is almost a
+blank. After what may have been but a short journey,
+though I had time in it to say my prayers twice, we
+stopped, jammed among fallen trees; and seeing a bank
+within reach, I tried to creep up it. In this there
+would have been little difficulty had not the contents of
+the kist caught in my feet and held on to them, like
+living things afraid of being left behind. I let down
+my hands to disentangle my feet, but failed; and then,
+grown desperate, I succeeded in reaching firm ground,
+dragging I knew not what after me. It proved to be a
+pillow-slip. Green Brae still shudders when I tell him
+that my first impulse was to leave the pillow-slip unopened.
+However, I ripped it up, for to undo the wet
+strings that had ravelled round my feet would have
+wearied even a man with a needle to pick open the
+knots; and among broken gimlets, the head of a grape,
+and other things no beggar would have stolen, I found
+a tin canister containing fifty pounds. Waster Lunny
+says that this should have made a religious man of
+Green Brae, and it did to this extent, that he called the
+fall of the cotter&#8217;s house providential. Otherwise the
+cotter, at whose expense it may be said the money was
+found, remains the more religious man of the two.</p>
+<p>At last I came to the Kelpie&#8217;s brig, and I could have
+wept in joy (and might have been better employed),
+when, like everything I saw on that journey, it broke
+suddenly through the mist, and seemed to run at me
+like a living monster. Next moment I ran back, for as
+I stepped upon the bridge I saw that I had been about
+to walk into the air. What was left of the Kelpie&#8217;s
+brig ended in mid-stream. Instead of thanking God
+for the light without which I should have gone abruptly
+to my death, I sat down miserable and hopeless.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_313' name='page_313'></a>313</span></div>
+<p>Presently I was up and trudging to the Loups of
+Malcolm. At the Loups the river runs narrow and deep
+between cliffs, and the spot is so called because one
+Malcolm jumped across it when pursued by wolves.
+Next day he returned boastfully to look at his jump,
+and gazing at it turned dizzy and fell into the river.
+Since that time chains have been hung across the Loups
+to reduce the distance between the farms of Carwhimple
+and Keep-What-You-Can from a mile to a hundred
+yards. You must cross the chains on your breast.
+They were suspended there by Rob Angus, who was
+also the first to breast them.</p>
+<p>But I never was a Rob Angus. When my pupils
+practise what they call the high jump, two small boys
+hold a string aloft, and the bigger ones run at it gallantly
+until they reach it, when they stop meekly and
+creep beneath. They will repeat this twenty times,
+and yet never, when they start for the string, seem to
+know where their courage will fail. Nay, they will
+even order the small boys to hold the string higher.
+I have smiled at this, but it was the same courage while
+the difficulty is far off that took me to the Loups. At
+sight of them I turned away.</p>
+<p>I prayed to God for a little of the mettle of other
+men, and He heard me, for with my eyes shut I seemed
+to see Margaret beckoning from across the abyss as if
+she had need of me. Then I rose calmly and tested
+the chains, and crossed them on my breast. Many have
+done it with the same danger, at which they laugh, but
+without that vision I should have held back.</p>
+<p>I was now across the river, and so had left the chance
+of drowning behind, but I was farther from Thrums
+than when I left the school-house, and this countryside
+was almost unknown to me. The mist had begun to
+clear, so that I no longer wandered into fields; but
+though I kept to the roads, I could not tell that they
+led toward Thrums, and in my exhaustion I had often
+to stand still. Then to make a new start in the mud
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_314' name='page_314'></a>314</span>
+was like pulling stakes out of the ground. So long as
+the rain faced me I thought I could not be straying far;
+but after an hour I lost this guide, for a wind rose that
+blew it in all directions.</p>
+<p>In another hour, when I should have been drawing
+near Thrums, I found myself in a wood, and here I
+think my distress was greatest; nor is this to be marvelled
+at, for instead of being near Thrums, I was listening
+to the monotonous roar of the sea. I was too
+spent to reason, but I knew that I must have travelled
+direct east, and must be close to the German Ocean.
+I remember putting my back against a tree and shutting
+my eyes, and listening to the lash of the waves against
+the beach, and hearing the faint toll of a bell, and
+wondering listlessly on what lighthouse it was ringing.
+Doubtless I would have lain down to sleep forever had
+I not heard another sound near at hand. It was the
+knock of a hammer on wood, and might have been a
+fisherman mending his boat. The instinct of self-preservation
+carried me to it, and presently I was at a
+little house. A man was standing in the rain, hammering
+new hinges to the door; and though I did not
+recognize him, I saw with bewilderment that the
+woman at his side was Nanny.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the dominie,&#8221; she cried, and her brother added:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Losh, sir, you hinna the look o&#8217; a living man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nanny,&#8221; I said, in perplexity, &#8220;what are you doing
+here?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur else should I be?&#8221; she asked.</p>
+<p>I pressed my hands over my eyes, crying, &#8220;Where
+am I?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Nanny shrank from me, but Sanders said, &#8220;Has the
+rain driven you gyte, man? You&#8217;re in Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But the sea,&#8221; I said, distrusting him. &#8220;I hear it.
+Listen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the wind in Windyghoul,&#8221; Sanders answered,
+looking at me queerly. &#8220;Come awa into the house.&#8221;</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_315' name='page_315'></a>315</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYEIGHT_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURSDEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYEIGHT_THRUMS_DURING_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURSDEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Eight.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS&mdash;DEFENCE OF THE MANSE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Hardly had I crossed the threshold of the mudhouse
+when such a sickness came over me that I could not
+have looked up, though Nanny&#8217;s voice had suddenly
+changed to Margaret&#8217;s. Vaguely I knew that Nanny
+had put the kettle on the fire&mdash;a woman&#8217;s first thought
+when there is illness in the house&mdash;and as I sat with my
+hands over my face I heard the water dripping from
+my clothes to the floor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why is that bell ringing?&#8221; I asked at last, ignoring
+all questions and speaking through my fingers. An
+artist, I suppose, could paint all expression out of a
+human face. The sickness was having that effect on
+my voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s the Auld Licht bell,&#8221; Sanders said; &#8220;and it&#8217;s
+almost as fearsome to listen to as last nicht&#8217;s rain. I
+wish I kent what they&#8217;re ringing it for.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wish no sic things,&#8221; said Nanny nervously.
+&#8220;There&#8217;s things it&#8217;s best to put off kenning as lang as
+we can.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s that ill-cleakit witch, Effie McBean, that makes
+Nanny speak so doleful,&#8221; Sanders told me. &#8220;There
+was to be a prayer-meeting last nicht, but Mr. Dishart
+never came to &#8217;t, though they rang till they wraxed
+their arms; and now Effie says it&#8217;ll ring on by itsel&#8217; till
+he&#8217;s brocht hame a corp. The hellicat says the rain&#8217;s a
+dispensation to drown him in for neglect o&#8217; duty. Sal,
+I would think little o&#8217; the Lord if He needed to create
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_316' name='page_316'></a>316</span>
+a new sea to drown one man in. Nanny, yon cuttie,
+that&#8217;s no swearing; I defy you to find a single lonely
+oath in what I&#8217;ve said.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never mind Effie McBean,&#8221; I interposed. &#8220;What
+are the congregation saying about the minister&#8217;s
+absence?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We ken little except what Effie telled us,&#8221; Nanny
+answered. &#8220;I was at Tilliedrum yestreen, meeting
+Sanders as he got out o&#8217; the gaol, and that awfu onding
+began when we was on the Bellies Braes. We
+focht our way through it, but not a soul did we meet;
+and wha would gang out the day that can bide at hame?
+Ay, but Effie says it&#8217;s kent in Thrums that Mr. Dishart
+has run off wi&#8217;&mdash;wi&#8217; an Egyptian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re waur than her, Nanny,&#8221; Sanders said
+roughly, &#8220;for you hae twa reasons for kenning better.
+In the first place, has Mr. Dishart no keeped you in
+siller a&#8217; the time I was awa? and for another, have I no
+been at the manse?&#8221;</p>
+<p>My head rose now.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He gaed to the manse,&#8221; Nanny explained, &#8220;to thank
+Mr. Dishart for being so good to me. Ay, but Jean
+wouldna let him in. I&#8217;m thinking that looks gey gray.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whatever was her reason,&#8221; Sanders admitted, &#8220;Jean
+wouldna open the door; but I keeked in at the parlor
+window, and saw Mrs. Dishart in&#8217;t looking very cosy-like
+and lauching; and do you think I would hae seen
+that if ill had come ower the minister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not if Margaret knew of it,&#8221; I said to myself, and
+wondered at Whamond&#8217;s forbearance.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She had a skein o&#8217; worsted stretched out on her
+hands,&#8221; Sanders continued, &#8220;and a young leddy was
+winding it. I didna see her richt, but she wasna a
+Thrums leddy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Effie McBean says she&#8217;s his intended, come to call
+him to account,&#8221; Nanny said; but I hardly listened,
+for I saw that I must hurry to Tammas Whamond&#8217;s.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_317' name='page_317'></a>317</span>
+Nanny followed me to the gate with her gown pulled
+over her head, and said excitedly:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, dominie, I warrant it&#8217;s true. It&#8217;ll be Babbie.
+Sanders doesna suspect, because I&#8217;ve telled him nothing
+about her. Oh, what&#8217;s to be done? They were
+baith so good to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I could only tell her to keep what she knew to herself.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has Rob Dow come back?&#8221; I called out after I had
+started.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur frae?&#8221; she replied; and then I remembered
+that all these things had happened while Nanny was at
+Tilliedrum. In this life some of the seven ages are
+spread over two decades, and others pass as quickly as
+a stage play. Though a fifth of a season&#8217;s rain had
+fallen in a night and a day, it had scarcely kept pace
+with Gavin.</p>
+<p>I hurried to the town by the Roods. That brae was
+as deserted as the country roads, except where children
+had escaped from their mothers to wade in it. Here
+and there dams were keeping the water away from one
+door to send it with greater volume to another, and at
+points the ground had fallen in. But this I noticed
+without interest. I did not even realize that I was
+holding my head painfully to the side where it had been
+blown by the wind and glued by the rain. I have
+never held my head straight since that journey.</p>
+<p>Only a few looms were going, their pedals in water.
+I was addressed from several doors and windows, once
+by Charles Yuill.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna pretend,&#8221; he said, &#8220;that you&#8217;ve walked in
+frae the school-house alane. The rain chased me into
+this house yestreen, and here it has keeped me, though
+I bide no further awa than Tillyloss.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Charles,&#8221; I said in a low voice, &#8220;why is the Auld
+Licht bell ringing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hae you no heard about Mr. Dishart?&#8221; he asked.
+&#8220;Oh, man! that&#8217;s Lang Tammas in the kirk by himsel&#8217;,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_318' name='page_318'></a>318</span>
+tearing at the bell to bring the folk thegither to depose
+the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Instead of going to Whamond&#8217;s house in the school
+wynd I hastened down the Banker&#8217;s close to the kirk,
+and had almost to turn back, so choked was the close
+with floating refuse. I could see the bell swaying, but
+the kirk was locked, and I battered on the door to no
+purpose. Then, remembering that <ins title='Was Henry'>Hendry</ins> Munn lived
+in Coutt&#8217;s trance, I set off for his house. He saw me
+crossing the square, but would not open his door until
+I was close to it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I open,&#8221; he cried, &#8220;squeeze through quick&#8221;;
+but though I did his bidding, a rush of water darted in
+before me. Hendry reclosed the door by flinging
+himself against it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;When I saw you crossing the square,&#8221; he said, &#8220;it
+was surprise enough to cure the hiccup.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry,&#8221; I replied instantly, &#8220;why is the Auld
+Licht bell ringing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He put his finger to his lip. &#8220;I see,&#8221; he said imperturbably,
+&#8220;you&#8217;ve met our folk in the glen and heard
+frae them about the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What folk?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mair than half the congregation,&#8221; he replied, &#8220;I
+started for Glen Quharity twa hours syne to help the
+farmers. You didna see them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; they must have been on the other side of the
+river.&#8221; Again that question forced my lips, &#8220;Why is
+the bell ringing?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Canny, dominie,&#8221; he said, &#8220;till we&#8217;re up the stair.
+Mysy Moncur&#8217;s lug&#8217;s at her keyhole listening to you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You lie, Hendry Munn,&#8221; cried an invisible woman.
+The voice became more plaintive: &#8220;I ken a heap, Hendry,
+so you may as well tell me a&#8217;.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lick away at the bone you hae,&#8221; the shoemaker replied
+heartlessly, and conducted me to his room up one
+of the few inside stairs then in Thrums. Hendry&#8217;s
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_319' name='page_319'></a>319</span>
+oddest furniture was five boxes, fixed to the wall at
+such a height that children could climb into them from
+a high stool. In these his bairns slept, and so space
+was economized. I could never laugh at the arrangement,
+as I knew that Betty had planned it on her
+deathbed for her man&#8217;s sake. Five little heads bobbed
+up in their beds as I entered, but more vexing to me
+was Wearyworld on a stool.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In by, dominie,&#8221; he said sociably. &#8220;Sal, you
+needna fear burning wi&#8217; a&#8217; that water on you. You&#8217;re
+in mair danger o&#8217; coming a-boil.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I want to speak to you alone, Hendry,&#8221; I said
+bluntly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You winna put me out, Hendry?&#8221; the alarmed
+policeman entreated. &#8220;Mind, you said in sic weather
+you would be friendly to a brute beast. Ay, ay, dominie,
+what&#8217;s your news? It&#8217;s welcome, be it good or
+bad. You would meet the townsfolk in the glen, and
+they would tell you about Mr. Dishart. What, you
+hinna heard? Oh, sirs, he&#8217;s a lost man. There would
+hae been a meeting the day to depose him if so many
+hadna gaen to the glen. But the morn&#8217;ll do as weel.
+The very women is cursing him, and the laddies has
+begun to gather stanes. He&#8217;s married on an Egyp&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry!&#8221; I cried, like one giving an order.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wearyworld, step!&#8221; said Hendry sternly, and then
+added soft-heartedly: &#8220;Here&#8217;s a bit news that&#8217;ll open
+Mysy Moncur&#8217;s door to you. You can tell her frae me
+that the bell&#8217;s ringing just because I forgot to tie it up
+last nicht, and the wind&#8217;s shaking it, and I winna gang
+out in the rain to stop it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay,&#8221; the policeman said, looking at me sulkily,
+&#8220;she may open her door for that, but it&#8217;ll no let me in.
+Tell me mair. Tell me wha the leddy at the manse is.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Out you go,&#8221; answered Hendry. &#8220;Once she opens
+the door, you can shove your foot in, and syne she&#8217;s in
+your power.&#8221; He pushed Wearyworld out, and came
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_320' name='page_320'></a>320</span>
+back to me, saying, &#8220;It was best to tell him the truth,
+to keep him frae making up lies.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But is it the truth? I was told Lang Tammas&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, I ken that story; but Tammas has other work
+on hand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then tie up the bell at once, Hendry,&#8221; I urged.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I canna,&#8221; he answered gravely. &#8220;Tammas took the
+keys o&#8217; the kirk fram me yestreen, and winna gie them
+up. He says the bell&#8217;s being rung by the hand o&#8217; God.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Has he been at the manse? Does Mrs. Dishart
+know&mdash;&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s been at the manse twa or three times, but Jean
+barred him out. She&#8217;ll let nobody in till the minister
+comes back, and so the mistress kens nothing. But
+what&#8217;s the use o&#8217; keeping it frae her ony langer?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Every use,&#8221; I said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;None,&#8221; answered Hendry sadly. &#8220;Dominie, the
+minister was married to the Egyptian on the hill last
+nicht, and Tammas was witness. Not only were they
+married, but they&#8217;ve run aff thegither.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are wrong, Hendry,&#8221; I assured him, telling as
+much as I dared. &#8220;I left Mr. Dishart in my house.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What! But if that is so, how did he no come back
+wi&#8217; you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because he was nearly drowned in the flood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;ll be wi&#8217; him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He was alone.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Hendry&#8217;s face lit up dimly with joy, and then he
+shook his head. &#8220;Tammas was witness,&#8221; he said.
+&#8220;Can you deny the marriage?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;All I ask of you,&#8221; I answered guardedly, &#8220;is to suspend
+judgment until the minister returns.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There can be nothing done, at ony rate,&#8221; he said,
+&#8220;till the folk themsel&#8217;s come back frae the glen; and I
+needna tell you how glad we would a&#8217; be to be as fond
+o&#8217; him as ever. But Tammas was witness.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have pity on his mother, man.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_321' name='page_321'></a>321</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;ve done the best for her we could,&#8221; he replied.
+&#8220;We prigged wi&#8217; Tammas no to gang to the manse till
+we was sure the minister was living. &#8216;For if he has
+been drowned,&#8217; we said, &#8216;his mother need never ken
+what we were thinking o&#8217; doing.&#8217; Ay, and we&#8217;re sorry
+for the young leddy, too.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What young lady is this you all talk of?&#8221; I asked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;s his intended. Ay, you needna start. She
+has come a&#8217; the road frae Glasgow to challenge him
+about the gypsy. The pitiful thing is that Mrs. Dishart
+lauched awa her fears, and now they&#8217;re baith waiting
+for his return, as happy as ignorance can make them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is no such lady,&#8221; I said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But there is,&#8221; he answered doggedly, &#8220;for she came
+in a machine late last nicht, and I was ane o&#8217; a dozen
+that baith heard and saw it through my window. It
+stopped at the manse near half an hour. What&#8217;s mair,
+the lady hersel&#8217; was at Sam&#8217;l Farquharson&#8217;s in the
+Tenements the day for twa hours.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I listened in bewilderment and fear.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sam&#8217;l&#8217;s bairn&#8217;s down wi&#8217; scarlet fever and like to die,
+and him being a widow-man he has gone useless. You
+mauna blame the wives in the Tenements for hauding
+back. They&#8217;re fleid to smit their ain litlins; and as it
+happens, Sam&#8217;l&#8217;s friends is a&#8217; aff to the glen. Weel, he
+ran greeting to the manse for Mr. Dishart, and the lady
+heard him crying to Jean through the door, and what
+does she do but gang straucht to the Tenements wi&#8217;
+Sam&#8217;l. Her goodness has naturally put the folk on her
+side against the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This does not prove her his intended,&#8221; I broke in.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was heard saying to Sam&#8217;l,&#8221; answered the kirk
+officer, &#8220;that the minister being awa, it was her duty to
+take his place. Yes, and though she little kent it, he
+was already married.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hendry,&#8221; I said, rising, &#8220;I must see this lady at
+once. Is she still at Farquharson&#8217;s house?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_322' name='page_322'></a>322</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;She may be back again by this time. Tammas set
+off for Sam&#8217;l&#8217;s as soon as he heard she was there, but he
+just missed her. I left him there an hour syne. He
+was waiting for her, determined to tell her all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I set off for the Tenements at once, declining Hendry&#8217;s
+company. The wind had fallen, so that the bell
+no longer rang, but the rain was falling doggedly.
+The streets were still deserted. I pushed open the precentor&#8217;s
+door in the school wynd, but there was no one
+in the house. Tibbie Birse saw me, and shouted from
+her door:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Hae you heard o&#8217; Mr. Dishart? He&#8217;ll never daur
+show face in Thrums again.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Without giving her a word I hastened to the Tenements.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The leddy&#8217;s no here,&#8221; Sam&#8217;l Farquharson told me,
+&#8220;and Tammas is back at the manse again, trying to
+force his way in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>From Sam&#8217;l, too, I turned, with no more than a
+groan; but he cried after me, &#8220;Perdition on the man
+that has played that leddy false.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Had Margaret been at her window she must have
+seen me, so recklessly did I hurry up the minister&#8217;s
+road, with nothing in me but a passion to take Whamond
+by the throat. He was not in the garden. The
+kitchen door was open. Jean was standing at it with
+her apron to her eyes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tammas Whamond?&#8221; I demanded, and my face
+completed the question.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You&#8217;re ower late,&#8221; she wailed. &#8220;He&#8217;s wi&#8217; her.
+Oh, dominie, whaur&#8217;s the minister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You base woman!&#8221; I cried, &#8220;why did you unbar
+the door?&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_22' id='linki_22'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus366.jpg' alt='' title='' width='427' height='672' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;IT WAS BABBIE, THOUGH NO LONGER IN A GYPSY&#8217;S DRESS.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;It was the mistress,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;She heard
+him shaking it, and I had to tell her wha it was. Dominie,
+it&#8217;s a&#8217; my wite! He tried to get in last nicht, and
+roared threats through the door, and after he had gone
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_323' name='page_323'></a>323</span>
+awa she speired wha I had been speaking to. I had to
+tell her, but I said he had come to let her ken that the
+minister was taking shelter frae the rain in a farmhouse.
+Ay, I said he was to bide there till the flood gaed down,
+and that&#8217;s how she has been easy a&#8217; day. I acted for
+the best, but I&#8217;m sair punished now; for when she heard
+Tammas at the door twa or three minutes syne, she
+ordered me to let him in, so that she could thank him
+for bringing the news last nicht, despite the rain.
+They&#8217;re in the parlor. Oh, dominie, gang in and stop
+his mouth.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was hard. I dared not go to the parlor.
+Margaret might have died at sight of me. I turned my
+face from Jean.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean,&#8221; said some one, opening the inner kitchen
+door, &#8220;why did you&mdash;&mdash;?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She stopped, and that was what turned me round.
+As she spoke I thought it was the young lady; when I
+looked I saw it was Babbie, though no longer in a
+gypsy&#8217;s dress. Then I knew that the young lady and
+Babbie were one.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_324' name='page_324'></a>324</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_THIRTYNINE_HOW_BABBIE_SPENT_THE_NIGHT_OF_AUGUST_FOURTH' id='CHAPTER_THIRTYNINE_HOW_BABBIE_SPENT_THE_NIGHT_OF_AUGUST_FOURTH'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Thirty-Nine.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />HOW BABBIE SPENT THE NIGHT OF AUGUST FOURTH.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>How had the Egyptian been spirited here from the
+Spittal? I did not ask the question. To interest myself
+in Babbie at that dire hour of Margaret&#8217;s life would
+have been as impossible to me as to sit down to a book.
+To others, however, it is only an old woman on whom
+the parlor door of the manse has closed, only a garrulous
+dominie that is in pain outside it. Your eyes are
+on the young wife.</p>
+<p>When Babbie was plucked off the hill, she thought as
+little as Gavin that her captor was Rob Dow. Close as
+he was to her, he was but a shadow until she screamed
+the second time, when he pressed her to the ground and
+tied his neckerchief over her mouth. Then, in the
+moment that power of utterance was taken from her,
+she saw the face that had startled her at Nanny&#8217;s window.
+Half-carried, she was borne forward rapidly,
+until some one seemed to rise out of the broom and
+strike them both. They had only run against the doctor&#8217;s
+trap; and huddling her into it, Dow jumped up
+beside her. He tied her hands together with a cord.
+For a time the horse feared the darkness in front more
+than the lash behind; but when the rains became terrific,
+it rushed ahead wildly&mdash;probably with its eyes
+shut.</p>
+<p>In three minutes Babbie went through all the degrees
+of fear. In the first she thought Lord Rintoul
+had kidnapped her; but no sooner had her captor resolved
+himself into Dow, drunk with the events of the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_325' name='page_325'></a>325</span>
+day and night, than in the earl&#8217;s hands would have lain
+safety. Next, Dow was forgotten in the dread of a
+sudden death which he must share. And lastly, the
+rain seemed to be driving all other horrors back, that it
+might have her for its own. Her perils increased to
+the unbearable as quickly as an iron in the fire passes
+through the various stages between warmth and white
+heat. Then she had to do something; and as she could
+not cry out, she flung herself from the dogcart. She
+fell heavily in Caddam Wood, but the rain would not
+let her lie there stunned. It beat her back to consciousness,
+and she sat up on her knees and listened breathlessly,
+staring in the direction the trap had taken, as if
+her eyes could help her ears.</p>
+<p>All night, I have said, the rain poured, but those
+charges only rode down the deluge at intervals, as now
+and again one wave greater than the others stalks over
+the sea. In the first lull it appeared to Babbie that the
+storm had swept by, leaving her to Dow. Now she
+heard the rubbing of the branches, and felt the torn
+leaves falling on her gown. She rose to feel her way
+out of the wood with her bound hands, then sank in terror,
+for some one had called her name. Next moment
+she was up again, for the voice was Gavin&#8217;s, who was
+hurrying after her, as he thought, down Windyghoul.
+He was no farther away than a whisper might have
+carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him,
+for already Dow was coming back. She could not see
+him, but she heard the horse whinny and the rocking of
+the dogcart. Dow was now at the brute&#8217;s head, and
+probably it tried to bite him, for he struck it, crying:</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you? Stand still till I find her.... I heard her
+move this minute.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie crouched upon a big stone and sat motionless
+while he groped for her. Her breathing might have
+been tied now, as well as her mouth. She heard him
+feeling for her, first with his feet and then with his
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_326' name='page_326'></a>326</span>
+hands, and swearing when his head struck against a
+tree.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I ken you&#8217;re within hearing,&#8221; he muttered, &#8220;and
+I&#8217;ll hae you yet. I have a gully-knife in my hand.
+Listen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He severed a whin-stalk with the knife, and Babbie
+seemed to see the gleam of the blade.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do I mean by wanting to kill you?&#8221; he said,
+as if she had asked the question. &#8220;Do you no ken wha
+said to me, &#8216;Kill this woman?&#8217; It was the Lord. &#8216;I
+winna kill her,&#8217; I said, &#8216;but I&#8217;ll cart her out o&#8217; the country.&#8217;
+&#8216;Kill her,&#8217; says He; &#8216;why encumbereth she the
+ground?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He resumed his search, but with new tactics. &#8220;I see
+you now,&#8221; he would cry, and rush forward perhaps
+within a yard of her. Then she must have screamed
+had she had the power. When he tied that neckerchief
+round her mouth he prolonged her life.</p>
+<p>Then came the second hurricane of rain, so appalling
+that had Babbie&#8217;s hands been free she would have
+pressed them to her ears. For a full minute she forgot
+Dow&#8217;s presence. A living thing touched her face.
+The horse had found her. She recoiled from it, but its
+frightened head pressed heavily on her shoulder. She
+rose and tried to steal away, but the brute followed, and
+as the rain suddenly exhausted itself she heard the dragging
+of the dogcart. She had to halt.</p>
+<p>Again she heard Dow&#8217;s voice. Perhaps he had been
+speaking throughout the roar of the rain. If so, it must
+have made him deaf to his own words. He groped for
+the horse&#8217;s head, and presently his hand touched Babbie&#8217;s
+dress, then jumped from it, so suddenly had he
+found her. No sound escaped him, and she was beginning
+to think it possible that he had mistaken her for a
+bush when his hand went over her face. He was making
+sure of his discovery.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Lord has delivered you into my hands,&#8221; he
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_327' name='page_327'></a>327</span>
+said in a low voice, with some awe in it. Then he
+pulled her to the ground, and, sitting down beside her,
+rocked himself backward and forward, his hands round
+his knees. She would have bartered the world for
+power to speak to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He wouldna hear o&#8217; my just carting you to some
+other countryside,&#8221; he said confidentially. &#8220;&#8216;The devil
+would just blaw her back again,&#8217; says He, &#8216;therefore
+kill her.&#8217; &#8216;And if I kill her,&#8217; I says, &#8216;they&#8217;ll hang me.&#8217;
+&#8216;You can hang yoursel&#8217;,&#8217; says He. &#8216;What wi&#8217;?&#8217; I speirs.
+&#8216;Wi&#8217; the reins o&#8217; the dogcart,&#8217; says He. &#8216;They would
+break,&#8217; says I. &#8216;Weel, weel,&#8217; says He, &#8216;though they do
+hang you, nobody&#8217;ll miss you.&#8217; &#8216;That&#8217;s true,&#8217; says I,
+&#8216;and You are a just God.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>He stood up and confronted her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Prisoner at the bar,&#8221; he said, &#8220;hae ye onything to
+say why sentence of death shouldna be pronounced
+against you? She doesna answer. She kens death is
+her deserts.&#8221;</p>
+<p>By this time he had forgotten probably why his victim
+was dumb.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Prisoner at the bar, hand back to me the soul o&#8217;
+Gavin Dishart. You winna? Did the devil, your master,
+summon you to him and say, &#8216;Either that noble
+man or me maun leave Thrums?&#8217; He did. And did
+you, or did you no, drag that minister, when under
+your spell, to the hill, and there marry him ower the
+tongs? You did. Witnesses, Rob Dow and Tammas
+Whamond.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She was moving from him on her knees, meaning
+when out of arm&#8217;s reach to make a dash for life.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Sit down,&#8221; he grumbled, &#8220;or how can you expect a
+fair trial? Prisoner at the bar, you have been found
+guilty of witchcraft.&#8221;</p>
+<p>For the first time his voice faltered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s the difficulty, for witches canna die, except
+by burning or drowning. There&#8217;s no blood in you for
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_328' name='page_328'></a>328</span>
+my knife, and your neck wouldna twist. Your master
+has brocht the rain to put out a&#8217; the fires, and we&#8217;ll hae
+to wait till it runs into a pool deep enough to drown
+you.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wonder at You, God. Do You believe her
+master&#8217;ll mak&#8217; the pool for her? He&#8217;ll rather stop his
+rain. Mr. Dishart said You was mair powerful than
+the devil, but it doesna look like it. If You had the
+power, how did You no stop this woman working her
+will on the minister? You kent what she was doing,
+for You ken a&#8217; things. Mr. Dishart says You ken a&#8217;
+things. If You do, the mair shame to You. Would a
+shepherd, that could help it, let dogs worry his sheep?
+Kill her! It&#8217;s fine to cry &#8216;Kill her,&#8217; but whaur&#8217;s the
+bonfire, whaur&#8217;s the pool? You that made the heaven
+and the earth and all that in them is, can You no set
+fire to some wet whins, or change this stane into a
+mill-dam?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He struck the stone with his fist, and then gave a cry
+of exultation. He raised the great slab in his arms
+and flung it from him. In that moment Babbie might
+have run away, but she fainted. Almost simultaneously
+with Dow she knew this was the stone which covered
+the Caddam well. When she came to, Dow was speaking,
+and his voice had become solemn.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You said your master was mair powerful than mine,
+and I said it too, and all the time you was sitting here
+wi&#8217; the very pool aneath you that I have been praying
+for. Listen!&#8221;</p>
+<p>He dropped a stone into the well, and she heard it
+strike the water.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What are you shaking at?&#8221; he said in reproof.
+&#8220;Was it no yoursel&#8217; that chose the spot? Lassie, say
+your prayers. Are you saying them?&#8221;</p>
+<p>He put his hand over her face, to feel if her lips were
+moving, and tore off the neckerchief.</p>
+<p>And then again the rain came between them. In
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_329' name='page_329'></a>329</span>
+that rain one could not think. Babbie did not know
+that she had bitten through the string that tied her
+hands. She planned no escape. But she flung herself
+at the place where Dow had been standing. He was no
+longer there, and she fell heavily, and was on her feet
+again in an instant and running recklessly. Trees intercepted
+her, and she thought they were Dow, and
+wrestled with them. By and by she fell into Windyghoul,
+and there she crouched until all her senses were
+restored to her, when she remembered that she had been
+married lately.</p>
+<p>How long Dow was in discovering that she had escaped,
+and whether he searched for her, no one knows.
+After a time he jumped into the dogcart again, and
+drove aimlessly through the rain. That wild journey
+probably lasted two hours, and came to an abrupt end
+only when a tree fell upon the trap. The horse galloped
+off, but one of Dow&#8217;s legs was beneath the tree,
+and there he had to lie helpless, for though the leg was
+little injured, he could not extricate himself. A night
+and day passed, and he believed that he must die; but
+even in this plight he did not forget the man he loved.
+He found a piece of slate, and in the darkness cut these
+words on it with his knife:</p>
+<blockquote>
+<p>&#8220;Me being about to die, I solemnly swear I didna
+see the minister marrying an Egyptian on the hill this
+nicht. May I burn in Hell if this is no true.</p>
+<p class='sig1'>(Signed)</p>
+<p class='sig2 smcap'>&#8220;Rob Dow.&#8221;</p>
+</blockquote>
+<p>This document he put in his pocket, and so preserved
+proof of what he was perjuring himself to deny.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_330' name='page_330'></a>330</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FORTY_BABBIE_AND_MARGARETDEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE_CONTINUED' id='CHAPTER_FORTY_BABBIE_AND_MARGARETDEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE_CONTINUED'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Forty.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />BABBIE AND MARGARET&mdash;DEFENCE OF THE MANSE CONTINUED.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>The Egyptian was mournful in Windyghoul, up which
+she had once danced and sung; but you must not think
+that she still feared Dow. I felt McKenzie&#8217;s clutch on
+my arm for hours after he left me, but she was far
+braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have
+shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it
+was sheer love of them that first made her play the
+coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was not for
+herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed
+him. Could I have gone to her then and said that
+Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing
+little breast would have frozen at once, and the
+drooping head would have been proud again, and she
+would have gone away forever without another tear.</p>
+<p>What do I say? I am doing a wrong to the love
+these two bore each other. Babbie would not have
+taken so base a message from my lips. He would have
+had to say the words to her himself before she believed
+them his. What would he want her to do now? was
+the only question she asked herself. To follow him
+was useless, for in that rain and darkness two people
+might have searched for each other all night in a single
+field. That he would go to the Spittal, thinking her in
+Rintoul&#8217;s dogcart, she did not doubt; and his distress
+was painful to her to think of. But not knowing that
+the burns were in flood, she underestimated his danger.</p>
+<p>Remembering that the mudhouse was near, she
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_331' name='page_331'></a>331</span>
+groped her way to it, meaning to pass the night there;
+but at the gate she turned away hastily, hearing from
+the door the voice of a man she did not know to be
+Nanny&#8217;s brother. She wandered recklessly a short distance,
+until the rain began to threaten again, and then,
+falling on her knees in the broom, she prayed to God
+for guidance. When she rose she set off for the manse.</p>
+<p>The rain that followed the flash of lightning had
+brought Margaret to the kitchen.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean, did you ever hear such a rain? It is trying to
+break into the manse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I canna hear you, ma&#8217;am; is it the rain you&#8217;re
+feared at?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What else could it be?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jean did not answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I hope the minister won&#8217;t leave the church, Jean,
+till this is over?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nobody would daur, ma&#8217;am. The rain&#8217;ll turn the
+key on them all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jean forced out these words with difficulty, for she
+knew that the church had been empty and the door
+locked for over an hour.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This rain has come as if in answer to the minister&#8217;s
+prayer, Jean.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It wasna rain like this they wanted.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean, you would not attempt to guide the Lord&#8217;s
+hand. The minister will have to reprove the people
+for thinking too much of him again, for they will say
+that he induced God to send the rain. To-night&#8217;s meeting
+will be remembered long in Thrums.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jean shuddered, and said, &#8220;It&#8217;s mair like an ordinary
+rain now, ma&#8217;am.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it has put out your fire, and I wanted another
+heater. Perhaps the one I have is hot enough, though.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Margaret returned to the parlor, and from the
+kitchen Jean could hear the heater tilted backward and
+forward in the box-iron&mdash;a pleasant, homely sound
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_332' name='page_332'></a>332</span>
+when there is happiness in the house. Soon she heard
+a step outside, however, and it was followed by a rough
+shaking of the barred door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is it you, Mr. Dishart?&#8221; Jean asked nervously.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s me, Tammas Whamond,&#8221; the precentor answered.
+&#8220;Unbar the door.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What do you want? Speak low.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I winna speak low. Let me in. I hae news for the
+minister&#8217;s mother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What news?&#8221; demanded Jean.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Jean Proctor, as chief elder of the kirk I order you
+to let me do my duty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur&#8217;s the minister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;s a minister no longer. He&#8217;s married a gypsy
+woman and run awa wi&#8217; her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You lie, Tammas Whamond. I believe&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your belief&#8217;s of no consequence. Open the door,
+and let me in to tell your mistress what I hae seen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;She&#8217;ll hear it first frae his ain lips if she hears it
+ava. I winna open the door.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll burst it open.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Whamond flung himself at the door, and Jean, her
+fingers rigid with fear, stood waiting for its fall. But
+the rain came to her rescue by lashing the precentor
+until even he was forced to run from it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll be back again,&#8221; he cried. &#8220;Woe to you, Jean
+Proctor, that hae denied your God this nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who was that speaking to you, Jean?&#8221; asked Margaret,
+re-entering the kitchen. Until the rain abated
+Jean did not attempt to answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thought it was the precentor&#8217;s voice,&#8221; Margaret
+said.</p>
+<p>Jean was a poor hand at lying, and she stuttered in
+her answer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is nothing wrong, is there?&#8221; cried Margaret,
+in sudden fright. &#8220;My son&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nothing, nothing.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_333' name='page_333'></a>333</span></div>
+<p>The words jumped from Jean to save Margaret from
+falling. Now she could not take them back. &#8220;I winna
+believe it o&#8217; him,&#8221; said Jean to herself. &#8220;Let them say
+what they will, I&#8217;ll be true to him; and when he comes
+back he&#8217;ll find her as he left her.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was Lang Tammas,&#8221; she answered her mistress;
+&#8220;but he just came to say that&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Quick, Jean! what?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&mdash;&mdash;Mr. Dishart has been called to a sick-bed in the
+country, ma&#8217;am&mdash;to the farm o&#8217; Look-About-You; and
+as it&#8217;s sic a rain, he&#8217;s to bide there a&#8217; nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And Whamond came through that rain to tell me
+this? How good of him. Was there any other message?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Just that the minister hoped you would go straight
+to your bed, ma&#8217;am,&#8221; said Jean, thinking to herself,
+&#8220;There can be no great sin in giving her one mair
+happy nicht; it may be her last.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The two women talked for a short time, and then
+read verse about in the parlor from the third chapter
+of Mark.</p>
+<p>&#8220;This is the first night we have been left alone in the
+manse,&#8221; Margaret said, as she was retiring to her bedroom,
+&#8220;and we must not grudge the minister to those
+who have sore need of him. I notice that you have
+barred the doors.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, they&#8217;re barred. Nobody can win in the nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nobody will want in, Jean,&#8221; Margaret said, smiling.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I dinna ken about that,&#8221; answered Jean below her
+breath. &#8220;Ay, ma&#8217;am, may you sleep for baith o&#8217; us
+this nicht, for I daurna gang to my bed.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jean was both right and wrong, for two persons
+wanted in within the next half-hour, and she opened
+the door to both of them. The first to come was Babbie.</p>
+<p>So long as women sit up of nights listening for a
+footstep, will they flatten their faces at the window,
+though all without be black. Jean had not been back
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_334' name='page_334'></a>334</span>
+in the kitchen for two minutes before she raised the
+blind. Her eyes were close to the glass, when she saw
+another face almost meet hers, as you may touch your
+reflection in a mirror. But this face was not her own.
+It was white and sad. Jean suppressed a cry, and let
+the blind fall, as if shutting the lid on some uncanny
+thing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Won&#8217;t you let me in?&#8221; said a voice that might have
+been only the sob of a rain-beaten wind; &#8220;I am nearly
+drowned.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Jean stood like death; but her suppliant would not
+pass on.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are not afraid?&#8221; the voice continued. &#8220;Raise
+the blind again, and you will see that no one need fear
+me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>At this request Jean&#8217;s hands sought each other&#8217;s
+company behind her back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Wha are you?&#8221; she asked, without stirring. &#8220;Are
+you&mdash;the woman?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Whaur&#8217;s the minister?&#8221;</p>
+<p>The rain again became wild, but this time it only
+tore by the manse as if to a conflict beyond.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you aye there? I daurna let you in till I&#8217;m
+sure the mistress is bedded. Gang round to the front,
+and see if there&#8217;s ony licht burning in the high west
+window.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was a light,&#8221; the voice said presently, &#8220;but
+it was turned out as I looked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I&#8217;ll let you in, and God kens I mean no wrang
+by it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie entered shivering, and Jean rebarred the
+door. Then she looked long at the woman whom her
+master loved. Babbie was on her knees at the hearth,
+holding out her hands to the dead fire.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What a pity it&#8217;s a fause face.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do I look so false?&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_335' name='page_335'></a>335</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Is it true? You&#8217;re no married to him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, it is true.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And yet you look as if you was fond o&#8217; him. If you
+cared for him, how could you do it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That was why I did it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And him could hae had wha he liked.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I gave up Lord Rintoul for him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What? Na, na; you&#8217;re the Egyptian.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You judge me by my dress.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And soaking it is. How you&#8217;re shivering&mdash;what
+neat fingers&mdash;what bonny little feet. I could near believe
+what you tell me. Aff wi&#8217; these rags, an I&#8217;ll gie
+you on my black frock, if&mdash;if you promise me no to
+gang awa wi&#8217;t.&#8221;</p>
+<p>So Babbie put on some clothes of Jean&#8217;s, including
+the black frock, and stockings and shoes.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Dishart cannot be back, Jean,&#8221; she said, &#8220;before
+morning, and I don&#8217;t want his mother to see me till he
+comes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I wouldna let you near her the nicht though you
+gaed on your knees to me. But whaur is he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie explained why Gavin had set off for the Spittal;
+but Jean shook her head incredulously, saying, &#8220;I
+canna believe you&#8217;re that grand leddy, and yet ilka
+time I look at you I could near believe it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In another minute Jean had something else to think
+of, for there came a loud rap upon the front door.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Tammas Whamond back again,&#8221; she moaned;
+&#8220;and if the mistress hears, she&#8217;ll tell me to let him in.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You shall open to me,&#8221; cried a hoarse voice.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s no Tammas&#8217; word,&#8221; Jean said in bewilderment.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is Lord Rintoul,&#8221; Babbie whispered.</p>
+<p>&#8220;What? Then it&#8217;s truth you telled me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The knocking continued; a door upstairs opened, and
+Margaret spoke over the banisters.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you gone to bed, Jean? Some one is knocking
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_336' name='page_336'></a>336</span>
+at the door, and a minute ago I thought I heard a carriage
+stop close by. Perhaps the farmer has driven Mr.
+Dishart home.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m putting on my things, ma&#8217;am,&#8221; Jean answered;
+then whispered to Babbie, &#8220;What&#8217;s to be done?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He won&#8217;t go away,&#8221; Babbie answered. &#8220;You will
+have to let him into the parlor, Jean. Can she see
+the door from up there?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; but though he was in the parlor?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I shall go to him there.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Make haste, Jean,&#8221; Margaret called. &#8220;If it is any
+persons wanting shelter, we must give it them on such
+a night.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;A minute, ma&#8217;am,&#8221; Jean answered. To Babbie she
+whispered, &#8220;What shall I say to her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I don&#8217;t know,&#8221; answered Babbie ruefully.
+&#8220;Think of something, Jean. But open the door now.
+Stop, let me into the parlor first.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The two women stole into the parlor.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell me what will be the result o&#8217; his coming here,&#8221;
+entreated Jean.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The result,&#8221; Babbie said firmly, &#8220;will be that he
+shall go away and leave me here.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Margaret heard Jean open the front door and speak
+to some person or persons whom she showed into the
+parlor.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_337' name='page_337'></a>337</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FORTYONE_RINTOUL_AND_BABBIEBREAKDOWN_OF_THE_DEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE' id='CHAPTER_FORTYONE_RINTOUL_AND_BABBIEBREAKDOWN_OF_THE_DEFENCE_OF_THE_MANSE'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Forty-One.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />RINTOUL AND BABBIE&mdash;BREAKDOWN OF THE DEFENCE OF THE MANSE.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;You dare to look me in the face!&#8221;</p>
+<p>They were Rintoul&#8217;s words. Yet Babbie had only
+ventured to look up because he was so long in speaking.
+His voice was low but harsh, like a wheel on
+which the brake is pressed sharply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It seems to be more than the man is capable of,&#8221; he
+added sourly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you think,&#8221; Babbie exclaimed, taking fire, &#8220;that
+he is afraid of you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So it seems; but I will drag him into the light,
+wherever he is skulking.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lord Rintoul strode to the door, and the brake was
+off his tongue already.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Go,&#8221; said Babbie coldly, &#8220;and shout and stamp
+through the house; you may succeed in frightening the
+women, who are the only persons in it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Where is he?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He has gone to the Spittal to see you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He knew I was on the hill.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He lost me in the darkness, and thought you had
+run away with me in your trap.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ha! So he is off to the Spittal to ask me to give
+you back to him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;To compel you,&#8221; corrected Babbie.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Pooh!&#8221; said the earl nervously, &#8220;that was but
+mummery on the hill.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was a marriage.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_338' name='page_338'></a>338</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;With gypsies for witnesses. Their word would
+count for less than nothing. Babbie, I am still in time
+to save you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t want to be saved. The marriage had witnesses
+no court could discredit.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;What witnesses?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. McKenzie and yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>She heard his teeth meet. When next she looked
+at him, there were tears in his eyes as well as in
+her own. It was perhaps the first time these two had
+ever been in close sympathy. Both were grieving for
+Rintoul.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am so sorry,&#8221; Babbie began in a broken voice;
+then stopped, because they seemed such feeble words.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you are sorry,&#8221; the earl answered eagerly, &#8220;it is
+not yet too late. McKenzie and I saw nothing. Come
+away with me, Babbie, if only in pity for yourself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ah, but I don&#8217;t pity myself.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because this man has blinded you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, he has made me see.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;This mummery on the hill&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why do you call it so? I believe God approved of
+that marriage, as He could never have countenanced
+yours and mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;God! I never heard the word on your lips before.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I know that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is his teaching, doubtless?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And he told you that to do to me as you have done
+was to be pleasing in God&#8217;s sight?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No; he knows that it was so evil in God&#8217;s sight that
+I shall suffer for it always.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But he has done no wrong, so there is no punishment
+for him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is true that he has done no wrong, but his punishment
+will be worse, probably, than mine.&#8221;</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_23' id='linki_23'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus384.jpg' alt='' title='' width='484' height='616' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;YOU DARE TO LOOK ME IN THE FACE!&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;That,&#8221; said the earl, scoffing, &#8220;is not just.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_339' name='page_339'></a>339</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my
+sins by marrying me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And what form is his punishment to take?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;For marrying me he will be driven from his church
+and dishonored in all men&#8217;s eyes, unless&mdash;unless God
+is more merciful to us than we can expect.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no
+longer meet it with sarcasm.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is you I pity now,&#8221; he said, looking wonderingly
+at her. &#8220;Do you not see that this man has deceived
+you? Where was his boasted purity in meeting you by
+stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to
+take you from me?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you knew him,&#8221; Babbie answered, &#8220;you would
+not need to be told that he is incapable of that. He
+thought me an ordinary gypsy until an hour ago.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you had so little regard for me that you waited
+until the eve of what was to be our marriage, and then,
+laughing at my shame, ran off to marry him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am not so bad as that,&#8221; Babbie answered, and told
+him what had brought her to Thrums. &#8220;I had no
+thought but of returning to you, nor he of keeping me
+from you. We had said good-by at the mudhouse
+door&mdash;and then we heard your voice.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And my voice was so horrible to you that it drove
+you to this?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&mdash;I love him so much.&#8221;</p>
+<p>What more could Babbie answer? These words told
+him that, if love commands, home, the friendships of a
+lifetime, kindnesses incalculable, are at once as naught.
+Nothing is so cruel as love if a rival challenges it to
+combat.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why could you not love me, Babbie?&#8221; said the earl
+sadly. &#8220;I have done so much for you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was little he had done for her that was not selfish.
+Men are deceived curiously in such matters. When
+they add a new wing to their house, they do not call the
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_340' name='page_340'></a>340</span>
+action virtue; but if they give to a fellow-creature for
+their own gratification, they demand of God a good
+mark for it. Babbie, however, was in no mood to make
+light of the earl&#8217;s gifts, and at his question she shook
+her head sorrowfully.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is it because I am too&mdash;old?&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was the only time he ever spoke of his age to her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh no, it is not that,&#8221; she replied hastily, &#8220;I love
+Mr. Dishart&mdash;because he loves me, I think.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have I not loved you always?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Never,&#8221; Babbie answered simply. &#8220;If you had,
+perhaps then I should have loved you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Babbie,&#8221; he exclaimed, &#8220;if ever man loved woman,
+and showed it by the sacrifices he made for her, I&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; Babbie said, &#8220;you don&#8217;t understand what it is.
+Ah! I did not mean to hurt you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If I don&#8217;t know what it is, what is it?&#8221; he asked,
+almost humbly. &#8220;I scarcely know you now.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is it,&#8221; said Babbie.</p>
+<p>She gave him back his ring, and then he broke down
+pitifully. Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw
+him only once; and with nothing to contrast against it, I
+may not now attempt to breathe life into the dust of his
+senile passion. These were the last words that passed
+between him and Babbie:</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was nothing,&#8221; he said wistfully, &#8220;in this wide
+world that you could not have had by asking me for it.
+Was not that love?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No,&#8221; she answered. &#8220;What right have I to everything
+I cry for?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You should never have had a care had you married
+me. That is love.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is not. I want to share my husband&#8217;s cares, as I
+expect him to share mine.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I would have humored you in everything.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You always did: as if a woman&#8217;s mind were for
+laughing at, like a baby&#8217;s passions.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_341' name='page_341'></a>341</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;You had your passions, too, Babbie. Yet did I ever
+chide you for them? That was love.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, it was contempt. Oh,&#8221; she cried passionately,
+&#8220;what have not you men to answer for who talk of love
+to a woman when her face is all you know of her; and
+her passions, her aspirations, are for kissing to sleep,
+her very soul a plaything? I tell you, Lord Rintoul,
+and it is all the message I send back to the gentlemen
+at the Spittal who made love to me behind your back,
+that this is a poor folly, and well calculated to rouse
+the wrath of God.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now, Jean&#8217;s ear had been to the parlor keyhole for
+a time, but some message she had to take to Margaret,
+and what she risked saying was this:</p>
+<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s Lord Rintoul and a party that has been catched
+in the rain, and he would be obliged to you if you could
+gie his bride shelter for the nicht.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Thus the distracted servant thought to keep Margaret&#8217;s
+mind at rest until Gavin came back.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lord Rintoul!&#8221; exclaimed Margaret. &#8220;What a pity
+Gavin has missed him. Of course she can stay here.
+Did you say I had gone to bed? I should not know
+what to say to a lord. But ask her to come up to me
+after he has gone&mdash;and, Jean, is the parlor looking
+tidy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Lord Rintoul having departed, Jean told Babbie how
+she had accounted to Margaret for his visit. &#8220;And she
+telled me to gie you dry claethes and her compliments,
+and would you gang up to the bedroom and see her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Very slowly Babbie climbed the stairs. I suppose
+she is the only person who was ever afraid of Margaret.
+Her first knock on the bedroom door was so soft that
+Margaret, who was sitting up in bed, did not hear it.
+When Babbie entered the room, Margaret&#8217;s first thought
+was that there could be no other so beautiful as this,
+and her second was that the stranger seemed even more
+timid than herself. After a few minutes&#8217; talk she laid
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_342' name='page_342'></a>342</span>
+aside her primness, a weapon she had drawn in self-defence
+lest this fine lady should not understand the
+grandeur of a manse, and at a &#8220;Call me Babbie, won&#8217;t
+you?&#8221; she smiled.</p>
+<p>&#8220;That is what some other person calls you,&#8221; said
+Margaret archly. &#8220;Do you know that he took twenty
+minutes to say good-night? My dear,&#8221; she added hastily,
+misinterpreting Babbie&#8217;s silence, &#8220;I should have
+been sorry had he taken one second less. Every tick
+of the clock was a gossip, telling me how he loves
+you.&#8221;</p>
+<p>In the dim light a face that begged for pity was
+turned to Margaret.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He does love you, Babbie?&#8221; she asked, suddenly
+doubtful.</p>
+<p>Babbie turned away her face, then shook her head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But you love him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Again Babbie shook her head.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Oh, my dear,&#8221; cried Margaret, in distress, &#8220;if this
+is so, are you not afraid to marry him?&#8221;</p>
+<p>She knew now that Babbie was crying, but she did
+not know why Babbie could not look her in the face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There may be times,&#8221; Babbie said, most woeful that
+she had not married Rintoul, &#8220;when it is best to marry
+a man though we do not love him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You are wrong, Babbie,&#8221; Margaret answered
+gravely; &#8220;if I know anything at all, it is that.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It may be best for others.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you mean for one other?&#8221; Margaret asked, and
+the girl bowed her head. &#8220;Ah, Babbie, you speak like
+a child.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;You do not understand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I do not need to be told the circumstances to know
+this&mdash;that if two people love each other, neither has
+any right to give the other up.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie turned impulsively to cast herself on the
+mercy of Gavin&#8217;s mother, but no word could she say; a
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_343' name='page_343'></a>343</span>
+hot tear fell from her eyes upon the coverlet, and then
+she looked at the door, as if to run away.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But I have been too inquisitive,&#8221; Margaret began;
+whereupon Babbie cried, &#8220;Oh no, no, no: you are very
+good. I have no one who cares whether I do right or
+wrong.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Your parents&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I have had none since I was a child.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is the more reason why I should be your friend,&#8221;
+Margaret said, taking the girl&#8217;s hand.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You do not know what you are saying. You cannot
+be my friend.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, dear, I love you already. You have a good
+face, Babbie, as well as a beautiful one.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Babbie could remain in the room no longer. She
+bade Margaret good-night and bent forward to kiss her;
+then drew back, like a Judas ashamed.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why did you not kiss me?&#8221; Margaret asked in surprise,
+but poor Babbie walked out of the room without
+answering.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>Of what occurred at the manse on the following day
+until I reached it, I need tell little more. When Babbie
+was tending Sam&#8217;l Farquharson&#8217;s child in the Tenements
+she learned of the flood in Glen Quharity, and
+that the greater part of the congregation had set off to
+the assistance of the farmers; but fearful as this made
+her for Gavin&#8217;s safety, she kept the new anxiety from
+his mother. Deceived by another story of Jean&#8217;s, Margaret
+was the one happy person in the house.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I believe you had only a lover&#8217;s quarrel with Lord
+Rintoul last night,&#8221; she said to Babbie in the afternoon.
+&#8220;Ah, you see I can guess what is taking you to the
+window so often. You must not think him long in
+coming for you. I can assure you that the rain which
+keeps my son from me must be sufficiently severe to
+separate even true lovers. Take an old woman&#8217;s example,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_344' name='page_344'></a>344</span>
+Babbie. If I thought the minister&#8217;s absence
+alarming, I should be in anguish; but as it is, my mind
+is so much at ease that, see, I can thread my needle.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was in less than an hour after Margaret spoke thus
+tranquilly to Babbie that the precentor got into the
+manse.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_345' name='page_345'></a>345</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FORTYTWO_MARGARET_THE_PRECENTOR_AND_GOD_BETWEEN' id='CHAPTER_FORTYTWO_MARGARET_THE_PRECENTOR_AND_GOD_BETWEEN'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Forty-Two.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />MARGARET, THE PRECENTOR, AND GOD BETWEEN.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Unless Andrew Luke, who went to Canada, be still
+above ground, I am now the only survivor of the few
+to whom Lang Tammas told what passed in the manse
+parlor after the door closed on him and Margaret.
+With the years the others lost the details, but before
+I forget them the man who has been struck by lightning
+will look at his arm without remembering what shrivelled
+it. There even came a time when the scene
+seemed more vivid to me than to the precentor, though
+that was only after he began to break up.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She was never the kind o&#8217; woman,&#8221; Whamond said,
+&#8220;that a body need be nane feared at. You can see she
+is o&#8217; the timid sort. I couldna hae selected a woman
+easier to speak bold out to, though I had ha&#8217;en my pick
+o&#8217; them.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He was a gaunt man, sour and hard, and he often
+paused in his story with a puzzled look on his forbidding
+face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But, man, she was so michty windy o&#8217; him. If he
+had wanted to put a knife into her, I believe that woman
+would just hae telled him to take care no to cut his
+hands. Ay, and what innocent-like she was! If she
+had heard enough, afore I saw her, to make her uneasy,
+I could hae begun at once; but here she was, shaking
+my hand and smiling to me, so that aye when I tried to
+speak I gaed through ither. Nobody can despise me
+for it, I tell you, mair than I despise mysel&#8217;.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thocht to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Let her hae her smile out, Tammas
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_346' name='page_346'></a>346</span>
+Whamond; it&#8217;s her hinmost.&#8217; Syne wi&#8217; shame at
+my cowardliness, I tried to yoke to my duty as chief
+elder o&#8217; the kirk, and I said to her, as thrawn as I could
+speak, &#8216;Dinna thank me; I&#8217;ve done nothing for you.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I ken it wasna for me you did it,&#8217; she said, &#8216;but for
+him; but, oh, Mr. Whamond, will that make me think
+the less o&#8217; you? He&#8217;s my all,&#8217; she says, wi&#8217; that smile
+back in her face, and a look mixed up wi&#8217;t that said as
+plain, &#8216;and I need no more.&#8217; I thocht o&#8217; saying that
+some builds their house upon the sand, but&mdash;dagont,
+dominie, it&#8217;s a solemn thing the pride mithers has in
+their laddies. I mind aince my ain mither&mdash;what the
+devil are you glowering at, Andrew Luke? Do you
+think I&#8217;m greeting?</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;You&#8217;ll sit down, Mr. Whamond,&#8217; she says next.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;No, I winna,&#8217; I said, angry-like. &#8216;I didna come
+here to sit.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I could see she thocht I was shy at being in the
+manse parlor; ay, and I thocht she was pleased at me
+looking shy. Weel, she took my hat out o&#8217; my hand,
+and she put it on the chair at the door, whaur there&#8217;s
+aye an auld chair in grand houses for the servant to sit
+on at family exercise.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;You&#8217;re a man, Mr. Whamond,&#8217; says she, &#8216;that the
+minister delights to honor, and so you&#8217;ll oblige me by
+sitting in his own armchair.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin never quite delighted to honor the precentor,
+of whom he was always a little afraid, and perhaps
+Margaret knew it. But you must not think less of her
+for wanting to gratify her son&#8217;s chief elder. She
+thought, too, that he had just done her a service. I
+never yet knew a good woman who did not enjoy flattering
+men she liked.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I saw my chance at that,&#8221; Whamond went on, &#8220;and
+I says to her sternly, &#8216;In worldly position,&#8217; I says, &#8216;I&#8217;m
+a common man, and it&#8217;s no for the like o&#8217; sic to sit in a
+minister&#8217;s chair; but it has been God&#8217;s will,&#8217; I says, &#8216;to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_347' name='page_347'></a>347</span>
+wrap around me the mantle o&#8217; chief elder o&#8217; the kirk,
+and if the minister falls awa frae grace, it becomes my
+duty to take his place.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If she had been looking at me, she maun hae grown
+feared at that, and syne I could hae gone on though
+my ilka word was a knockdown blow. But she was
+picking some things aff the chair to let me down on&#8217;t.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s a pair o&#8217; mittens I&#8217;m working for the minister,&#8217;
+she says, and she handed them to me. Ay, I tried
+no to take them, but&mdash;Oh, lads, it&#8217;s queer to think
+how saft I was.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;He&#8217;s no to ken about them till they&#8217;re finished,&#8217;
+she says, terrible fond-like.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The words came to my mouth, &#8216;They&#8217;ll never be finished,&#8217;
+and I could hae cursed mysel&#8217; for no saying
+them. I dinna ken how it was, but there was something
+pitiful in seeing her take up the mittens and begin
+working cheerily at one, and me kenning all the
+time that they would never be finished. I watched her
+fingers, and I said to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Another stitch, and that
+maun be your last.&#8217; I said that to mysel&#8217; till I thocht
+it was the needle that said it, and I wondered at her no
+hearing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;In the tail o&#8217; the day I says, &#8216;You needna bother;
+he&#8217;ll never wear them,&#8217; and they sounded sic words o&#8217;
+doom that I rose up off the chair. Ay, but she took me
+up wrang, and she said, &#8216;I see you have noticed how
+careless o&#8217; his ain comforts he is, and that in his zeal
+he forgets to put on his mittens, though they may be in
+his pocket a&#8217; the time. Ay,&#8217; says she, confident-like,
+&#8216;but he winna forget these mittens, Mr. Whamond, and
+I&#8217;ll tell you the reason: it&#8217;s because they&#8217;re his mother&#8217;s
+work.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I stamped my foot, and she gae me an apologetic
+look, and she says, &#8216;I canna help boasting about his
+being so fond o&#8217; me.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, but here was me saying to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Do your
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_348' name='page_348'></a>348</span>
+duty, Tammas Whamond; you sluggard, do your duty,&#8217;
+and without lifting my een frae her fingers I said
+sternly, &#8216;The chances are,&#8217; I said, &#8216;that these mittens
+will never be worn by the hands they are worked for.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;You mean,&#8217; says she, &#8216;that he&#8217;ll gie them awa to
+some ill-off body, as he gies near a&#8217; thing he has? Ay,
+but there&#8217;s one thing he never parts wi&#8217;, and that&#8217;s my
+work. There&#8217;s a young lady in the manse the now,&#8217;
+says she, &#8216;that offered to finish the mittens for me, but
+he would value them less if I let ony other body put a
+stitch into them.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I thocht to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Tammas Whamond, the Lord
+has opened a door to you, and you&#8217;ll be disgraced forever
+if you dinna walk straucht in.&#8217; So I rose again,
+and I says, boldly this time, &#8216;Whaur&#8217;s that young leddy?
+I hae something to say to her that canna be kept waiting.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;She&#8217;s up the stair,&#8217; she says, surprised, &#8216;but you
+canna ken her, Mr. Whamond, for she just came last
+nicht.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I ken mair o&#8217; her than you think,&#8217; says I; &#8216;I ken
+what brocht her here, and ken wha she thinks she is to
+be married to, and I&#8217;ve come to tell her that she&#8217;ll
+never get him.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;How no?&#8217; she said, amazed like.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Because,&#8217; said I, wi&#8217; my teeth thegither, &#8216;he is already
+married.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Lads, I stood waiting to see her fall, and when she
+didna fall I just waited langer, thinking she was slow
+in taking it a&#8217; in.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I see you ken wha she is,&#8217; she said, looking at me,
+&#8216;and yet I canna credit your news.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;They&#8217;re true,&#8217; I cries.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Even if they are,&#8217; says she, considering, &#8216;it may be
+the best thing that could happen to baith o&#8217; them.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I sank back in the chair in fair bewilderment, for I
+didna ken at that time, as we a&#8217; ken now, that she was
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_349' name='page_349'></a>349</span>
+thinking o&#8217; the earl when I was thinking o&#8217; her son.
+Dominie, it looked to me as if the Lord had opened a
+door to me, and syne shut it in my face.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Syne wi&#8217; me sitting there in a kind o&#8217; awe o&#8217; the
+woman&#8217;s simpleness, she began to tell me what the
+minister was like when he was a bairn, and I was saying
+a&#8217; the time to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;You&#8217;re chief elder o&#8217; the
+kirk, Tammas Whamond, and you maun speak out the
+next time she stops to draw breath.&#8217; They were terrible
+sma&#8217;, common things she telled me, sic as near a&#8217;
+mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o&#8217; holy
+way she said them drove my words down my throat,
+like as if I was some infidel man trying to break out
+wi&#8217; blasphemy in a kirk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;ll let you see something,&#8217; says she, &#8216;that I ken
+will interest you.&#8217; She brocht it out o&#8217; a drawer, and
+what do you think it was? As sure as death it was no
+more than some o&#8217; his hair when he was a litlin, and it
+was tied up sic carefully in paper that you would hae
+thocht it was some valuable thing.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Mr. Whamond,&#8217; she says solemnly, &#8216;you&#8217;ve come
+thrice to the manse to keep me frae being uneasy about
+my son&#8217;s absence, and you was the chief instrument
+under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I&#8217;ll gie you
+a little o&#8217; that hair.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and yet to
+see her fondling it! I says to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;Mrs. Dishart,&#8217;
+I says to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;I was the chief instrument under God
+in bringing him to Thrums, and I&#8217;ve come here to tell
+you that I&#8217;m to be the chief instrument under God in
+driving him out o&#8217;t.&#8217; Ay, but when I focht to bring
+out these words, my mouth snecked like a box.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Dinna gie me his hair,&#8217; was a&#8217; I could say, and I
+wouldna take it frae her; but she laid it in my hand,
+and&mdash;and syne what could I do? Ay, it&#8217;s easy to speak
+about thae things now, and to wonder how I could hae
+so disgraced the position o&#8217; chief elder o&#8217; the kirk, but
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_350' name='page_350'></a>350</span>
+I tell you I was near greeting for the woman. Call me
+names, dominie; I deserve them all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>I did not call Whamond names for being reluctant to
+break Margaret&#8217;s heart. Here is a confession I may
+make. Sometimes I say my prayers at night in a
+hurry, going on my knees indeed, but with as little
+reverence as I take a drink of water before jumping into
+bed, and for the same reason, because it is my nightly
+habit. I am only pattering words I have by heart to
+a chair then, and should be as well employed writing a
+comic Bible. At such times I pray for the earthly
+well-being of the precentor, though he has been dead
+for many years. He crept into my prayers the day he
+told me this story, and was part of them for so long
+that when they are only a recitation he is part of them
+still.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She said to me,&#8221; Whamond continued, &#8220;that the
+women o&#8217; the congregation would be fond to handle the
+hair. Could I tell her that the women was waur agin
+him than the men? I shivered to hear her.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Syne when they&#8217;re a&#8217; sitting breathless listening
+to his preaching,&#8217; she says, &#8216;they&#8217;ll be able to picture
+him as a bairn, just as I often do in the kirk mysel&#8217;.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Andrew Luke, you&#8217;re sneering at me, but I tell you
+if you had been there and had begun to say, &#8216;He&#8217;ll
+preach in our kirk no more,&#8217; I would hae struck you.
+And I&#8217;m chief elder o&#8217; the kirk.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She says, &#8216;Oh, Mr. Whamond, there&#8217;s times in the
+kirk when he is praying, and the glow on his face is
+hardly mortal, so that I fall a-shaking, wi&#8217; a mixture
+o&#8217; fear and pride, me being his mother; and sinful
+though I am to say it, I canna help thinking at sic
+times that I ken what the mother o&#8217; Jesus had in her
+heart when she found Him in the temple.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dominie, it&#8217;s sax-and-twenty years since I was made
+an elder o&#8217; the kirk. I mind the day as if it was yestreen.
+Mr. Carfrae made me walk hame wi&#8217; him, and
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_351' name='page_351'></a>351</span>
+he took me into the manse parlor, and he set me in
+that very chair. It was the first time I was ever in the
+manse. Ay, he little thocht that day in his earnestness,
+and I little thocht mysel&#8217; in the pride o&#8217; my lusty
+youth, that the time was coming when I would swear
+in that reverenced parlor. I say swear, dominie, for
+when she had finished I jumped to my feet, and I cried,
+&#8216;Hell!&#8217; and I lifted up my hat. And I was chief elder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;She fell back frae my oath,&#8221; he said, &#8220;and syne she
+took my sleeve and speired, &#8216;What has come ower you,
+Mr. Whamond? Hae you onything on your mind?&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I&#8217;ve sin on it,&#8217; I roared at her. &#8216;I have neglect o&#8217;
+duty on it. I am one o&#8217; them that cries &#8220;Lord, Lord,&#8221;
+and yet do not the things which He commands. He has
+pointed out the way to me, and I hinna followed it.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;What is it you hinna done that you should hae
+done?&#8217; she said. &#8216;Oh, Mr. Whamond, if you want my
+help, it&#8217;s yours.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Your son&#8217;s a&#8217; the earth to you,&#8217; I cried, &#8216;but my
+eldership&#8217;s as muckle to me. Sax-and-twenty years
+hae I been an elder, and now I maun gie it up.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;Wha says that?&#8217; she speirs.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;I say it,&#8217; I cried. &#8216;I&#8217;ve shirked my duty. I gie up
+my eldership now. Tammas Whamond is no langer an
+elder o&#8217; the kirk;&#8217; ay, and I was chief elder.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dominie, I think she began to say that when the
+minister came hame he wouldna accept my resignation,
+but I paid no heed to her. You ken what was the
+sound that keeped my ears frae her words; it was the
+sound o&#8217; a machine coming yont the Tenements. You
+ken what was the sicht that made me glare through the
+window instead o&#8217; looking at her; it was the sicht o&#8217;
+Mr. Dishart in the machine. I couldna speak, but I got
+my body atween her and the window, for I heard shouting,
+and I couldna doubt that it was the folk cursing
+him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But she heard too, she heard too, and she squeezed
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_352' name='page_352'></a>352</span>
+by me to the window. I couldna look out; I just
+walked saft-like to the parlor door, but afore I reached
+it she cried joyously&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;It&#8217;s my son come back, and see how fond o&#8217; him
+they are! They are running at the side o&#8217; the machine,
+and the laddies are tossing their bonnets in the air.&#8217;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;God help you, woman!&#8217; I said to mysel&#8217;, &#8216;it canna
+be bonnets&mdash;it&#8217;s stanes and divits mair likely that
+they&#8217;re flinging at him.&#8217; Syne I creeped out o&#8217; the
+manse. Dominie, you mind I passed you in the kitchen,
+and didna say a word?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Yes, I saw the precentor pass through the kitchen,
+with such a face on him as no man ever saw him wear
+again. Since Tammas Whamond died we have had to
+enlarge the Thrums cemetery twice; so it can matter
+not at all to him, and but little to me, what you who
+read think of him. All his life children ran from him.
+He was the dourest, the most unlovable man in Thrums.
+But may my right hand wither, and may my tongue be
+cancer-bitten, and may my mind be gone into a dry rot,
+before I forget what he did for me and mine that day!</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_353' name='page_353'></a>353</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FORTYTHREE_RAINMISTTHE_JAWS' id='CHAPTER_FORTYTHREE_RAINMISTTHE_JAWS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Forty-Three.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />RAIN&mdash;MIST&mdash;THE JAWS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>To this day we argue in the glen about the sound
+mistaken by many of us for the firing of the Spittal
+cannon, some calling it thunder and others the tearing
+of trees in the torrent. I think it must have been the
+roll of stones into the Quharity from Silver Hill, of
+which a corner has been missing since that day. Silver
+Hill is all stones, as if creation had been riddled there,
+and in the sun the mica on them shines like many pools
+of water.</p>
+<p>At the roar, as they thought, of the cannon, the farmers
+looked up from their struggle with the flood to say,
+&#8220;That&#8217;s Rintoul married,&#8221; as clocks pause simultaneously
+to strike the hour. Then every one in the glen
+save Gavin and myself was done with Rintoul. Before
+the hills had answered the noise, Gavin was on his way
+to the Spittal. The dog must have been ten minutes in
+overtaking him, yet he maintained afterward that it
+was with him from the start. From this we see that
+the shock he had got carried him some distance before
+he knew that he had left the school-house. It also
+gave him a new strength, that happily lasted longer
+than his daze of mind.</p>
+<p>Gavin moved northward quicker than I came south,
+climbing over or wading through his obstacles, while I
+went round mine. After a time, too, the dog proved
+useful, for on discovering that it was going homeward
+it took the lead, and several times drew him to the
+right road to the Spittal by refusing to accompany him
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_354' name='page_354'></a>354</span>
+on the wrong road. Yet in two hours he had walked
+perhaps nine miles without being four miles nearer the
+Spittal. In that flood the glen milestones were three
+miles apart.</p>
+<p>For some time he had been following the dog doubtfully,
+for it seemed to be going too near the river.
+When they struck a cart-track, however, he concluded
+rightly that they were nearing a bridge. His faith in
+his guide was again tested before they had been many
+minutes on this sloppy road. The dog stopped, whined,
+looked irresolute, and then ran to the right, disappearing
+into the mist in an instant. He shouted to it to
+come back, and was surprised to hear a whistle in reply.
+This was sufficient to make him dash after the dog, and
+in less than a minute he stopped abruptly by the side of
+a shepherd.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Have you brocht it?&#8221; the man cried almost into
+Gavin&#8217;s ear; yet the roar of the water was so tremendous
+that the words came faintly, as if from a distance.
+&#8220;Wae is me; is it only you, Mr. Dishart?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is it only you!&#8221; No one in the glen would have
+addressed a minister thus except in a matter of life or
+death, and Gavin knew it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;He&#8217;ll be ower late,&#8221; the shepherd exclaimed, rubbing
+his hands together in distress. &#8220;I&#8217;m speaking o&#8217;
+Whinbusses&#8217; grieve. He has run for ropes, but he&#8217;ll
+be ower late.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is there some one in danger?&#8221; asked Gavin, who
+stood, he knew not where, with this man, enveloped in
+mist.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is there no? Look!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;There is nothing to be seen but mist; where are we?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We&#8217;re on the high bank o&#8217; the Quharity. Take
+care, man; you was stepping ower into the roaring
+water. Lie down and tell me if he&#8217;s there yet. Maybe
+I just think that I see him, for the sicht is painted on
+my een.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_355' name='page_355'></a>355</span></div>
+<p>Gavin lay prone and peered at the river, but the mist
+came up to his eyes. He only knew that the river was
+below from the sound.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is there a man down there?&#8221; he asked, shuddering.</p>
+<p>&#8220;There was a minute syne; on a bit island.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Why does he not speak?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He is senseless. Dinna move; the mist&#8217;s clearing,
+and you&#8217;ll see if he&#8217;s there syne. The mist has been
+lifting and falling that way ilka minute since me and
+the grieve saw him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The mist did not rise. It only shook like a blanket,
+and then again remained stationary. But in that
+movement Gavin had seen twice, first incredulously,
+and then with conviction.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shepherd,&#8221; he said, rising, &#8220;it is Lord Rintoul.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Ay, it&#8217;s him; and you saw his feet was in the water.
+They were dry when the grieve left me. Mr. Dishart,
+the ground he is on is being washed awa bit by bit.
+I tell you, the flood&#8217;s greedy for him, and it&#8217;ll hae
+him&mdash;&mdash;Look, did you see him again?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Is he living?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;We saw him move. Hst! Was that a cry?&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was only the howling of the dog, which had
+recognized its master and was peering over the bank,
+the body quivering to jump, but the legs restless with
+indecision.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If we were down there,&#8221; Gavin said, &#8220;we could hold
+him secure till rescue comes. It is no great jump.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;How far would you make it? I saw him again!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It looked further that time.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s it! Sometimes the ground he is on looks so
+near that you think you could almost drop on it, and
+the next time it&#8217;s yards and yards awa. I&#8217;ve stood
+ready for the spring, Mr. Dishart, a dozen times, but
+I aye sickened. I daurna do it. Look at the dog; just
+when it&#8217;s starting to jump, it pulls itsel&#8217; back.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_356' name='page_356'></a>356</span></div>
+<p>As if it had heard the shepherd, the dog jumped at
+that instant.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It sprang too far,&#8221; Gavin said.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It didna spring far enough.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They waited, and presently the mist thinned for a
+moment, as if it was being drawn out. They saw the
+earl, but there was no dog.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Poor brute,&#8221; said the shepherd, and looked with
+awe at Gavin.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Rintoul is slipping into the water,&#8221; Gavin answered.
+&#8220;You won&#8217;t jump?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, I&#8217;m wae for him, and&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Then I will,&#8221; Gavin was about to say, but the
+shepherd continued, &#8220;And him only married twa hours
+syne.&#8221;</p>
+<p>That kept the words in Gavin&#8217;s mouth for half a
+minute, and then he spoke them.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Dinna think o&#8217;t,&#8221; cried the shepherd, taking him
+by the coat. &#8220;The ground he is on is slippery. I&#8217;ve
+flung a dozen stanes at it, and them that hit it slithered
+off. Though you landed in the middle o&#8217;t, you would
+slide into the water.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;He shook himsel&#8217; free o&#8217; me,&#8221; the shepherd told
+afterward, &#8220;and I saw him bending down and measuring
+the distance wi&#8217; his een as cool as if he was calculating
+a drill o&#8217; tatties. Syne I saw his lips moving in
+prayer. It wasna spunk he needed to pray for, though.
+Next minute there was me, my very arms prigging wi&#8217;
+him to think better o&#8217;t, and him standing ready to loup,
+his knees bent, and not a tremble in them. The mist
+lifted, and I&mdash;&mdash;Lads, I couldna gie a look to the earl.
+Mr. Dishart jumped; I hardly saw him, but I kent,
+I kent, for I was on the bank alane. What did I do? I
+flung mysel&#8217; down in a sweat, and if een could bore
+mist mine would hae done it. I thocht I heard the
+minister&#8217;s death-cry, and may I be struck if I dinna believe
+now that it was a skirl o&#8217; my ain. After that
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_357' name='page_357'></a>357</span>
+there was no sound but the jaw o&#8217; the water; and I
+prayed, but no to God, to the mist to rise, and after an
+awful time it rose, and I saw the minister was safe; he
+had pulled the earl into the middle o&#8217; the bit island and
+was rubbing him back to consciousness. I sweat when
+I think o&#8217;t yet.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The Little Minister&#8217;s jump is always spoken of as a
+brave act in the glen, but at such times I am silent.
+This is not because, being timid myself, I am without
+admiration for courage. My little maid says that three
+in every four of my poems are to the praise of prowess,
+and she has not forgotten how I carried her on my
+shoulder once to Tilliedrum to see a soldier who had
+won the Victoria Cross, and made her shake hands with
+him, though he was very drunk. Only last year one of
+my scholars declared to me that Nelson never said
+&#8220;England expects every man this day to do his duty,&#8221;
+for which I thrashed the boy and sent him to the cooling-stone.
+But was it brave of Gavin to jump? I have
+heard some maintain that only misery made him so bold,
+and others that he jumped because it seemed a fine
+thing to risk his life for an enemy. But these are
+really charges of cowardice, and my boy was never a
+coward. Of the two kinds of courage, however, he did
+not then show the nobler. I am glad that he was ready
+for such an act, but he should have remembered Margaret
+and Babbie. As it was, he may be said to have
+forced them to jump with him. Not to attempt a gallant
+deed for which one has the impulse, may be braver
+than the doing of it.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Though it seemed as lang time,&#8221; the shepherd says,
+&#8220;as I could hae run up a hill in, I dinna suppose it was
+many minutes afore I saw Rintoul opening and shutting
+his een. The next glint I had o&#8217; them they were
+speaking to ane another; ay, and mair than speaking.
+They were quarrelling. I couldna hear their words,
+but there was a moment when I thocht they were to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_358' name='page_358'></a>358</span>
+grapple. Lads, the memory o&#8217; that&#8217;ll hing about my
+deathbed. There was twa men, edicated to the highest
+pitch, ane a lord and the other a minister, and the
+flood was taking awa a mouthful o&#8217; their footing ilka
+minute, and the jaws o&#8217; destruction was gaping for them,
+and yet they were near fechting. We ken now it was
+about a woman. Ay, but does that make it less awful?&#8221;</p>
+<p>No, that did not make it less awful. It was even
+awful that Gavin&#8217;s first words when Rintoul opened
+his eyes and closed them hastily were, &#8220;Where is she?&#8221;
+The earl did not answer; indeed, for the moment the
+words had no meaning to him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How did I come here?&#8221; he asked feebly.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You should know better than I. Where is my wife?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I remember now,&#8221; Rintoul repeated several times.
+&#8220;Yes, I had left the Spittal to look for you&mdash;you were
+so long in coming. How did I find you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was I who found you,&#8221; Gavin answered. &#8220;You
+must have been swept away by the flood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;And you too?&#8221;</p>
+<p>In a few words Gavin told how he came to be beside
+the earl.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I suppose they will say you have saved my life,&#8221;
+was Rintoul&#8217;s commentary.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is not saved yet. If help does not come, we shall
+be dead men in an hour. What have you done with
+my wife?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rintoul ceased to listen to him, and shouted sums of
+money to the shepherd, who shook his head and bawled
+an answer that neither Gavin nor the earl heard. Across
+that thundering water only Gavin&#8217;s voice could carry,
+the most powerful ever heard in a Thrums pulpit, the
+one voice that could be heard all over the Commonty
+during the time of the tent-preaching. Yet he never
+roared, as some preachers do of whom we say, &#8220;Ah, if
+they could hear the Little Minister&#8217;s word!&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin caught the gesticulating earl by the sleeve,
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_359' name='page_359'></a>359</span>
+and said, &#8220;Another man has gone for ropes. Now,
+listen to me; how dared you go through a marriage ceremony
+with her, knowing her already to be my wife?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Rintoul did listen this time.</p>
+<p>&#8220;How do you know I married her?&#8221; he asked sharply.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I heard the cannon.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Now the earl understood, and the shadow on his face
+shook and lifted, and his teeth gleamed. His triumph
+might be short-lived, but he would enjoy it while he
+could.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Well,&#8221; he answered, picking the pebbles for his
+sling with care, &#8220;you must know that I could not have
+married her against her will. The frolic on the hill
+amused her, but she feared you might think it serious,
+and so pressed me to proceed with her marriage to-day
+despite the flood.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This was the point at which the shepherd saw the
+minister raise his fist. It fell, however, without striking.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Do you really think that I could doubt her?&#8221; Gavin
+said compassionately, and for the second time in twenty-four
+hours the earl learned that he did not know what
+love is.</p>
+<p>For a full minute they had forgotten where they were.
+Now, again, the water seemed to break loose, so that
+both remembered their danger simultaneously and
+looked up. The mist parted for long enough to show
+them that where had only been the shepherd was now
+a crowd of men, with here and there a woman. Before
+the mist again came between the minister had recognized
+many members of his congregation.</p>
+<hr class='tb' />
+<p>In his unsuccessful attempt to reach Whinbusses, the
+grieve had met the relief party from Thrums. Already
+the weavers had helped Waster Lunny to stave off ruin,
+and they were now on their way to Whinbusses, keeping
+together through fear of mist and water. Every
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_360' name='page_360'></a>360</span>
+few minutes Snecky Hobart rang his bell to bring in
+stragglers.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Follow me,&#8221; was all the panting grieve could say at
+first, but his agitation told half his story. They went
+with him patiently, only stopping once, and then excitedly,
+for they come suddenly on Rob Dow. Rob was
+still lying a prisoner beneath the tree, and the grieve
+now remembered that he had fallen over this tree, and
+neither noticed the man under it nor been noticed by
+the man. Fifty hands released poor Dow, and two men
+were commissioned to bring him along slowly while the
+others hurried to the rescue of the earl. They were
+amazed to learn from the shepherd that Mr. Dishart
+also was in danger, and after &#8220;Is there a woman wi&#8217;
+him?&#8221; some cried, &#8220;He&#8217;ll get off cheap wi&#8217; drowning,&#8221;
+and &#8220;It&#8217;s the judgment o&#8217; God.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The island on which the two men stood was now little
+bigger than the round tables common in Thrums, and
+its centre was some feet farther from the bank than
+when Gavin jumped. A woman, looking down at it,
+sickened, and would have toppled into the water, had
+not John Spens clutched her. Others were so stricken
+with awe that they forgot they had hands.</p>
+<p>Peter Tosh, the elder, cast a rope many times, but
+it would not carry. The one end was then weighted
+with a heavy stone, and the other tied round the waists
+of two men. But the force of the river had been underestimated.
+The stone fell short into the torrent, which
+rushed off with it so furiously that the men were flung
+upon their faces and trailed to the verge of the precipice.
+A score of persons sprang to their rescue, and
+the rope snapped. There was only one other rope, and
+its fate was not dissimilar. This time the stone fell
+into the water beyond the island, and immediately
+rushed down stream. Gavin seized the rope, but it
+pressed against his body, and would have pushed him
+off his feet had not Tosh cut it. The trunk of the tree
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_361' name='page_361'></a>361</span>
+that had fallen on Rob Dow was next dragged to the
+bank and an endeavor made to form a sloping bridge
+of it. The island, however, was now soft and unstable,
+and, though the trunk was successfully lowered, it only
+knocked lumps off the island, and finally it had to be
+let go, as the weavers could not pull it back. It
+splashed into the water, and was at once whirled out
+of sight. Some of the party on the bank began hastily
+to improvise a rope of cravats and the tags of the ropes
+still left, but the mass stood helpless and hopeless.</p>
+<p>&#8220;You may wonder that we could have stood still,
+waiting to see the last o&#8217; them,&#8221; Birse, the post, has said
+to me in the school-house, &#8220;but, dominie, I couldna hae
+moved, magre my neck. I&#8217;m a hale man, but if this
+minute we was to hear the voice o&#8217; the Almighty saying
+solemnly, &#8216;Afore the clock strikes again, Birse, the
+post, will fall down dead of heart disease,&#8217; what do you
+think you would do? I&#8217;ll tell you. You would stand
+whaur you are, and stare, tongue-tied, at me till I
+dropped. How do I ken? By the teaching o&#8217; that
+nicht. Ay, but there&#8217;s a mair important thing I dinna
+ken, and that is whether I would be palsied wi&#8217; fear like
+the earl, or face death with the calmness o&#8217; the minister.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Indeed, the contrast between Rintoul and Gavin was
+now impressive. When Tosh signed that the weavers
+had done their all and failed, the two men looked in
+each other&#8217;s faces, and Gavin&#8217;s face was firm and the
+earl&#8217;s working convulsively. The people had given up
+attempting to communicate with Gavin save by signs,
+for though they heard his sonorous voice, when he
+pitched it at them, they saw that he caught few words
+of theirs. &#8220;He heard our skirls,&#8221; Birse said, &#8220;but
+couldna grip the words ony mair than we could hear
+the earl. And yet we screamed, and the minister
+didna. I&#8217;ve heard o&#8217; Highlandmen wi&#8217; the same gift,
+so that they could be heard across a glen.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_362' name='page_362'></a>362</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;We must prepare for death,&#8221; Gavin said solemnly
+to the earl, &#8220;and it is for your own sake that I again ask
+you to tell me the truth. Worldly matters are nothing
+to either of us now, but I implore you not to carry a lie
+into your Maker&#8217;s presence.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I will not give up hope,&#8221; was all Rintoul&#8217;s answer,
+and he again tried to pierce the mist with offers of reward.
+After that he became doggedly silent, fixing his
+eyes on the ground at his feet. I have a notion that he
+had made up his mind to confess the truth about Babbie
+when the water had eaten the island as far as the point
+at which he was now looking.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_363' name='page_363'></a>363</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FORTYFOUR_END_OF_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS' id='CHAPTER_FORTYFOUR_END_OF_THE_TWENTYFOUR_HOURS'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Forty-Four.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />END OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>Out of the mist came the voice of Gavin, clear and
+strong&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;If you hear me, hold up your hands as a sign.&#8221;</p>
+<p>They heard, and none wondered at his voice crossing
+the chasm while theirs could not. When the mist
+cleared, they were seen to have done as he bade them.
+Many hands remained up for a time because the people
+did not remember to bring them down, so great was the
+awe that had fallen on all, as if the Lord was near.</p>
+<p>Gavin took his watch from his pocket, and he said&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am to fling this to you. You will give it to Mr.
+Ogilvy, the schoolmaster, as a token of the love I bear
+him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The watch was caught by James Langlands, and
+handed to Peter Tosh, the chief elder present.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To Mr. Ogilvy,&#8221; Gavin continued, &#8220;you will also
+give the chain. You will take it off my neck when you
+find the body.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To each of my elders, and to Hendry Munn, kirk
+officer, and to my servant Jean, I leave a book, and
+they will go to my study and choose it for themselves.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I also leave a book for Nanny Webster, and I charge
+you, Peter Tosh, to take it to her, though she be not a
+member of my church.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The pictorial Bible with &#8216;To my son on his sixth
+birthday&#8217; on it, I bequeath to Rob Dow. No, my
+mother will want to keep that. I give to Rob Dow my
+Bible with the brass clasp.</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_364' name='page_364'></a>364</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;It is my wish that every family in the congregation
+should have some little thing to remember me by.
+This you will tell my mother.</p>
+<p>&#8220;To my successor I leave whatsoever of my papers
+he may think of any value to him, including all my
+notes on Revelation, of which I meant to make a book.
+I hope he will never sing the paraphrases.</p>
+<p>&#8220;If Mr. Carfrae&#8217;s health permits, you will ask him to
+preach the funeral sermon; but if he be too frail, then
+you will ask Mr. Trail, under whom I sat in Glasgow.
+The illustrated &#8216;Pilgrim&#8217;s Progress&#8217; on the drawers in
+my bedroom belongs to Mr. Trail, and you will return
+it to him with my affection and compliments.</p>
+<p>&#8220;I owe five shillings to Hendry Munn for mending
+my boots, and a smaller sum to Baxter, the mason. I
+have two pounds belonging to Rob Dow, who asked me
+to take charge of them for him. I owe no other man
+anything, and this you will bear in mind if Matthew
+Cargill, the flying stationer, again brings forward a
+claim for the price of Whiston&#8217;s &#8216;Josephus,&#8217; which I did
+not buy from him.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Mr. Moncur, of Aberbrothick, had agreed to assist
+me at the Sacrament, and will doubtless still lend his
+services. Mr. Carfrae or Mr. Trail will take my place
+if my successor is not elected by that time. The Sacrament
+cups are in the vestry press, of which you will
+find the key beneath the clock in my parlor. The
+tokens are in the topmost drawer in my bedroom.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The weekly prayer-meeting will be held as usual
+on Thursday at eight o&#8217;clock, and the elders will officiate.</p>
+<p>&#8220;It is my wish that the news of my death be broken
+to my mother by Mr. Ogilvy, the schoolmaster, and by
+no other. You will say to him that this is my solemn
+request, and that I bid him discharge it without faltering
+and be of good cheer.</p>
+<p>&#8220;But if Mr. Ogilvy be not now alive, the news of my
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_365' name='page_365'></a>365</span>
+death will be broken to my mother by my beloved wife.
+Last night I was married on the hill, over the tongs,
+but with the sanction of God, to her whom you call the
+Egyptian, and despite what has happened since then, of
+which you will soon have knowledge, I here solemnly
+declare that she is my wife, and you will seek for her
+at the Spittal or elsewhere till you find her, and you
+will tell her to go to my mother and remain with her
+always, for these are the commands of her husband.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was then that Gavin paused, for Lord Rintoul had
+that to say to him which no longer could be kept back.
+All the women were crying sore, and also some men
+whose eyes had been dry at the coffining of their children.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Now I ken,&#8221; said Cruickshanks, who had been an
+atheist, &#8220;that it&#8217;s only the fool wha&#8217; says in his heart,
+&#8216;There is no God.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Another said, &#8220;That&#8217;s a man.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Another said, &#8220;That man has a religion to last him
+all through.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A fourth said, &#8220;Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is
+at hand.&#8221;</p>
+<p>A fifth said, &#8220;That&#8217;s our minister. He&#8217;s the minister
+o&#8217; the Auld Licht Kirk o&#8217; Thrums. Woe is me, we&#8217;re
+to lose him.&#8221;</p>
+<p>Many cried, &#8220;Our hearts was set hard against him.
+O Lord, are you angry wi&#8217; your servants that you&#8217;re
+taking him frae us just when we ken what he is?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Gavin did not hear them, and again he spoke:</p>
+<p>&#8220;My brethren, God is good. I have just learned that
+my wife is with my dear mother at the manse. I leave
+them in your care and in His.&#8221;</p>
+<p>No more he said of Babbie, for the island was become
+very small.</p>
+<p>&#8220;The Lord calls me hence. It is only for a little
+time I have been with you, and now I am going away,
+and you will know me no more. Too great has been
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_366' name='page_366'></a>366</span>
+my pride because I was your minister, but He who sent
+me to labor among you is slow to wrath; and He ever
+bore in mind that you were my first charge. My people,
+I must say to you, &#8216;Farewell.&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>Then, for the first time, his voice faltered, and wanting
+to go on he could not. &#8220;Let us read,&#8221; he said,
+quickly, &#8220;in the Word of God in the fourteenth of
+Matthew, from the twenty-eighth verse.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He repeated these four verses:&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;And Peter answered Him and said, Lord, if it be
+Thou, bid me come unto Thee on the water.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;And He said, Come. And when Peter was come
+down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to
+Jesus.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was
+afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord,
+save me.</p>
+<p>&#8220;&#8216;And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand
+and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little
+faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?&#8217;&#8221;</p>
+<p>After this Gavin&#8217;s voice was again steady, and he
+said, &#8220;The sand-glass is almost run out. Dearly beloved,
+with what words shall I bid you good-by?&#8221;</p>
+<p>Many thought that these were to be the words, for
+the mist parted, and they saw the island tremble and
+half of it sink.</p>
+<p>&#8220;My people,&#8221; said the voice behind the mist, &#8220;this
+is the text I leave with you: &#8216;Lay not up for yourselves
+treasures upon earth, where moth and rust doth corrupt,
+and where thieves break through and steal; but lay up
+for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth
+nor rust doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break
+through nor steal.&#8217; That text I read in the flood, where
+the hand of God has written it. All the pound-notes in
+the world would not dam this torrent for a moment, so
+that we might pass over to you safely. Yet it is but a
+trickle of water, soon to be dried up. Verily, I say
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_367' name='page_367'></a>367</span>
+unto you, only a few hours ago the treasures of earth
+stood between you and this earl, and what are they now
+compared to this trickle of water? God only can turn
+rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into dry
+ground. Let His Word be a lamp unto your feet and a
+light unto your path; may He be your refuge and your
+strength. Amen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>This amen he said quickly, thinking death was now
+come. He was seen to raise his hands, but whether to
+Heaven or involuntarily to protect his face as he fell
+none was sure, for the mist again filled the chasm.
+Then came a clap of stillness. No one breathed.</p>
+<p>But the two men were not yet gone, and Gavin spoke
+once more.</p>
+<p>&#8220;Let us sing in the twenty-third Psalm.&#8221;</p>
+<p>He himself raised the tune, and so long as they heard
+his voice they sang&mdash;</p>
+<div class='poem'><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;The Lord&#8217;s my shepherd, I&#8217;ll not want;</p>
+<p class='indent2'>He makes me down to lie</p>
+<p>In pastures green; He leadeth me</p>
+<p class='indent2'>The quiet waters by.</p>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;My soul He doth restore again;</p>
+<p class='indent2'>And me to walk doth make</p>
+<p>Within the paths of righteousness</p>
+<p class='indent2'>Ev&#8217;n for His own name&#8217;s sake.</p>
+</div><div class='stanza'>
+<p>&#8220;Yea, though I walk in Death&#8217;s dark vale,</p>
+<p class='indent2'>Yet will I fear none ill;</p>
+<p>For Thou art with me; and Thy rod</p>
+<p class='indent2'>And staff&mdash;&mdash;&#8221;</p>
+</div></div>
+<p>But some had lost the power to sing in the first verse,
+and others at &#8220;Death&#8217;s dark vale,&#8221; and when one man
+found himself singing alone he stopped abruptly. This
+was because they no longer heard the minister.</p>
+<p>&#8220;O Lord!&#8221; Peter Tosh cried, &#8220;lift the mist, for it&#8217;s
+mair than we can bear.&#8221;</p>
+<p>The mist rose slowly, and those who had courage to
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_368' name='page_368'></a>368</span>
+look saw Gavin praying with the earl. Many could not
+look, and some of them did not even see Rob Dow jump.</p>
+<p>For it was Dow, the man with the crushed leg, who
+saved Gavin&#8217;s life, and flung away his own for it. Suddenly
+he was seen on the edge of the bank, holding one
+end of the improvised rope in his hand. As Tosh says&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It all happened in the opening and shutting o&#8217; an
+eye. It&#8217;s a queer thing to say, but though I prayed to
+God to take awa the mist, when He did raise it I couldna
+look. I shut my een tight, and held my arm afore my
+face, like ane feared o&#8217; being struck. Even when I
+daured to look, my arm was shaking so that I could see
+Rob both above it and below it. He was on the edge,
+crouching to leap. I didna see wha had haud o&#8217; the
+other end o&#8217; the rope. I heard the minister cry, &#8216;No,
+Dow, no!&#8217; and it gae through me as quick as a stab that
+if Rob jumped he would knock them both into the water.
+But he did jump, and you ken how it was that he didna
+knock them off.&#8221;</p>
+<p>It was because he had no thought of saving his own
+life. He jumped, not at the island, now little bigger
+than the seat of a chair, but at the edge of it, into the
+foam, and with his arm outstretched. For a second the
+hand holding the rope was on the dot of land. Gavin
+tried to seize the hand; Rintoul clutched the rope. The
+earl and the minister were dragged together into safety,
+and both left the water senseless. Gavin was never
+again able to lift his left hand higher than his head.
+Dow&#8217;s body was found next day near the school-house.</p>
+<hr class='toprule' />
+<div class='chsp'>
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_369' name='page_369'></a>369</span>
+<a name='CHAPTER_FORTYFIVE_TALK_OF_A_LITTLE_MAID_SINCE_GROWN_TALL' id='CHAPTER_FORTYFIVE_TALK_OF_A_LITTLE_MAID_SINCE_GROWN_TALL'></a>
+<h2>Chapter Forty-Five.
+<span class='chsub'> <br /><br />TALK OF A LITTLE MAID SINCE GROWN TALL.</span></h2>
+</div>
+<p>My scholars have a game they call &#8220;The Little Minister,&#8221;
+in which the boys allow the girls as a treat to
+join. Some of the characters in the real drama are
+omitted as of no importance&mdash;the dominie, for instance&mdash;and
+the two best fighters insist on being Dow and
+Gavin. I notice that the game is finished when Dow
+dives from a haystack, and Gavin and the earl are
+dragged to the top of it by a rope. Though there should
+be another scene, it is only a marriage, which the girls
+have, therefore, to go through without the help of the
+boys. This warns me that I have come to an end of
+my story for all except my little maid. In the days
+when she sat on my knee and listened it had no end,
+for after I told her how her father and mother were
+married a second time she would say, &#8220;And then I came,
+didn&#8217;t I? Oh, tell me about me!&#8221; So it happened that
+when she was no higher than my staff she knew more
+than I could write in another book, and many a time
+she solemnly told me what I had told her, as&mdash;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you like me to tell you a story? Well, it&#8217;s
+about a minister, and the people wanted to be bad to
+him, and then there was a flood, and a flood is lochs
+falling instead of rain, and so of course he was nearly
+drownded, and he preached to them till they liked him
+again, and so they let him marry her, and they like her
+awful too, and, just think! it was my father; and that&#8217;s
+all. Now tell me about grandmother when father came
+home.&#8221;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_370' name='page_370'></a>370</span></div>
+<p>I told her once again that Margaret never knew how
+nearly Gavin was driven from his kirk. For Margaret
+was as one who goes to bed in the daytime and wakes
+in it, and is not told that there has been a black night
+while she slept. She had seen her son leave the manse
+the idol of his people, and she saw them rejoicing as
+they brought him back. Of what occurred at the Jaws,
+as the spot where Dow had saved two lives is now called,
+she learned, but not that these Jaws snatched him and
+her from an ignominy more terrible than death, for
+she never knew that the people had meditated driving
+him from his kirk. This Thrums is bleak and perhaps
+forbidding, but there is a moment of the day when a
+setting sun dyes it pink, and the people are like their
+town. Thrums was never colder in times of snow than
+were his congregation to their minister when the Great
+Rain began, but his fortitude rekindled their hearts.
+He was an obstinate minister, and love had led him a
+dance, but in the hour of trial he had proved himself a
+man.</p>
+<p>When Gavin reached the manse, and saw not only his
+mother but Babbie, he would have kissed them both;
+but Babbie could only say, &#8220;She does not know,&#8221; and
+then run away crying. Gavin put his arm round his
+mother, and drew her into the parlor, where he told
+her who Babbie was. Now Margaret had begun to love
+Babbie already, and had prayed to see Gavin happily
+married; but it was a long time before she went upstairs
+to look for his wife and kiss her and bring her down.
+&#8220;Why was it a long time?&#8221; my little maid would ask,
+and I had to tell her to wait until she was old, and had
+a son, when she would find out for herself.</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_24' id='linki_24'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus418.jpg' alt='' title='' width='454' height='700' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;BABBIE COULD ONLY SAY, &#8216;SHE DOES NOT KNOW.&#8217;&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>While Gavin and the earl were among the waters,
+two men were on their way to Mr. Carfrae&#8217;s home, to
+ask him to return with them and preach the Auld Licht
+kirk of Thrums vacant; and he came, though now so
+done that he had to be wheeled about in a little coach.
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_371' name='page_371'></a>371</span>
+He came in sorrow, yet resolved to perform what was
+asked of him if it seemed God&#8217;s will; but, instead of
+banishing Gavin, all he had to do was to remarry him
+and kirk him, both of which things he did, sitting in
+his coach, as many can tell. Lang Tammas spoke no
+more against Gavin, but he would not go to the marriage,
+and he insisted on resigning his eldership for a
+year and a day. I think he only once again spoke to
+Margaret. She was in the manse garden when he was
+passing, and she asked him if he would tell her now
+why he had been so agitated when he visited her on the
+day of the flood. He answered gruffly, &#8220;It&#8217;s no business
+o&#8217; yours.&#8221; Dr. McQueen was Gavin&#8217;s best man.
+He died long ago of scarlet fever. So severe was the
+epidemic that for a week he was never in bed. He attended
+fifty cases without suffering, but as soon as he
+had bent over Hendry Munn&#8217;s youngest boys, who both
+had it, he said, &#8220;I&#8217;m smitted,&#8221; and went home to die.
+You may be sure that Gavin proved a good friend to
+Micah Dow. I have the piece of slate on which Rob
+proved himself a good friend to Gavin; it was in his
+pocket when we found the body. Lord Rintoul returned
+to his English estates, and never revisited the Spittal.
+The last thing I heard of him was that he had been
+offered the Lord-Lieutenantship of a county, and had
+accepted it in a long letter, in which he began by pointing
+out his unworthiness. This undid him, for the
+Queen, or her councillors, thinking from his first page
+that he had declined the honor, read no further, and
+appointed another man. Waster Lunny is still alive,
+but has gone to another farm. Sanders Webster, in his
+gratitude, wanted Nanny to become an Auld Licht, but
+she refused, saying, &#8220;Mr. Dishart is worth a dozen o&#8217;
+Mr. Duthie, and I&#8217;m terrible fond o&#8217; Mrs. Dishart, but
+Established I was born and Established I&#8217;ll remain
+till I&#8217;m carried out o&#8217; this house feet foremost.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But Nanny went to Heaven for all that,&#8221; my little
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_372' name='page_372'></a>372</span>
+maid told me. &#8220;Jean says people can go to Heaven
+though they are not Auld Lichts, but she says it takes
+them all their time. Would you like me to tell you a
+story about my mother putting glass on the manse dike?
+Well, my mother and my father is very fond of each
+other, and once they was in the garden, and my father
+kissed my mother, and there was a woman watching
+them over the dike, and she cried out&mdash;something
+naughty.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was Tibbie Birse,&#8221; I said, &#8220;and what she cried
+was, &#8216;Mercy on us, that&#8217;s the third time in half an hour!&#8217;
+So your mother, who heard her, was annoyed, and put
+glass on the wall.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But it&#8217;s me that is telling you the story. You are
+sure you don&#8217;t know it? Well, they asked father to take
+the glass away, and he wouldn&#8217;t; but he once preached
+at mother for having a white feather in her bonnet, and
+another time he preached at her for being too fond of
+him. Jean told me. That&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>No one seeing Babbie going to church demurely on
+Gavin&#8217;s arm could guess her history. Sometimes I
+wonder whether the desire to be a gypsy again ever
+comes over her for a mad hour, and whether, if so,
+Gavin takes such measures to cure her as he threatened
+in Caddam Wood. I suppose not; but here is another
+story:</p>
+<div class='figcenter'>
+<div class='figtag'>
+<a name='linki_25' id='linki_25'></a>
+</div>
+<img src='images/illus422.jpg' alt='' title='' width='453' height='676' />
+<br />
+<p class='caption'>
+&#8220;THERE WAS A WOMAN WATCHING THEM OVER THE DIKE.&#8221;<br />
+</p>
+</div>
+<p>&#8220;When I ask mother to tell me about her once being
+a gypsy she says I am a bad &#8217;quisitive little girl, and
+to put on my hat and come with her to the prayer-meeting;
+and when I asked father to let me see
+mother&#8217;s gypsy frock he made me learn Psalm forty-eight
+by heart. But once I see&#8217;d it, and it was a long
+time ago, as long as a week ago. Micah Dow gave me
+rowans to put in my hair, and I like Micah because he
+calls me Miss, and so I woke in my bed because there
+was noises, and I ran down to the parlor, and there was
+my mother in her gypsy frock, and my rowans was in
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_373' name='page_373'></a>373</span>
+her hair, and my father was kissing her, and when they
+saw me they jumped; and that&#8217;s all.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Would you like me to tell you another story? It is
+about a little girl. Well, there was once a minister
+and his wife, and they hadn&#8217;t no little girls, but just
+little boys, and God was sorry for them, so He put a
+little girl in a cabbage in the garden, and when they
+found her they were glad. Would you like me to tell
+you who the little girl was? Well, it was me, and,
+ugh! I was awful cold in the cabbage. Do you like
+that story?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes; I like it best of all the stories I know.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;So do I like it, too. Couldn&#8217;t nobody help loving
+me, &#8217;cause I&#8217;m so nice? Why am I so fearful nice?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Because you are like your grandmother.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;It was clever of my father to know when he found
+me in the cabbage that my name was Margaret. Are
+you sorry grandmother is dead?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am glad your mother and father were so good to
+her and made her so happy.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Are you happy?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But when I am happy I laugh.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am old, you see, and you are young.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I am nearly six. Did you love grandmother? Then
+why did you never come to see her? Did grandmother
+know you was here? Why not? Why didn&#8217;t I not
+know about you till after grandmother died?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;I&#8217;ll tell you when you are big.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Shall I be big enough when I am six?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, not till your eighteenth birthday.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But birthdays comes so slow. Will they come
+quicker when I am big?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Much quicker.&#8221;</p>
+<p>On her sixth birthday Micah Dow drove my little
+maid to the school-house in the doctor&#8217;s gig, and she
+crept beneath the table and whispered&mdash;</p>
+<div><span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_374' name='page_374'></a>374</span></div>
+<p>&#8220;Grandfather!&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Father told me to call you that if I liked, and I
+like,&#8221; she said when I had taken her upon my knee.
+&#8220;I know why you kissed me just now. It was because
+I looked like grandmother. Why do you kiss me when
+I look like her?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Who told you I did that?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Nobody didn&#8217;t tell me. I just found out. I loved
+grandmother too. She told me all the stories she
+knew.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Did she ever tell you a story about a black dog?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No. Did she know one?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes, she knew it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Perhaps she had forgotten it?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;No, she remembered it.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Tell it to me.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Not till you are eighteen.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;But will you not be dead when I am eighteen?
+When you go to Heaven, will you see grandmother?&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Yes.&#8221;</p>
+<p>&#8220;Will she be glad to see you?&#8221;</p>
+<p>My little maid&#8217;s eighteenth birthday has come, and
+I am still in Thrums, which I love, though it is beautiful
+to none, perhaps, save to the very done, who lean
+on their staves and look long at it, having nothing else
+to do till they die. I have lived to rejoice in the happiness
+of Gavin and Babbie; and if at times I have suddenly
+had to turn away my head after looking upon
+them in their home surrounded by their children, it was
+but a moment&#8217;s envy that I could not help. Margaret
+never knew of the dominie in the glen. They wanted
+to tell her of me, but I would not have it. She has
+been long gone from this world; but sweet memories
+of her still grow, like honeysuckle, up the white walls
+of the manse, smiling in at the parlor window and beckoning
+from the door, and for some filling all the air
+with fragrance. It was not she who raised the barrier
+<span class='pagenum pncolor'><a id='page_375' name='page_375'></a>375</span>
+between her and me, but God Himself; and to those
+who maintain otherwise, I say they do not understand
+the purity of a woman&#8217;s soul. During the years she
+was lost to me her face ever came between me and ungenerous
+thoughts; and now I can say, all that is carnal
+in me is my own, and all that is good I got from her.
+Only one bitterness remains. When I found Gavin in
+the rain, when I was fighting my way through the flood,
+when I saw how the hearts of the people were turned
+against him&mdash;above all, when I found Whamond in the
+manse&mdash;I cried to God, making promises to Him, if He
+would spare the lad for Margaret&#8217;s sake, and he spared
+him; but these promises I have not kept.</p>
+<p class='center larger padtop'><b><i>The End.</i></b></p>
+<div class="trnote">
+<p><b>Transcriber Note</b></p>
+<p>Table of Contents added.</p>
+<p>Sections in Greek will yield a transliteration when the pointer is moved over each line, e.g. <span lang="el" title="agiasthêtô">&#7937;&#947;&#953;&#945;&#963;&#952;&#7968;&#964;&#969;</span></p>
+</div>
+
+<!-- generated by ppg.rb version: 3.21k3 -->
+<!-- timestamp: 2010-10-29 01:32:57 -0500 -->
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Little Minister, by J. M. Barrie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Little Minister
+
+Author: J. M. Barrie
+
+Illustrator: C. Allen Gilbert
+
+Release Date: October 29, 2010 [EBook #33901]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE LITTLE MINISTER ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Katherine Ward, and the
+Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+The Little Minister
+
+_By_
+
+J. M. BARRIE
+
+Maude Adams Edition
+
+
+  NEW YORK
+  R. H. RUSSELL: Publisher
+  1898
+
+  Copyright 1891 and 1895
+  By UNITED STATES BOOK CO.
+
+  Copyright 1898
+  By ROBERT HOWARD RUSSELL
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+                                                                  PAGE
+        I. The Love-Light.                                           1
+       II. Runs Alongside the Making of a Minister.                  7
+      III. The Night-Watchers.                                      17
+       IV. First Coming of the Egyptian Woman.                      30
+        V. A Warlike Chapter, Culminating in the Flouting of the
+               Minister by the Woman.                               42
+       VI. In Which the Soldiers Meet the Amazons of Thrums.        50
+      VII. Has the Folly of Looking into a Woman's Eyes by way
+               of Text.                                             62
+     VIII. 3 A.M.--Monstrous Audacity of the Woman.                 69
+       IX. The Woman Considered in Absence--Adventures of a
+               Military Cloak.                                      79
+        X. First Sermon Against Women.                              89
+       XI. Tells in a Whisper of Man's Fall During the Curling
+               Season.                                             100
+      XII. Tragedy of a Mud House.                                 110
+     XIII. Second Coming of the Egyptian Woman.                    117
+      XIV. The Minister Dances to the Woman's Piping.              125
+       XV. The Minister Bewitched--Second Sermon against Women.    135
+      XVI. Continued Misbehaviour of the Egyptian Woman.           143
+     XVII. Intrusion of Haggart into These Pages against the
+               Author's Wish.                                      151
+    XVIII. Caddam--Love Leading to a Rupture.                      161
+      XIX. Circumstances Leading to the First Sermon in Approval
+               of Women.                                           169
+       XX. End of the State of Indecision.                         177
+      XXI. Night--Margaret--Flashing of a Lantern.                 186
+     XXII. Lovers.                                                 196
+    XXIII. Contains a Birth, Which is Sufficient for One
+               Chapter.                                            205
+     XXIV. The New World, and the Woman Who May Not Dwell
+               Therein.                                            211
+      XXV. Beginning of the Twenty-Four Hours.                     217
+     XXVI. Scene at the Spittal.                                   225
+    XXVII. First Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the
+               Twenty-Four Hours.                                  232
+   XXVIII. The Hill before Darkness Fell--Scene of the Impending
+               Catastrophe.                                        237
+     XXIX. Story of the Egyptian.                                  244
+      XXX. The Meeting for Rain.                                   252
+     XXXI. Various Bodies Converging on the Hill.                  259
+    XXXII. Leading Swiftly to the Appalling Marriage.              268
+   XXXIII. While the Ten O'Clock Bell Was Ringing.                 274
+    XXXIV. The Great Rain.                                         281
+     XXXV. The Glen at Break of Day.                               285
+    XXXVI. Story of the Dominie.                                   299
+   XXXVII. Second Journey of the Dominie to Thrums During the
+               Twenty-Four Hours.                                  308
+  XXXVIII. Thrums during the Twenty-Four Hours--Defence of the
+               Manse.                                              315
+    XXXIX. How Babbie Spent the Night of August Fourth.            324
+       XL. Babbie and Margaret--Defence of the Manse Continued.    330
+      XLI. Rintoul and Babbie--Breakdown of the Defence of the
+               Manse.                                              337
+     XLII. Margaret, the Precentor, and God Between.               345
+    XLIII. Rain--Mist--The Jaws.                                   353
+     XLIV. End of the Twenty-Four Hours.                           363
+      XLV. Talk of a Little Maid Since Grown Tall.                 369
+
+
+[Illustration: "I'LL GI'E YOU MY RABBIT," MICAH SAID, "IF YOU'LL GANG
+AWA'."--PAGE 215.]
+
+
+
+
+NOTE
+
+
+The illustrations in this book have been made especially for this
+edition of The Little Minister by arrangement with Mr. Charles
+Frohman, through whose courtesy they are here reproduced. Many of them
+were drawn by C. Allen Gilbert, while others are from photographs
+which appear here for the first time.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter One.
+
+THE LOVE-LIGHT.
+
+
+Long ago, in the days when our caged blackbirds never saw a king's
+soldier without whistling impudently, "Come ower the water to
+Charlie," a minister of Thrums was to be married, but something
+happened, and he remained a bachelor. Then, when he was old, he passed
+in our square the lady who was to have been his wife, and her hair was
+white, but she, too, was still unmarried. The meeting had only one
+witness, a weaver, and he said solemnly afterwards, "They didna speak,
+but they just gave one another a look, and I saw the love-light in
+their een." No more is remembered of these two, no being now living
+ever saw them, but the poetry that was in the soul of a battered
+weaver makes them human to us for ever.
+
+It is of another minister I am to tell, but only to those who know
+that light when they see it. I am not bidding good-bye to many
+readers, for though it is true that some men, of whom Lord Rintoul was
+one, live to an old age without knowing love, few of us can have met
+them, and of women so incomplete I never heard.
+
+Gavin Dishart was barely twenty-one when he and his mother came to
+Thrums, light-hearted like the traveller who knows not what awaits him
+at the bend of the road. It was the time of year when the ground is
+carpeted beneath the firs with brown needles, when split-nuts patter
+all day from the beech, and children lay yellow corn on the dominie's
+desk to remind him that now they are needed in the fields. The day was
+so silent that carts could be heard rumbling a mile away. All Thrums
+was out in its wynds and closes--a few of the weavers still in
+knee-breeches--to look at the new Auld Licht minister. I was there
+too, the dominie of Glen Quharity, which is four miles from Thrums;
+and heavy was my heart as I stood afar off so that Gavin's mother
+might not have the pain of seeing me. I was the only one in the crowd
+who looked at her more than at her son.
+
+Eighteen years had passed since we parted. Already her hair had lost
+the brightness of its youth, and she seemed to me smaller and more
+fragile; and the face that I loved when I was a hobbledehoy, and loved
+when I looked once more upon it in Thrums, and always shall love till
+I die, was soft and worn. Margaret was an old woman, and she was only
+forty-three; and I am the man who made her old. As Gavin put his eager
+boyish face out at the carriage window, many saw that he was holding
+her hand, but none could be glad at the sight as the dominie was glad,
+looking on at a happiness in which he dared not mingle. Margaret was
+crying because she was so proud of her boy. Women do that. Poor sons
+to be proud of, good mothers, but I would not have you dry those
+tears.
+
+[Illustration: A STREET IN THRUMS.]
+
+When the little minister looked out at the carriage window, many of
+the people drew back humbly, but a little boy in a red frock with
+black spots pressed forward and offered him a sticky parly, which
+Gavin accepted, though not without a tremor, for children were more
+terrible to him then than bearded men. The boy's mother, trying not to
+look elated, bore him away, but her face said that he was made for
+life. With this little incident Gavin's career in Thrums began. I
+remembered it suddenly the other day when wading across the wynd where
+it took place. Many scenes in the little minister's life come back to
+me in this way. The first time I ever thought of writing his love
+story as an old man's gift to a little maid since grown tall, was one
+night while I sat alone in the school-house; on my knees a fiddle that
+has been my only living companion since I sold my hens. My mind had
+drifted back to the first time I saw Gavin and the Egyptian together,
+and what set it wandering to that midnight meeting was my garden gate
+shaking in the wind. At a gate on the hill I had first encountered
+these two. It rattled in his hand, and I looked up and saw them, and
+neither knew why I had such cause to start at the sight. Then the gate
+swung to. It had just such a click as mine.
+
+These two figures on the hill are more real to me than things that
+happened yesterday, but I do not know that I can make them live to
+others. A ghost-show used to come yearly to Thrums on the merry Muckle
+Friday, in which the illusion was contrived by hanging a glass between
+the onlookers and the stage. I cannot deny that the comings and goings
+of the ghost were highly diverting, yet the farmer of T'nowhead only
+laughed because he had paid his money at the hole in the door like the
+rest of us. T'nowhead sat at the end of a form where he saw round the
+glass and so saw no ghost. I fear my public may be in the same
+predicament. I see the little minister as he was at one-and-twenty,
+and the little girl to whom this story is to belong sees him, though
+the things I have to tell happened before she came into the world. But
+there are reasons why she should see; and I do not know that I can
+provide the glass for others. If they see round it, they will neither
+laugh nor cry with Gavin and Babbie.
+
+When Gavin came to Thrums he was as I am now, for the pages lay before
+him on which he was to write his life. Yet he was not quite as I am.
+The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story,
+and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the
+volume as it is with what he vowed to make it. But the biographer sees
+the last chapter while he is still at the first, and I have only to
+write over with ink what Gavin has written in pencil.
+
+How often is it a phantom woman who draws the man from the way he
+meant to go? So was man created, to hunger for the ideal that is above
+himself, until one day there is magic in the air, and the eyes of a
+girl rest upon him. He does not know that it is he himself who crowned
+her, and if the girl is as pure as he, their love is the one form of
+idolatry that is not quite ignoble. It is the joining of two souls on
+their way to God. But if the woman be bad, the test of the man is when
+he wakens from his dream. The nobler his ideal, the further will he
+have been hurried down the wrong way, for those who only run after
+little things will not go far. His love may now sink into passion,
+perhaps only to stain its wings and rise again, perhaps to drown.
+
+Babbie, what shall I say of you who make me write these things? I am
+not your judge. Shall we not laugh at the student who chafes when
+between him and his book comes the song of the thrushes, with whom, on
+the mad night you danced into Gavin's life, you had more in common
+than with Auld Licht ministers? The gladness of living was in your
+step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what love might be.
+
+[Illustration: "BABBIE."]
+
+You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds are
+free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to dazzle the
+eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken by you into
+his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice that so fair a
+thing could be; to think of you is still to be young. Even those who
+called you a little devil, of whom I have been one, admitted that
+in the end you had a soul, though not that you had been born with one.
+They said you stole it, and so made a woman of yourself. But again I
+say I am not your judge, and when I picture you as Gavin saw you
+first, a bare-legged witch dancing up Windyghoul, rowan berries in
+your black hair, and on your finger a jewel the little minister could
+not have bought with five years of toil, the shadows on my pages lift,
+and I cannot wonder that Gavin loved you.
+
+Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin's story, not mine.
+Yet must it be mine too, in a manner, and of myself I shall
+sometimes have to speak; not willingly, for it is time my little
+tragedy had died of old age. I have kept it to myself so long that
+now I would stand at its grave alone. It is true that when I heard
+who was to be the new minister I hoped for a day that the life broken
+in Harvie might be mended in Thrums, but two minutes' talk with Gavin
+showed me that Margaret had kept from him the secret which was hers
+and mine, and so knocked the bottom out of my vain hopes. I did
+not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor shall any one who
+blames her ever be called friend by me; but it was bitter to look at
+the white manse among the trees and know that I must never enter it.
+For Margaret's sake I had to keep aloof, yet this new trial came
+upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought that in those eighteen
+years my passions had burned like a ship till they sank, but I
+suffered again as on that awful night when Adam Dishart came back,
+nearly killing Margaret and tearing up all my ambitions by the
+root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums until I had looked again
+on Margaret, who thought me dead, and Gavin, who had never heard
+of me, and then I trudged back to the school-house. Something I
+heard of them from time to time during the winter--for in the
+gossip of Thrums I was well posted--but much of what is to be told
+here I only learned afterwards from those who knew it best. Gavin
+heard of me at times as the dominie in the glen who had ceased to
+attend the Auld Licht kirk, and Margaret did not even hear of me. It
+was all I could do for them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Two.
+
+RUNS ALONGSIDE THE MAKING OF A MINISTER.
+
+
+On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a quarry, at the foot
+of cliffs that may one day fall forward, is a village called Harvie.
+So has it shrunk since the day when I skulked from it that I hear of a
+traveller's asking lately at one of its doors how far he was from a
+village; yet Harvie throve once and was celebrated even in distant
+Thrums for its fish. Most of our weavers would have thought it as
+unnatural not to buy harvies in the square on the Muckle Friday, as to
+let Saturday night pass without laying in a sufficient stock of
+halfpennies to go round the family twice.
+
+Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early age that he
+could only recall thatched houses with nets drying on the roofs, and a
+sandy shore in which coarse grass grew. In the picture he could not
+pick out the house of his birth, though he might have been able to go
+to it had he ever returned to the village. Soon he learned that his
+mother did not care to speak of Harvie, and perhaps he thought that
+she had forgotten it too, all save one scene to which his memory still
+guided him. When his mind wandered to Harvie, Gavin saw the door of
+his home open and a fisherman enter, who scratched his head and then
+said, "Your man's drowned, missis." Gavin seemed to see many women
+crying, and his mother staring at them with a face suddenly painted
+white, and next to hear a voice that was his own saying, "Never mind,
+mother; I'll be a man to you now, and I'll need breeks for the
+burial." But Adam required no funeral, for his body lay deep in the
+sea.
+
+Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his mother's life, and the
+most memorable event of his own childhood. But it was neither. When
+Margaret, even after she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie, it was not
+at Adam's death she shuddered, but at the recollection of me.
+
+It would ill become me to take a late revenge on Adam Dishart now by
+saying what is not true of him. Though he died a fisherman he was a
+sailor for a great part of his life, and doubtless his recklessness
+was washed into him on the high seas, where in his time men made a
+crony of death, and drank merrily over dodging it for another night.
+To me his roars of laughter without cause were as repellent as a boy's
+drum; yet many faces that were long in my company brightened at his
+coming, and women, with whom, despite my yearning, I was in no wise a
+favorite, ran to their doors to listen to him as readily as to the
+bell-man. Children scurried from him if his mood was savage, but to
+him at all other times, while me they merely disregarded. There was
+always a smell of the sea about him. He had a rolling gait, unless he
+was drunk, when he walked very straight, and before both sexes he
+boasted that any woman would take him for his beard alone. Of this
+beard he took prodigious care, though otherwise thinking little of his
+appearance, and I now see that he understood women better than I did,
+who had nevertheless reflected much about them. It cannot be said that
+he was vain, for though he thought he attracted women strangely, that,
+I maintain, is a weakness common to all men, and so no more to be
+marvelled at than a stake in a fence. Foreign oaths were the nails
+with which he held his talk together, yet I doubt not they were a
+curiosity gathered at sea, like his chains of shells, more for his own
+pleasure than for others' pain. His friends gave them no weight, and
+when he wanted to talk emphatically he kept them back, though they
+were then as troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who
+has to speak with his spoil in his mouth.
+
+Adam was drowned on Gavin's fourth birthday, a year after I had to
+leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack in a storm, and could not
+reach the rope his partner flung him. "It's no go, lad," he shouted;
+"so long, Jim," and sank.
+
+A month afterwards Margaret sold her share in the smack, which was all
+Adam left her, and the furniture of the house was rouped. She took
+Gavin to Glasgow, where her only brother needed a housekeeper, and
+there mother and son remained until Gavin got his call to Thrums.
+During those seventeen years I lost knowledge of them as completely as
+Margaret had lost knowledge of me. On hearing of Adam's death I went
+back to Harvie to try to trace her, but she had feared this, and so
+told no one where she was going.
+
+According to Margaret, Gavin's genius showed itself while he was still
+a child. He was born with a brow whose nobility impressed her from the
+first. It was a minister's brow, and though Margaret herself was no
+scholar, being as slow to read as she was quick at turning bannocks on
+the girdle, she decided, when his age was still counted by months,
+that the ministry had need of him. In those days the first question
+asked of a child was not, "Tell me your name," but "What are you to
+be?" and one child in every family replied, "A minister." He was set
+apart for the Church as doggedly as the shilling a week for the rent,
+and the rule held good though the family consisted of only one boy.
+From his earliest days Gavin thought he had been fashioned for the
+ministry as certainly as a spade for digging, and Margaret rejoiced
+and marvelled thereat, though she had made her own puzzle. An
+enthusiastic mother may bend her son's mind as she chooses if she
+begins at once; nay, she may do stranger things. I know a mother in
+Thrums who loves "features," and had a child born with no chin to
+speak of. The neighbors expected this to bring her to the dust, but it
+only showed what a mother can do. In a few months that child had a
+chin with the best of them.
+
+Margaret's brother died, but she remained in his single room, and,
+ever with a picture of her son in a pulpit to repay her, contrived to
+keep Gavin at school. Everything a woman's fingers can do Margaret's
+did better than most, and among the wealthy people who employed
+her--would that I could have the teaching of the sons of such as were
+good to her in those hard days!--her gentle manner was spoken of. For
+though Margaret had no schooling, she was a lady at heart, moving and
+almost speaking as one even in Harvie, where they did not perhaps like
+her the better for it.
+
+At six Gavin hit another boy hard for belonging to the Established
+Church, and at seven he could not lose himself in the Shorter
+Catechism. His mother expounded the Scriptures to him till he was
+eight, when he began to expound them to her. By this time he was
+studying the practical work of the pulpit as enthusiastically as ever
+medical student cut off a leg. From a front pew in the gallery Gavin
+watched the minister's every movement, noting that the first thing to
+do on ascending the pulpit is to cover your face with your hands, as
+if the exalted position affected you like a strong light, and the
+second to move the big Bible slightly, to show that the kirk officer,
+not having had a university education, could not be expected to know
+the very spot on which it ought to lie. Gavin saw that the minister
+joined in the singing more like one countenancing a seemly thing than
+because he needed it himself, and that he only sang a mouthful now and
+again after the congregation was in full pursuit of the precentor. It
+was noteworthy that the first prayer lasted longer than all the
+others, and that to read the intimations about the Bible-class and the
+collection elsewhere than immediately before the last Psalm would have
+been as sacrilegious as to insert the dedication to King James at the
+end of Revelation. Sitting under a minister justly honoured in his
+day, the boy was often some words in advance of him, not vainglorious
+of his memory, but fervent, eager, and regarding the preacher as
+hardly less sacred than the Book. Gavin was encouraged by his
+frightened yet admiring mother to saw the air from their pew as the
+minister sawed it in the pulpit, and two benedictions were pronounced
+twice a Sabbath in that church, in the same words, the same manner,
+and simultaneously.
+
+There was a black year when the things of this world, especially its
+pastimes, took such a grip of Gavin that he said to Margaret he would
+rather be good at the high jump than the author of "The Pilgrim's
+Progress." That year passed, and Gavin came to his right mind. One
+afternoon Margaret was at home making a glengarry for him out of a
+piece of carpet, and giving it a tartan edging, when the boy bounded
+in from school, crying, "Come quick, mother, and you'll see him."
+Margaret reached the door in time to see a street musician flying from
+Gavin and his friends. "Did you take stock of him, mother?" the boy
+asked when he reappeared with the mark of a muddy stick on his back.
+"He's a Papist!--a sore sight, mother, a sore sight. We stoned him for
+persecuting the noble Martyrs."
+
+When Gavin was twelve he went to the university, and also got a place
+in a shop as errand boy. He used to run through the streets between
+his work and his classes. Potatoes and salt fish, which could then be
+got at two pence the pound if bought by the half-hundred weight, were
+his food. There was not always a good meal for two, yet when Gavin
+reached home at night there was generally something ready for him,
+and Margaret had supped "hours ago." Gavin's hunger urged him to fall
+to, but his love for his mother made him watchful.
+
+"What did you have yourself, mother?" he would demand suspiciously.
+
+"Oh, I had a fine supper, I assure you."
+
+"What had you?"
+
+"I had potatoes, for one thing."
+
+"And dripping?"
+
+"You may be sure."
+
+"Mother, you're cheating me. The dripping hasn't been touched since
+yesterday."
+
+"I dinna--don't--care for dripping--no much."
+
+Then would Gavin stride the room fiercely, a queer little figure.
+
+"Do you think I'll stand this, mother? Will I let myself be pampered
+with dripping and every delicacy while you starve?"
+
+"Gavin, I really dinna care for dripping."
+
+"Then I'll give up my classes, and we can have butter."
+
+"I assure you I'm no hungry. It's different wi' a growing laddie."
+
+"I'm not a growing laddie," Gavin would say, bitterly; "but, mother, I
+warn you that not another bite passes my throat till I see you eating
+too."
+
+So Margaret had to take her seat at the table, and when she said "I
+can eat no more," Gavin retorted sternly, "Nor will I, for fine I see
+through you."
+
+These two were as one far more than most married people, and, just as
+Gavin in his childhood reflected his mother, she now reflected him.
+The people for whom she sewed thought it was contact with them that
+had rubbed the broad Scotch from her tongue, but she was only keeping
+pace with Gavin. When she was excited the Harvie words came back to
+her, as they come back to me. I have taught the English language all
+my life, and I try to write it, but everything I say in this book I
+first think to myself in the Doric. This, too, I notice, that in
+talking to myself I am broader than when gossiping with the farmers of
+the glen, who send their children to me to learn English, and then
+jeer at them if they say "old lights" instead of "auld lichts."
+
+To Margaret it was happiness to sit through the long evenings sewing,
+and look over her work at Gavin as he read or wrote or recited to
+himself the learning of the schools. But she coughed every time the
+weather changed, and then Gavin would start.
+
+"You must go to your bed, mother," he would say, tearing himself from
+his books; or he would sit beside her and talk of the dream that was
+common to both--a dream of a manse where Margaret was mistress and
+Gavin was called the minister. Every night Gavin was at his mother's
+bedside to wind her shawl round her feet, and while he did it Margaret
+smiled.
+
+"Mother, this is the chaff pillow you've taken out of my bed, and
+given me your feather one."
+
+"Gavin, you needna change them. I winna have the feather pillow."
+
+"Do you dare to think I'll let you sleep on chaff? Put up your head.
+Now, is that soft?"
+
+"It's fine. I dinna deny but what I sleep better on feathers. Do you
+mind, Gavin, you bought this pillow for me the moment you got your
+bursary money?"
+
+The reserve that is a wall between many of the Scottish poor had been
+broken down by these two. When he saw his mother sleeping happily,
+Gavin went back to his work. To save the expense of a lamp, he would
+put his book almost beneath the dying fire, and, taking the place of
+the fender, read till he was shivering with cold.
+
+"Gavin, it is near morning, and you not in your bed yet! What are you
+thinking about so hard?"
+
+"Oh, mother, I was wondering if the time would ever come when I would
+be a minister, and you would have an egg for your breakfast every
+morning."
+
+So the years passed, and soon Gavin would be a minister. He had now
+sermons to prepare, and every one of them was first preached to
+Margaret. How solemn was his voice, how his eyes flashed, how stern
+were his admonitions.
+
+"Gavin, such a sermon I never heard. The spirit of God is on you. I'm
+ashamed you should have me for a mother."
+
+"God grant, mother," Gavin said, little thinking what was soon to
+happen, or he would have made this prayer on his knees, "that you may
+never be ashamed to have me for a son."
+
+"Ah, mother," he would say wistfully, "it is not a great sermon, but
+do you think I'm preaching Christ? That is what I try, but I'm carried
+away and forget to watch myself."
+
+"The Lord has you by the hand, Gavin; and mind, I dinna say that
+because you're my laddie."
+
+"Yes, you do, mother, and well I know it, and yet it does me good to
+hear you."
+
+That it did him good I, who would fain have shared those days with
+them, am very sure. The praise that comes of love does not make us
+vain, but humble rather. Knowing what we are, the pride that shines in
+our mother's eyes as she looks at us is about the most pathetic thing
+a man has to face, but he would be a devil altogether if it did not
+burn some of the sin out of him.
+
+Not long before Gavin preached for our kirk and got his call, a great
+event took place in the little room at Glasgow. The student appeared
+for the first time before his mother in his ministerial clothes. He
+wore the black silk hat, that was destined to become a terror to
+evil-doers in Thrums, and I dare say he was rather puffed up about
+himself that day. You would probably have smiled at him.
+
+"It's a pity I'm so little, mother," he said with a sigh.
+
+"You're no what I would call a particularly long man," Margaret said,
+"but you're just the height I like."
+
+Then Gavin went out in his grandeur, and Margaret cried for an hour.
+She was thinking of me as well as of Gavin, and as it happens, I know
+that I was thinking at the same time of her. Gavin kept a diary in
+those days, which I have seen, and by comparing it with mine, I
+discovered that while he was showing himself to his mother in his
+black clothes, I was on my way back from Tilliedrum, where I had gone
+to buy a sand-glass for the school. The one I bought was so like
+another Margaret had used at Harvie that it set me thinking of her
+again all the way home. This is a matter hardly worth mentioning, and
+yet it interests me.
+
+Busy days followed the call to Thrums, and Gavin had difficulty in
+forcing himself to his sermons when there was always something more to
+tell his mother about the weaving town they were going to, or about
+the manse or the furniture that had been transferred to him by the
+retiring minister. The little room which had become so familiar that
+it seemed one of a family party of three had to be stripped, and many
+of its contents were sold. Among what were brought to Thrums was a
+little exercise book, in which Margaret had tried, unknown to Gavin,
+to teach herself writing and grammar, that she might be less unfit for
+a manse. He found it accidentally one day. It was full of "I am, thou
+art, he is," and the like, written many times in a shaking hand. Gavin
+put his arms round his mother when he saw what she had been doing. The
+exercise book is in my desk now, and will be my little maid's when I
+die.
+
+"Gavin, Gavin," Margaret said many times in those last days at
+Glasgow, "to think it has all come true!"
+
+"Let the last word you say in the house be a prayer of thankfulness,"
+she whispered to him when they were taking a final glance at the old
+home.
+
+In the bare room they called the house, the little minister and his
+mother went on their knees, but, as it chanced, their last word there
+was not addressed to God.
+
+"Gavin," Margaret whispered as he took her arm, "do you think this
+bonnet sets me?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Three.
+
+THE NIGHT-WATCHERS.
+
+
+What first struck Margaret in Thrums was the smell of the caddis. The
+town smells of caddis no longer, but whiffs of it may be got even now
+as one passes the houses of the old, where the lay still swings at
+little windows like a great ghost pendulum. To me it is a homely
+smell, which I draw in with a great breath, but it was as strange to
+Margaret as the weavers themselves, who, in their colored nightcaps
+and corduroys streaked with threads, gazed at her and Gavin. The
+little minister was trying to look severe and old, but twenty-one was
+in his eye.
+
+"Look, mother, at that white house with the green roof. That is the
+manse."
+
+The manse stands high, with a sharp eye on all the town. Every back
+window in the Tenements has a glint of it, and so the back of the
+Tenements is always better behaved than the front. It was in the front
+that Jamie Don, a pitiful bachelor all his life because he thought the
+women proposed, kept his ferrets, and here, too, Beattie hanged
+himself, going straight to the clothes-posts for another rope when the
+first one broke, such was his determination. In the front Sanders
+Gilruth openly boasted (on Don's potato-pit) that by having a seat in
+two churches he could lie in bed on Sabbath and get the credit of
+being at one or other. (Gavin made short work of him.) To the
+right-minded the Auld Licht manse was as a family Bible, ever lying
+open before them, but Beattie spoke for more than himself when he
+said, "Dagone that manse! I never gie a swear but there it is
+glowering at me."
+
+The manse looks down on the town from the north-east, and is reached
+from the road that leaves Thrums behind it in another moment by a
+wide, straight path, so rough that to carry a fraught of water to the
+manse without spilling was to be superlatively good at one thing.
+Packages in a cart it set leaping like trout in a fishing-creel.
+Opposite the opening of the garden wall in the manse, where for many
+years there had been an intention of putting up a gate, were two big
+stones a yard apart, standing ready for the winter, when the path was
+often a rush of yellow water, and this the only bridge to the glebe
+dyke, down which the minister walked to church.
+
+When Margaret entered the manse on Gavin's arm, it was a whitewashed
+house of five rooms, with a garret in which the minister could sleep
+if he had guests, as during the Fast week. It stood with its garden
+within high walls, and the roof facing southward was carpeted with
+moss that shone in the sun in a dozen shades of green and yellow.
+Three firs guarded the house from west winds, but blasts from the
+north often tore down the steep fields and skirled through the manse,
+banging all its doors at once. A beech, growing on the east side,
+leant over the roof as if to gossip with the well in the courtyard.
+The garden was to the south, and was over full of gooseberry and
+currant bushes. It contained a summer seat, where strange things were
+soon to happen.
+
+Margaret would not even take off her bonnet until she had seen through
+the manse and opened all the presses. The parlour and kitchen were
+downstairs, and of the three rooms above, the study was so small that
+Gavin's predecessor could touch each of its walls without shifting his
+position. Every room save Margaret's had long-lidded beds, which close
+as if with shutters, but hers was coff-fronted, or comparatively
+open, with carving on the wood like the ornamentation of coffins.
+Where there were children in a house they liked to slope the boards of
+the closed-in bed against the dresser, and play at sliding down
+mountains on them.
+
+But for many years there had been no children in the manse. He in
+whose ways Gavin was to attempt the heavy task of walking had been a
+widower three months after his marriage, a man narrow when he came to
+Thrums, but so large-hearted when he left it that I, who know there is
+good in all the world because of the lovable souls I have met in this
+corner of it, yet cannot hope that many are as near to God as he. The
+most gladsome thing in the world is that few of us fall very low; the
+saddest that, with such capabilities, we seldom rise high. Of those
+who stand perceptibly above their fellows I have known very few; only
+Mr. Carfrae and two or three women.
+
+Gavin only saw a very frail old minister who shook as he walked, as if
+his feet were striking against stones. He was to depart on the morrow
+to the place of his birth, but he came to the manse to wish his
+successor God-speed. Strangers were so formidable to Margaret that she
+only saw him from her window.
+
+"May you never lose sight of God, Mr. Dishart," the old man said in
+the parlour. Then he added, as if he had asked too much, "May you
+never turn from Him as I often did when I was a lad like you."
+
+As this aged minister, with the beautiful face that God gives to all
+who love Him and follow His commandments, spoke of his youth, he
+looked wistfully around the faded parlour.
+
+"It is like a dream," he said. "The first time I entered this room the
+thought passed through me that I would cut down that cherry-tree,
+because it kept out the light, but, you see, it outlives me. I grew
+old while looking for the axe. Only yesterday I was the young
+minister, Mr. Dishart, and to-morrow you will be the old one, bidding
+good-bye to your successor."
+
+His eyes came back to Gavin's eager face.
+
+"You are very young, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"Nearly twenty-one."
+
+"Twenty-one! Ah, my dear sir, you do not know how pathetic that sounds
+to me. Twenty-one! We are children for the second time at twenty-one,
+and again when we are grey and put all our burden on the Lord. The
+young talk generously of relieving the old of their burdens, but the
+anxious heart is to the old when they see a load on the back of the
+young. Let me tell you, Mr. Dishart, that I would condone many things
+in one-and-twenty now that I dealt hardly with at middle age. God
+Himself, I think, is very willing to give one-and-twenty a second
+chance."
+
+"I am afraid," Gavin said anxiously, "that I look even younger."
+
+"I think," Mr. Carfrae answered, smiling, "that your heart is as fresh
+as your face; and that is well. The useless men are those who never
+change with the years. Many views that I held to in my youth and long
+afterwards are a pain to me now, and I am carrying away from Thrums
+memories of errors into which I fell at every stage of my ministry.
+When you are older you will know that life is a long lesson in
+humility."
+
+He paused.
+
+"I hope," he said nervously, "that you don't sing the Paraphrases?"
+
+Mr. Carfrae had not grown out of all his prejudices, you see; indeed,
+if Gavin had been less bigoted than he on this question they might
+have parted stiffly. The old minister would rather have remained to
+die in his pulpit than surrender it to one who read his sermons.
+Others may blame him for this, but I must say here plainly that I
+never hear a minister reading without wishing to send him back to
+college.
+
+"I cannot deny," Mr. Carfrae said, "that I broke down more than once
+to-day. This forenoon I was in Tillyloss, for the last time, and it
+so happens that there is scarcely a house in it in which I have not
+had a marriage or prayed over a coffin. Ah, sir, these are the scenes
+that make the minister more than all his sermons. You must join
+the family, Mr. Dishart, or you are only a minister once a week. And
+remember this, if your call is from above, it is a call to stay. Many
+such partings in a lifetime as I have had to-day would be too
+heartrending."
+
+"And yet," Gavin said, hesitatingly, "they told me in Glasgow that I
+had received a call from the mouth of hell."
+
+"Those were cruel words, but they only mean that people who are seldom
+more than a day's work in advance of want sometimes rise in arms for
+food. Our weavers are passionately religious, and so independent that
+they dare any one to help them, but if their wages were lessened they
+could not live. And so at talk of reduction they catch fire. Change of
+any kind alarms them, and though they call themselves Whigs, they rose
+a few years ago over the paving of the streets and stoned the workmen,
+who were strangers, out of the town."
+
+"And though you may have thought the place quiet to-day, Mr. Dishart,
+there was an ugly outbreak only two months ago, when the weavers
+turned on the manufacturers for reducing the price of the web, made a
+bonfire of some of their doors, and terrified one of them into leaving
+Thrums. Under the command of some Chartists, the people next paraded
+the streets to the music of fife and drum, and six policemen who drove
+up from Tilliedrum in a light cart were sent back tied to the seats."
+
+"No one has been punished?"
+
+"Not yet, but nearly two years ago there was a similar riot, and the
+sheriff took no action for months. Then one night the square suddenly
+filled with soldiers, and the ringleaders were seized in their beds.
+Mr. Dishart, the people are determined not to be caught in that way
+again, and ever since the rising a watch has been kept by night on
+every road that leads to Thrums. The signal that the soldiers are
+coming is to be the blowing of a horn. If you ever hear that horn, I
+implore you to hasten to the square."
+
+"The weavers would not fight?"
+
+"You do not know how the Chartists have fired this part of the
+country. One misty day, a week ago, I was on the hill; I thought I had
+it to myself, when suddenly I heard a voice cry sharply, 'Shoulder
+arms.' I could see no one, and after a moment I put it down to a freak
+of the wind. Then all at once the mist before me blackened, and a body
+of men seemed to grow out of it. They were not shadows; they were
+Thrums weavers drilling, with pikes in their hands.
+
+"They broke up," Mr. Carfrae continued, after a pause, "at my
+entreaty, but they have met again since then."
+
+"And there were Auld Lichts among them?" Gavin asked. "I should have
+thought they would be frightened at our precentor, Lang Tammas, who
+seems to watch for backsliding in the congregation as if he had
+pleasure in discovering it."
+
+Gavin spoke with feeling, for the precentor had already put him
+through his catechism, and it was a stiff ordeal.
+
+"The precentor!" said Mr. Carfrae. "Why, he was one of them."
+
+The old minister, once so brave a figure, tottered as he rose to go,
+and reeled in a dizziness until he had walked a few paces. Gavin went
+with him to the foot of the manse road; without his hat, as all Thrums
+knew before bedtime.
+
+"I begin," Gavin said, as they were parting, "where you leave off, and
+my prayer is that I may walk in your ways."
+
+"Ah, Mr. Dishart," the white-haired minister said, with a sigh, "the
+world does not progress so quickly as a man grows old. You only begin
+where I began."
+
+He left Gavin, and then, as if the little minister's last words had
+hurt him, turned and solemnly pointed his staff upward. Such men are
+the strong nails that keep the world together.
+
+The twenty-one-years-old minister returned to the manse somewhat
+sadly, but when he saw his mother at the window of her bedroom, his
+heart leapt at the thought that she was with him and he had eighty
+pounds a year. Gaily he waved both his hands to her, and she answered
+with a smile, and then, in his boyishness, he jumped over a gooseberry
+bush. Immediately afterwards he reddened and tried to look venerable,
+for while in the air he had caught sight of two women and a man
+watching him from the dyke. He walked severely to the door, and, again
+forgetting himself, was bounding upstairs to Margaret, when Jean, the
+servant, stood scandalised in his way.
+
+"I don't think she caught me," was Gavin's reflection, and "The Lord
+preserve's!" was Jean's.
+
+Gavin found his mother wondering how one should set about getting a
+cup of tea in a house that had a servant in it. He boldly rang the
+bell, and the willing Jean answered it so promptly (in a rush and
+jump) that Margaret was as much startled as Aladdin the first time he
+rubbed his lamp.
+
+Manse servants of the most admired kind move softly, as if constant
+contact with a minister were goloshes to them; but Jean was new and
+raw, only having got her place because her father might be an elder
+any day. She had already conceived a romantic affection for her
+master; but to say "sir" to him--as she thirsted to do--would have
+been as difficult to her as to swallow oysters. So anxious was she to
+please that when Gavin rang she fired herself at the bedroom, but
+bells were novelties to her as well as to Margaret, and she cried,
+excitedly, "What is 't?" thinking the house must be on fire.
+
+"There's a curran folk at the back door," Jean announced later, "and
+their respects to you, and would you gie them some water out o' the
+well? It has been a drouth this aucht days, and the pumps is locked.
+Na," she said, as Gavin made a too liberal offer, "that would toom the
+well, and there's jimply enough for oursels. I should tell you, too,
+that three o' them is no Auld Lichts."
+
+"Let that make no difference," Gavin said grandly, but Jean changed
+his message to: "A bowlful apiece to Auld Lichts; all other
+denominations one cupful."
+
+"Ay, ay," said Snecky Hobart, letting down the bucket, "and we'll
+include atheists among other denominations." The conversation came to
+Gavin and Margaret through the kitchen doorway.
+
+"Dinna class Jo Cruickshanks wi' me," said Sam'l Langlands the U. P.
+
+"Na, na," said Cruickshanks the atheist, "I'm ower independent to be
+religious. I dinna gang to the kirk to cry, 'Oh, Lord, gie, gie,
+gie.'"
+
+"Take tent o' yoursel', my man," said Lang Tammas sternly, "or you'll
+soon be whaur you would neifer the warld for a cup o' that cauld
+water."
+
+"Maybe you've ower keen an interest in the devil, Tammas," retorted
+the atheist; "but, ony way, if it's heaven for climate, it's hell for
+company."
+
+"Lads," said Snecky, sitting down on the bucket, "we'll send Mr.
+Dishart to Jo. He'll make another Rob Dow o' him."
+
+"Speak mair reverently o' your minister," said the precentor. "He has
+the gift."
+
+"I hinna naturally your solemn rasping word, Tammas, but in the heart
+I speak in all reverence. Lads, the minister has a word! I tell you he
+prays near like one giving orders."
+
+"At first," Snecky continued, "I thocht yon lang candidate was the
+earnestest o' them a', and I dinna deny but when I saw him wi' his
+head bowed-like in prayer during the singing I says to mysel', 'Thou
+art the man.' Ay, but Betsy wraxed up her head, and he wasna praying.
+He was combing his hair wi' his fingers on the sly."
+
+"You ken fine, Sneck," said Cruickshanks, "that you said, 'Thou art
+the man' to ilka ane o' them, and just voted for Mr. Dishart because
+he preached hinmost."
+
+"I didna say it to Mr. Urquhart, the ane that preached second," Sneck
+said. "That was the lad that gaed through ither."
+
+"Ay," said Susy Tibbits, nicknamed by Haggart "the Timidest Woman"
+because she once said she was too young to marry, "but I was fell
+sorry for him, just being over anxious. He began bonny, flinging
+himself, like ane inspired, at the pulpit door, but after Hendry Munn
+pointed at it and cried out, 'Be cautious, the sneck's loose,' he a'
+gaed to bits. What a coolness Hendry has, though I suppose it was his
+duty, him being kirk-officer."
+
+"We didna want a man," Lang Tammas said, "that could be put out by sic
+a sma' thing as that. Mr. Urquhart was in sic a ravel after it that
+when he gies out the first line o' the hunder and nineteenth psalm for
+singing, says he, 'And so on to the end.' Ay, that finished his
+chance."
+
+"The noblest o' them to look at," said Tibbie Birse, "was that ane
+frae Aberdeen, him that had sic a saft side to Jacob."
+
+"Ay," said Snecky, "and I speired at Dr. McQueen if I should vote for
+him. 'Looks like a genius, does he?' says the Doctor. 'Weel, then,'
+says he, 'dinna vote for him, for my experience is that there's no
+folk sic idiots as them that looks like geniuses.'"
+
+"Sal," Susy said, "it's a guid thing we've settled, for I enjoyed
+sitting like a judge upon them so muckle that I sair doubt it was a
+kind o' sport to me."
+
+"It was no sport to them, Susy, I'se uphaud, but it is a blessing
+we've settled, and ondoubtedly we've got the pick o' them. The only
+thing Mr. Dishart did that made me oneasy was his saying the word
+Caesar as if it began wi' a _k_."
+
+"He'll startle you mair afore you're done wi' him," the atheist said
+maliciously. "I ken the ways o' thae ministers preaching for kirks.
+Oh, they're cunning. You was a' pleased that Mr. Dishart spoke about
+looms and webs, but, lathies, it was a trick. Ilka ane o' thae young
+ministers has a sermon about looms for weaving congregations, and a
+second about beating swords into ploughshares for country places, and
+another on the great catch of fishes for fishing villages. That's
+their stock-in-trade; and just you wait and see if you dinna get the
+ploughshares and the fishes afore the month's out. A minister
+preaching for a kirk is one thing, but a minister placed in't may be a
+very different berry."
+
+"Joseph Cruickshanks," cried the precentor, passionately, "none o'
+your d----d blasphemy!"
+
+They all looked at Whamond, and he dug his teeth into his lips in
+shame.
+
+"Wha's swearing now?" said the atheist.
+
+But Whamond was quick.
+
+"Matthew, twelve and thirty-one," he said.
+
+"Dagont, Tammas," exclaimed the baffled Cruickshanks, "you're aye
+quoting Scripture. How do you no quote Feargus O'Connor?"
+
+"Lads," said Snecky, "Jo hasna heard Mr. Dishart's sermons. Ay, we get
+it scalding when he comes to the sermon. I canna thole a minister
+that preaches as if heaven was round the corner."
+
+"If you're hitting at our minister, Snecky," said James Cochrane, "let
+me tell you he's a better man than yours."
+
+"A better curler, I dare say."
+
+"A better prayer."
+
+"Ay, he can pray for a black frost as if it was ane o' the Royal
+Family. I ken his prayers, 'O Lord, let it haud for anither day, and
+keep the snaw awa'.' Will you pretend, Jeames, that Mr. Duthie could
+make onything o' Rob Dow?"
+
+"I admit that Rob's awakening was an extraordinary thing, and
+sufficient to gie Mr. Dishart a name. But Mr. Carfrae was baffled wi'
+Rob too."
+
+"Jeames, if you had been in our kirk that day Mr. Dishart preached
+for't you would be wearying the now for Sabbath, to be back in't
+again. As you ken, that wicked man there, Jo Cruickshanks, got Rob
+Dow, drucken, cursing, poaching Rob Dow, to come to the kirk to annoy
+the minister. Ay, he hadna been at that work for ten minutes when Mr.
+Dishart stopped in his first prayer and ga'e Rob a look. I couldna see
+the look, being in the precentor's box, but as sure as death I felt it
+boring through me. Rob is hard wood, though, and soon he was at his
+tricks again. Weel, the minister stopped a second time in the sermon,
+and so awful was the silence that a heap o' the congregation couldna
+keep their seats. I heard Rob breathing quick and strong. Mr. Dishart
+had his arm pointed at him a' this time, and at last he says sternly,
+'Come forward.' Listen, Joseph Cruickshanks, and tremble. Rob gripped
+the board to keep himsel' frae obeying, and again Mr. Dishart says,
+'Come forward,' and syne Rob rose shaking, and tottered to the pulpit
+stair like a man suddenly shot into the Day of Judgment. 'You hulking
+man of sin,' cries Mr. Dishart, not a tick fleid, though Rob's as big
+as three o' him, 'sit down on the stair and attend to me, or I'll step
+doun frae the pulpit and run you out of the house of God.'"
+
+"And since that day," said Hobart, "Rob has worshipped Mr. Dishart as
+a man that has stepped out o' the Bible. When the carriage passed this
+day we was discussing the minister, and Sam'l Dickie wasna sure but
+what Mr. Dishart wore his hat rather far back on his head. You should
+have seen Rob. 'My certie,' he roars, 'there's the shine frae Heaven
+on that little minister's face, and them as says there's no has me to
+fecht.'"
+
+"Ay, weel," said the U. P., rising, "we'll see how Rob wears--and how
+your minister wears too. I wouldna like to sit in a kirk whaur they
+daurna sing a paraphrase."
+
+"The Psalms of David," retorted Whamond, "mount straight to heaven,
+but your paraphrases sticks to the ceiling o' the kirk."
+
+"You're a bigoted set, Tammas Whamond, but I tell you this, and it's
+my last words to you the nicht, the day'll come when you'll hae Mr.
+Duthie, ay, and even the U. P. minister, preaching in the Auld Licht
+kirk."
+
+"And let this be my last words to you," replied the precentor,
+furiously; "that rather than see a U. P. preaching in the Auld Licht
+kirk I would burn in hell fire for ever!"
+
+This gossip increased Gavin's knowledge of the grim men with whom he
+had now to deal. But as he sat beside Margaret after she had gone to
+bed, their talk was pleasant.
+
+"You remember, mother," Gavin said, "how I almost prayed for the manse
+that was to give you an egg every morning. I have been telling Jean
+never to forget the egg."
+
+"Ah, Gavin, things have come about so much as we wanted that I'm a
+kind o' troubled. It's hardly natural, and I hope nothing terrible is
+to happen now."
+
+Gavin arranged her pillows as she liked them, and when he next stole
+into the room in his stocking soles to look at her, he thought she was
+asleep. But she was not. I dare say she saw at that moment Gavin in
+his first frock, and Gavin in knickerbockers, and Gavin as he used to
+walk into the Glasgow room from college, all still as real to her as
+the Gavin who had a kirk.
+
+The little minister took away the lamp to his own room, shaking his
+fist at himself for allowing his mother's door to creak. He pulled up
+his blind. The town lay as still as salt. But a steady light showed in
+the south, and on pressing his face against the window he saw another
+in the west. Mr. Carfrae's words about the night-watch came back to
+him. Perhaps it had been on such a silent night as this that the
+soldiers marched into Thrums. Would they come again?
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Four.
+
+FIRST COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
+
+
+A learned man says in a book, otherwise beautiful with truth, that
+villages are family groups. To him Thrums would only be a village,
+though town is the word we have ever used, and this is not true of it.
+Doubtless we have interests in common, from which a place so near (but
+the road is heavy) as Tilliedrum is shut out, and we have an
+individuality of our own too, as if, like our red houses, we came from
+a quarry that supplies no other place. But we are not one family. In
+the old days, those of us who were of the Tenements seldom wandered to
+the Croft head, and if we did go there we saw men to whom we could not
+always give a name. To flit from the Tanage brae to Haggart's road was
+to change one's friends. A kirk-wynd weaver might kill his swine and
+Tillyloss not know of it until boys ran westward hitting each other
+with the bladders. Only the voice of the dulsemen could be heard all
+over Thrums at once. Thus even in a small place but a few outstanding
+persons are known to everybody.
+
+In eight days Gavin's figure was more familiar in Thrums than many
+that had grown bent in it. He had already been twice to the cemetery,
+for a minister only reaches his new charge in time to attend a
+funeral. Though short of stature he cast a great shadow. He was so
+full of his duties, Jean said, that though he pulled to the door as he
+left the manse, he had passed the currant bushes before it snecked. He
+darted through courts, and invented ways into awkward houses. If you
+did not look up quickly he was round the corner. His visiting
+exhausted him only less than his zeal in the pulpit, from which,
+according to report, he staggered damp with perspiration to the
+vestry, where Hendry Munn wrung him like a wet cloth. A deaf lady,
+celebrated for giving out her washing, compelled him to hold her
+trumpet until she had peered into all his crannies, with the Shorter
+Catechism for a lantern. Janet Dundas told him, in answer to his
+knock, that she could not abide him, but she changed her mind when he
+said her garden was quite a show. The wives who expected a visit
+scrubbed their floors for him, cleaned out their presses for him, put
+diamond socks on their bairns for him, rubbed their hearthstones blue
+for him, and even tidied up the garret for him, and triumphed over the
+neighbours whose houses he passed by. For Gavin blundered occasionally
+by inadvertence, as when he gave dear old Betty Davie occasion to say
+bitterly--
+
+"Ou ay, you can sail by my door and gang to Easie's, but I'm thinking
+you would stop at mine too if I had a brass handle on't."
+
+So passed the first four weeks, and then came the fateful night of the
+seventeenth of October, and with it the strange woman. Family worship
+at the manse was over and Gavin was talking to his mother, who never
+crossed the threshold save to go to church (though her activity at
+home was among the marvels Jean sometimes slipped down to the
+Tenements to announce), when Wearyworld the policeman came to the door
+"with Rob Dow's compliments, and if you're no wi' me by ten o'clock
+I'm to break out again." Gavin knew what this meant, and at once set
+off for Rob's.
+
+"You'll let me gang a bit wi' you," the policeman entreated, "for till
+Rob sent me on this errand not a soul has spoken to me the day; ay,
+mony a ane hae I spoken to, but not a man, woman, nor bairn would
+fling me a word."
+
+"I often meant to ask you," Gavin said as they went along the
+Tenements, which smelled at that hour of roasted potatoes, "why you
+are so unpopular."
+
+"It's because I'm police. I'm the first ane that has ever been in
+Thrums, and the very folk that appointed me at a crown a week looks
+upon me as a disgraced man for accepting. It's Gospel that my ain wife
+is short wi' me when I've on my uniform, though weel she kens that I
+would rather hae stuck to the loom if I hadna ha'en sic a queer richt
+leg. Nobody feels the shame o' my position as I do mysel', but this is
+a town without pity."
+
+"It should be a consolation to you that you are discharging useful
+duties."
+
+"But I'm no. I'm doing harm. There's Charles Dickson says that the
+very sicht o' my uniform rouses his dander so muckle that it makes him
+break windows, though a peaceably-disposed man till I was appointed.
+And what's the use o' their haeing a policeman when they winna come to
+the lock-up after I lay hands on them?"
+
+"Do they say they won't come?"
+
+"Say? Catch them saying onything! They just gie me a wap into the
+gutters. If they would speak I wouldna complain, for I'm nat'rally the
+sociablest man in Thrums."
+
+"Rob, however, had spoken to you."
+
+"Because he had need o' me. That was ay Rob's way, converted or no
+converted. When he was blind drunk he would order me to see him safe
+hame, but would he crack wi' me? Na, na."
+
+Wearyworld, who was so called because of his forlorn way of muttering,
+"It's a weary warld, and nobody bides in't," as he went his melancholy
+rounds, sighed like one about to cry, and Gavin changed the subject.
+
+"Is the watch for the soldiers still kept up?" he asked.
+
+"It is, but the watchers winna let me in aside them. I'll let you see
+that for yoursel' at the head o' the Roods, for they watch there in
+the auld windmill."
+
+Most of the Thrums lights were already out, and that in the windmill
+disappeared as footsteps were heard.
+
+"You're desperate characters," the policeman cried, but got no answer.
+He changed his tactics.
+
+"A fine nicht for the time o' year," he cried. No answer.
+
+"But I wouldna wonder," he shouted, "though we had rain afore
+morning." No answer.
+
+"Surely you could gie me a word frae ahint the door. You're doing an
+onlawful thing, but I dinna ken wha you are."
+
+"You'll swear to that?" some one asked gruffly.
+
+"I swear to it, Peter."
+
+Wearyworld tried another six remarks in vain.
+
+"Ay," he said to the minister, "that's what it is to be an onpopular
+man. And now I'll hae to turn back, for the very anes that winna let
+me join them would be the first to complain if I gaed out o' bounds."
+
+Gavin found Dow at New Zealand, a hamlet of mud houses, whose tenants
+could be seen on any Sabbath morning washing themselves in the burn
+that trickled hard by. Rob's son, Micah, was asleep at the door, but
+he brightened when he saw who was shaking him.
+
+"My father put me out," he explained, "because he's daft for the
+drink, and was fleid he would curse me. He hasna cursed me," Micah
+added, proudly, "for an aught days come Sabbath. Hearken to him at his
+loom. He daurna take his feet off the treadles for fear o' running
+straucht to the drink."
+
+Gavin went in. The loom, and two stools, the one four-footed and the
+other a buffet, were Rob's most conspicuous furniture. A shaving-strap
+hung on the wall. The fire was out, but the trunk of a tree, charred
+at one end, showed how he heated his house. He made a fire of peat,
+and on it placed one end of a tree trunk that might be six feet long.
+As the tree burned away it was pushed further into the fireplace, and
+a roaring fire could always be got by kicking pieces of the
+smouldering wood and blowing them into flame with the bellows. When
+Rob saw the minister he groaned relief and left his loom. He had been
+weaving, his teeth clenched, his eyes on fire, for seven hours.
+
+"I wasna fleid," little Micah said to the neighbours afterwards, "to
+gang in wi' the minister. He's a fine man that. He didna ca' my father
+names. Na, he said, 'You're a brave fellow, Rob,' and he took my
+father's hand, he did. My father was shaking after his fecht wi' the
+drink, and, says he, 'Mr. Dishart,' he says, 'if you'll let me break
+out nows and nans, I could bide straucht atween times, but I canna
+keep sober if I hinna a drink to look forrit to.' Ay, my father
+prigged sair to get one fou day in the month, and he said, 'Syne if I
+die sudden, there's thirty chances to one that I gang to heaven, so
+it's worth risking.' But Mr. Dishart wouldna hear o't, and he cries,
+'No, by God,' he cries, 'we'll wrestle wi' the devil till we throttle
+him,' and down him and my father gaed on their knees.
+
+"The minister prayed a lang time till my father said his hunger for
+the drink was gone, 'but', he says, 'it swells up in me o' a sudden
+aye, and it may be back afore you're hame.' 'Then come to me at once,'
+says Mr. Dishart; but my father says, 'Na, for it would haul me into
+the public-house as if it had me at the end o' a rope, but I'll send
+the laddie.'
+
+"You saw my father crying the minister back? It was to gie him twa
+pound, and, says my father, 'God helping me,' he says, 'I'll droon
+mysel in the dam rather than let the drink master me, but in case it
+should get haud o' me and I should die drunk, it would be a michty
+gratification to me to ken that you had the siller to bury me
+respectable without ony help frae the poor's rates.' The minister
+wasna for taking it at first, but he took it when he saw how earnest
+my father was. Ay, he's a noble man. After he gaed awa my father made
+me learn the names o' the apostles frae Luke sixth, and he says to me,
+'Miss out Bartholomew,' he says, 'for he did little, and put Gavin
+Dishart in his place.'"
+
+Feeling as old as he sometimes tried to look, Gavin turned homeward.
+Margaret was already listening for him. You may be sure she knew his
+step. I think our steps vary as much as the human face. My bookshelves
+were made by a blind man who could identify by their steps nearly all
+who passed his window. Yet he has admitted to me that he could not
+tell wherein my steps differed from others; and this I believe, though
+rejecting his boast that he could distinguish a minister's step from a
+doctor's, and even tell to which denomination the minister belonged.
+
+I have sometimes asked myself what would have been Gavin's future had
+he gone straight home that night from Dow's. He would doubtless have
+seen the Egyptian before morning broke, but she would not have come
+upon him like a witch. There are, I dare say, many lovers who would
+never have been drawn to each other had they met for the first time,
+as, say, they met the second time. But such dreaming is to no purpose.
+Gavin met Sanders Webster, the mole-catcher, and was persuaded by him
+to go home by Caddam Wood.
+
+Gavin took the path to Caddam, because Sanders told him the Wild
+Lindsays were there, a gypsy family that threatened the farmers by day
+and danced devilishly, it was said, at night. The little minister knew
+them by repute as a race of giants, and that not many persons would
+have cared to face them alone at midnight; but he was feeling as one
+wound up to heavy duties, and meant to admonish them severely.
+
+Sanders, an old man who lived with his sister Nanny on the edge of the
+wood, went with him, and for a time both were silent. But Sanders had
+something to say.
+
+"Was you ever at the Spittal, Mr. Dishart?" he asked.
+
+"Lord Rintoul's house at the top of Glen Quharity? No."
+
+"Hae you ever looked on a lord?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Or on an auld lord's young leddyship? I have."
+
+"What is she?"
+
+"You surely ken that Rintoul's auld, and is to be married on a young
+leddyship. She's no' a leddyship yet, but they're to be married soon,
+so I may say I've seen a leddyship. Ay, an impressive sicht. It was
+yestreen."
+
+"Is there a great difference in their ages?"
+
+"As muckle as atween auld Peter Spens and his wife, wha was saxteen
+when he was saxty, and she was playing at dumps in the street when her
+man was waiting for her to make his porridge. Ay, sic a differ doesna
+suit wi' common folk, but of course earls can please themsels.
+Rintoul's so fond o' the leddyship 'at is to be, that when she was at
+the school in Edinbury he wrote to her ilka day. Kaytherine Crummie
+telled me that, and she says aince you're used to it, writing letters
+is as easy as skinning moles. I dinna ken what they can write sic a
+heap about, but I daur say he gies her his views on the Chartist
+agitation and the potato disease, and she'll write back about the
+romantic sichts o' Edinbury and the sermons o' the grand preachers she
+hears. Sal, though, thae grand folk has no religion to speak o', for
+they're a' English kirk. You're no' speiring what her leddyship said
+to me?"
+
+"What did she say?"
+
+"Weel, you see, there was a dancing ball on, and Kaytherine Crummie
+took me to a window whaur I could stand on a flower-pot and watch the
+critturs whirling round in the ball like teetotums. What's mair, she
+pointed out the leddyship that's to be to me, and I just glowered at
+her, for thinks I, 'Take your fill, Sanders, and whaur there's lords
+and leddyships, dinna waste a minute on colonels and honourable misses
+and sic like dirt.' Ay, but what wi' my een blinking at the blaze o'
+candles, I lost sicht o' her till all at aince somebody says at my
+lug, 'Well, my man, and who is the prettiest lady in the room?' Mr.
+Dishart, it was her leddyship. She looked like a star."
+
+"And what did you do?"
+
+"The first thing I did was to fall aff the flower-pot; but syne I came
+to, and says I, wi' a polite smirk, 'I'm thinking your leddyship,'
+says I, 'as you're the bonniest yourself.'"
+
+"I see you are a cute man, Sanders."
+
+"Ay, but that's no' a'. She lauched in a pleased way and tapped me wi'
+her fan, and says she, 'Why do you think me the prettiest?' I dinna
+deny but what that staggered me, but I thocht a minute, and took a
+look at the other dancers again, and syne I says, michty sly like,
+'The other leddies,' I says, 'has sic sma' feet.'"
+
+Sanders stopped here and looked doubtingly at Gavin.
+
+"I canna make up my mind," he said, "whether she liked that, for she
+rapped my knuckles wi' her fan fell sair, and aff she gaed. Ay, I
+consulted Tammas Haggart about it, and he says, 'The flirty crittur,'
+he says. What would you say, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+Gavin managed to escape without giving an answer, for here their roads
+separated. He did not find the Wild Lindsays, however. Children of
+whim, of prodigious strength while in the open, but destined to wither
+quickly in the hot air of towns, they had gone from Caddam, leaving
+nothing of themselves behind but a black mark burned by their fires
+into the ground. Thus they branded the earth through many counties
+until some hour when the spirit of wandering again fell on them, and
+they forsook their hearths with as little compunction as the bird
+leaves its nest.
+
+Gavin had walked quickly, and he now stood silently in the wood, his
+hat in his hand. In the moonlight the grass seemed tipped with hoar
+frost. Most of the beeches were already bare, but the shoots,
+clustering round them, like children at their mother's skirts, still
+retained their leaves red and brown. Among the pines these leaves were
+as incongruous as a wedding-dress at a funeral. Gavin was standing on
+grass, but there were patches of heather within sight, and broom, and
+the leaf of the blaeberry. Where the beeches had drawn up the earth
+with them as they grew, their roots ran this way and that, slippery to
+the feet and looking like disinterred bones. A squirrel appeared
+suddenly on the charred ground, looked doubtfully at Gavin to see if
+he was growing there, and then glided up a tree, where it sat eyeing
+him, and forgetting to conceal its shadow. Caddam was very still. At
+long intervals came from far away the whack of an axe on wood. Gavin
+was in a world by himself, and this might be some one breaking into
+it.
+
+The mystery of woods by moonlight thrilled the little minister. His
+eyes rested on the shining roots, and he remembered what had been told
+him of the legend of Caddam, how once on a time it was a mighty wood,
+and a maiden most beautiful stood on its confines, panting and afraid,
+for a wicked man pursued her; how he drew near, and she ran a little
+way into the wood, and he followed her, and she still ran, and still
+he followed, until both were for ever lost, and the bones of her
+pursuer lie beneath a beech, but the lady may still be heard singing
+in the woods if the night be fine, for then she is a glad spirit, but
+weeping when there is wild wind, for then she is but a mortal seeking
+a way out of the wood.
+
+[Illustration: IN CADDAM WOOD.]
+
+The squirrel slid down the fir and was gone. The axe's blows
+ceased. Nothing that moved was in sight. The wind that has its nest in
+trees was circling around with many voices, that never rose above a
+whisper, and were often but the echo of a sigh.
+
+Gavin was in the Caddam of past days, where the beautiful maiden
+wanders ever, waiting for him who is so pure that he may find her. He
+will wander over the tree-tops looking for her, with the moon for his
+lamp, and some night he will hear her singing. The little minister
+drew a deep breath, and his foot snapped a brittle twig. Then he
+remembered who and where he was, and stooped to pick up his staff. But
+he did not pick it up, for as his fingers were closing on it the lady
+began to sing.
+
+For perhaps a minute Gavin stood stock still, like an intruder. Then
+he ran towards the singing, which seemed to come from Windyghoul, a
+straight road through Caddam that farmers use in summer, but leave in
+the back end of the year to leaves and pools. In Windyghoul there is
+either no wind or so much that it rushes down the sieve like an army,
+entering with a shriek of terror, and escaping with a derisive howl.
+The moon was crossing the avenue. But Gavin only saw the singer.
+
+She was still fifty yards away, sometimes singing gleefully, and again
+letting her body sway lightly as she came dancing up Windyghoul. Soon
+she was within a few feet of the little minister, to whom singing,
+except when out of tune, was a suspicious thing, and dancing a device
+of the devil. His arm went out wrathfully, and his intention was to
+pronounce sentence on this woman.
+
+But she passed, unconscious of his presence, and he had not moved nor
+spoken. Though really of the average height, she was a little thing to
+the eyes of Gavin, who always felt tall and stout except when he
+looked down. The grace of her swaying figure was a new thing in the
+world to him. Only while she passed did he see her as a gleam of
+colour, a gypsy elf poorly clad, her bare feet flashing beneath a
+short green skirt, a twig of rowan berries stuck carelessly into her
+black hair. Her face was pale. She had an angel's loveliness. Gavin
+shook.
+
+Still she danced onwards, but she was very human, for when she came to
+muddy water she let her feet linger in it, and flung up her arms,
+dancing more wantonly than before. A diamond on her finger shot a
+thread of fire over the pool. Undoubtedly she was the devil.
+
+Gavin leaped into the avenue, and she heard him and looked behind. He
+tried to cry "Woman!" sternly, but lost the word, for now she saw him,
+and laughed with her shoulders, and beckoned to him, so that he shook
+his fist at her. She tripped on, but often turning her head beckoned
+and mocked him, and he forgot his dignity and his pulpit and all other
+things, and ran after her. Up Windyghoul did he pursue her, and it was
+well that the precentor was not there to see. She reached the mouth of
+the avenue, and kissing her hand to Gavin, so that the ring gleamed
+again, was gone.
+
+The minister's one thought was to find her, but he searched in vain.
+She might be crossing the hill on her way to Thrums, or perhaps she
+was still laughing at him from behind a tree. After a longer time than
+he was aware of, Gavin realised that his boots were chirping and his
+trousers streaked with mud. Then he abandoned the search and hastened
+homewards in a rage.
+
+[Illustration: IN WINDYGHOUL.]
+
+From the hill to the manse the nearest way is down two fields, and the
+little minister descended them rapidly. Thrums, which is red in
+daylight, was grey and still as the cemetery. He had glimpses of
+several of its deserted streets. To the south the watch-light showed
+brightly, but no other was visible. So it seemed to Gavin, and
+then--suddenly--he lost the power to move. He had heard the horn.
+Thrice it sounded, and thrice it struck him to the heart. He looked
+again and saw a shadow stealing along the Tenements, then another,
+then half-a-dozen. He remembered Mr. Carfrae's words, "If you ever
+hear that horn, I implore you to hasten to the square," and in another
+minute he had reached the Tenements.
+
+Now again he saw the gypsy. She ran past him, half-a-score of men,
+armed with staves and pikes, at her heels. At first he thought they
+were chasing her, but they were following her as a leader. Her eyes
+sparkled as she waved them to the square with her arms.
+
+"The soldiers, the soldiers!" was the universal cry.
+
+"Who is that woman?" demanded Gavin, catching hold of a frightened old
+man.
+
+"Curse the Egyptian limmer," the man answered, "she's egging my laddie
+on to fecht."
+
+"Bless her rather," the son cried, "for warning us that the sojers is
+coming. Put your ear to the ground, Mr. Dishart, and you'll hear the
+dirl o' their feet."
+
+The young man rushed away to the square, flinging his father from him.
+Gavin followed. As he turned into the school wynd, the town drum began
+to beat, windows were thrown open, and sullen men ran out of closes
+where women were screaming and trying to hold them back. At the foot
+of the wynd Gavin passed Sanders Webster.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," the mole-catcher cried, "hae you seen that Egyptian?
+May I be struck dead if it's no' her little leddyship."
+
+But Gavin did not hear him.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Five.
+
+A WARLIKE CHAPTER, CULMINATING IN THE FLOUTING OF THE MINISTER BY THE
+WOMAN.
+
+
+"Mr. Dishart!"
+
+Jean had clutched at Gavin in Bank Street. Her hair was streaming, and
+her wrapper but half buttoned.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Dishart, look at the mistress! I couldna keep her in the
+manse."
+
+Gavin saw his mother beside him, bare-headed, trembling.
+
+"How could I sit still, Gavin, and the town full o' the skirls of
+women and bairns? Oh, Gavin, what can I do for them? They will suffer
+most this night."
+
+As Gavin took her hand he knew that Margaret felt for the people more
+than he.
+
+"But you must go home, mother," he said, "and leave me to do my duty.
+I will take you myself if you will not go with Jean. Be careful of
+her, Jean."
+
+"Ay, will I," Jean answered, then burst into tears. "Mr. Dishart," she
+cried, "if they take my father they'd best take my mither too."
+
+The two women went back to the manse, where Jean relit the fire,
+having nothing else to do, and boiled the kettle, while Margaret
+wandered in anguish from room to room.
+
+[Illustration: THE WARNING.]
+
+Men nearly naked ran past Gavin, seeking to escape from Thrums by the
+fields he had descended. When he shouted to them they only ran faster.
+A Tillyloss weaver whom he tried to stop struck him savagely and sped
+past to the square. In Bank Street, which was full of people at one
+moment and empty the next, the minister stumbled over old Charles
+Yuill.
+
+"Take me and welcome," Yuill cried, mistaking Gavin for the enemy. He
+had only one arm through the sleeve of his jacket, and his feet were
+bare.
+
+"I am Mr. Dishart. Are the soldiers already in the square, Yuill?"
+
+"They'll be there in a minute."
+
+The man was so weak that Gavin had to hold him.
+
+"Be a man, Charles. You have nothing to fear. It is not such as you
+the soldiers have come for. If need be, I can swear that you had not
+the strength, even if you had the will, to join in the weavers'
+riot."
+
+"For Godsake, Mr. Dishart," Yuill cried, his hands chattering on
+Gavin's coat, "dinna swear that. My laddie was in the thick o' the
+riot; and if he's ta'en there's the poor's-house gaping for Kitty and
+me, for I couldna weave half a web a week. If there's a warrant agin
+onybody o' the name of Yuill, swear it's me; swear I'm a desperate
+character, swear I'm michty strong for all I look palsied; and if when
+they take me, my courage breaks down, swear the mair, swear I
+confessed my guilt to you on the Book."
+
+As Yuill spoke the quick rub-a-dub of a drum was heard.
+
+"The soldiers!" Gavin let go his hold of the old man, who hastened
+away to give himself up.
+
+"That's no the sojers," said a woman; "it's the folk gathering in the
+square. This'll be a watery Sabbath in Thrums."
+
+"Rob Dow," shouted Gavin, as Dow flung past with a scythe in his hand,
+"lay down that scythe."
+
+"To hell wi' religion!" Rob retorted, fiercely; "it spoils a' thing."
+
+"Lay down that scythe; I command you."
+
+Rob stopped undecidedly, then cast the scythe from him, but its
+rattle on the stones was more than he could bear.
+
+"I winna," he cried, and, picking it up, ran to the square.
+
+An upper window in Bank Street opened, and Dr. McQueen put out his
+head. He was smoking as usual.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," he said, "you will return home at once if you are a
+wise man; or, better still, come in here. You can do nothing with
+these people to-night."
+
+"I can stop their fighting."
+
+"You will only make black blood between them and you."
+
+"Dinna heed him, Mr. Dishart," cried some women.
+
+"You had better heed him," cried a man.
+
+"I will not desert my people," Gavin said.
+
+"Listen, then, to my prescription," the doctor replied. "Drive that
+gypsy lassie out of the town before the soldiers reach it. She is
+firing the men to a red-heat through sheer devilry."
+
+"She brocht the news, or we would have been nipped in our beds," some
+people cried.
+
+"Does any one know who she is?" Gavin demanded, but all shook their
+heads. The Egyptian, as they called her, had never been seen in these
+parts before.
+
+"Has any other person seen the soldiers?" he asked. "Perhaps this is a
+false alarm."
+
+"Several have seen them within the last few minutes," the doctor
+answered. "They came from Tilliedrum, and were advancing on us from
+the south, but when they heard that we had got the alarm they stopped
+at the top of the brae, near T'nowhead's farm. Man, you would take
+these things more coolly if you smoked."
+
+"Show me this woman," Gavin said sternly to those who had been
+listening. Then a stream of people carried him into the square.
+
+The square has altered little, even in these days of enterprise,
+when Tillyloss has become Newton Bank, and the Craft Head Croft
+Terrace, with enamelled labels on them for the guidance of slow
+people, who forget their address and have to run to the end of the
+street and look up every time they write a letter. The stones on
+which the butter-wives sat have disappeared, and with them the clay
+walls and the outside stairs. Gone, too, is the stair of the
+town-house, from the top of which the drummer roared the gossip of
+the week on Sabbaths to country folk, to the scandal of all who
+knew that the proper thing on that day is to keep your blinds down;
+but the town-house itself, round and red, still makes exit to the
+south troublesome. Wherever streets meet the square there is a
+house in the centre of them, and thus the heart of Thrums is a
+box, in which the stranger finds himself suddenly, wondering at
+first how he is to get out, and presently how he got in.
+
+To Gavin, who never before had seen a score of people in the square at
+once, here was a sight strange and terrible. Andrew Struthers, an old
+soldier, stood on the outside stair of the town-house, shouting words
+of command to some fifty weavers, many of them scantily clad, but all
+armed with pikes and poles. Most were known to the little minister,
+but they wore faces that were new to him. Newcomers joined the body
+every moment. If the drill was clumsy the men were fierce. Hundreds of
+people gathered around, some screaming, some shaking their fists at
+the old soldier, many trying to pluck their relatives out of danger.
+Gavin could not see the Egyptian. Women and old men, fighting for the
+possession of his ear, implored him to disperse the armed band. He ran
+up the town-house stair, and in a moment it had become a pulpit.
+
+"Dinna dare to interfere, Mr. Dishart," Struthers said savagely.
+
+"Andrew Struthers," said Gavin solemnly, "in the name of God I order
+you to leave me alone. If you don't," he added ferociously, "I'll
+fling you over the stair."
+
+"Dinna heed him, Andrew," some one shouted, and another cried, "He
+canna understand our sufferings; he has dinner ilka day."
+
+Struthers faltered, however, and Gavin cast his eye over the armed
+men.
+
+"Rob Dow," he said, "William Carmichael, Thomas Whamond, William Munn,
+Alexander Hobart, Henders Haggart, step forward."
+
+These were Auld Lichts, and when they found that the minister would
+not take his eyes off them, they obeyed, all save Rob Dow.
+
+"Never mind him, Rob," said the atheist, Cruickshanks, "it's better
+playing cards in hell than singing psalms in heaven."
+
+"Joseph Cruickshanks," responded Gavin grimly, "you will find no cards
+down there."
+
+Then Rob also came to the foot of the stair. There was some angry
+muttering from the crowd, and young Charles Yuill exclaimed, "Curse
+you, would you lord it ower us on week-days as weel as on Sabbaths?"
+
+"Lay down your weapons," Gavin said to the six men.
+
+They looked at each other. Hobart slipped his pike behind his back.
+
+"I hae no weapon," he said slily.
+
+"Let me hae my fling this nicht," Dow entreated, "and I'll promise to
+bide sober for a twelvemonth."
+
+"Oh, Rob, Rob!" the minister said bitterly, "are you the man I prayed
+with a few hours ago?"
+
+The scythe fell from Rob's hands.
+
+"Down wi' your pikes," he roared to his companions, "or I'll brain you
+wi' them."
+
+"Ay, lay them down," the precentor whispered, "but keep your feet on
+them."
+
+Then the minister, who was shaking with excitement, though he did not
+know it, stretched forth his arms for silence, and it came so suddenly
+as to frighten the people in the neighboring streets.
+
+"If he prays we're done for," cried young Charles Yuill, but even in
+that hour many of the people were unbonneted.
+
+"Oh, Thou who art the Lord of hosts," Gavin prayed, "we are in Thy
+hands this night. These are Thy people, and they have sinned; but Thou
+art a merciful God, and they were sore tried, and knew not what they
+did. To Thee, our God, we turn for deliverance, for without Thee we
+are lost."
+
+The little minister's prayer was heard all round the square, and many
+weapons were dropped as an Amen to it.
+
+"If you fight," cried Gavin, brightening as he heard the clatter of
+the iron on the stones, "your wives and children may be shot in the
+streets. These soldiers have come for a dozen of you; will you be
+benefited if they take away a hundred?"
+
+"Oh, hearken to him," cried many women.
+
+"I winna," answered a man, "for I'm ane o' the dozen. Whaur's the
+Egyptian?"
+
+"Here."
+
+Gavin saw the crowd open, and the woman of Windyghoul come out of it,
+and, while he should have denounced her, he only blinked, for once
+more her loveliness struck him full in the eyes. She was beside him on
+the stair before he became a minister again.
+
+"How dare you, woman?" he cried; but she flung a rowan berry at him.
+
+"If I were a man," she exclaimed, addressing the people, "I wouldna
+let myself be catched like a mouse in a trap."
+
+"We winna," some answered.
+
+"What kind o' women are you," cried the Egyptian, her face gleaming as
+she turned to her own sex, "that bid your men folk gang to gaol when a
+bold front would lead them to safety? Do you want to be husbandless
+and hameless?"
+
+"Disperse, I command you!" cried Gavin. "This abandoned woman is
+inciting you to riot."
+
+"Dinna heed this little man," the Egyptian retorted.
+
+It is curious to know that even at that anxious moment Gavin winced
+because she called him little.
+
+"She has the face of a mischief-maker," he shouted, "and her words are
+evil."
+
+"You men and women o' Thrums," she responded, "ken that I wish you
+weel by the service I hae done you this nicht. Wha telled you the
+sojers was coming?"
+
+"It was you; it was you!"
+
+"Ay, and mony a mile I ran to bring the news. Listen, and I'll tell
+you mair."
+
+"She has a false tongue," Gavin cried; "listen not to the brazen
+woman."
+
+"What I have to tell," she said, "is as true as what I've telled
+already, and how true that is you a' ken. You're wondering how the
+sojers has come to a stop at the tap o' the brae instead o' marching
+on the town. Here's the reason. They agreed to march straucht to the
+square if the alarm wasna given, but if it was they were to break into
+small bodies and surround the town so that you couldna get out. That's
+what they're doing now."
+
+At this the screams were redoubled, and many men lifted the weapons
+they had dropped.
+
+"Believe her not," cried Gavin. "How could a wandering gypsy know all
+this?"
+
+"Ay, how can you ken?" some demanded.
+
+"It's enough that I do ken," the Egyptian answered. "And this mair I
+ken, that the captain of the soldiers is confident he'll nab every one
+o' you that's wanted unless you do one thing."
+
+"What is 't?"
+
+[Illustration: THE SOLDIERS.]
+
+"If you a' run different ways you're lost, but if you keep thegither
+you'll be able to force a road into the country, whaur you can
+scatter. That's what he's fleid you'll do."
+
+"Then it's what we will do."
+
+"It is what you will not do," Gavin said passionately. "The truth is
+not in this wicked woman."
+
+But scarcely had he spoken when he knew that startling news had
+reached the square. A murmur arose on the skirts of the mob, and swept
+with the roar of the sea towards the town-house. A detachment of the
+soldiers were marching down the Roods from the north.
+
+"There's some coming frae the east-town end," was the next intelligence;
+"and they've gripped Sanders Webster, and auld Charles Yuill has
+given himsel' up."
+
+"You see, you see," the gypsy said, flashing triumph at Gavin.
+
+"Lay down your weapons," Gavin cried, but his power over the people
+had gone.
+
+"The Egyptian spoke true," they shouted; "dinna heed the minister."
+
+Gavin tried to seize the gypsy by the shoulders, but she slipped past
+him down the stair, and crying "Follow me!" ran round the town-house
+and down the brae.
+
+"Woman!" he shouted after her, but she only waved her arms scornfully.
+The people followed her, many of the men still grasping their weapons,
+but all in disorder. Within a minute after Gavin saw the gleam of the
+ring on her finger, as she waved her hands, he and Dow were alone in
+the square.
+
+"She's an awfu' woman that," Rob said. "I saw her lauching."
+
+Gavin ground his teeth.
+
+"Rob Dow," he said, slowly, "if I had not found Christ I would have
+throttled that woman. You saw how she flouted me?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Six.
+
+IN WHICH THE SOLDIERS MEET THE AMAZONS OF THRUMS.
+
+
+Dow looked shamefacedly at the minister, and then set off up the
+square.
+
+"Where are you going, Rob?"
+
+"To gie myself up. I maun do something to let you see there's one man
+in Thrums that has mair faith in you than in a fliskmahoy."
+
+"And only one, Rob. But I don't know that they want to arrest you."
+
+"Ay, I had a hand in tying the polissman to the----"
+
+"I want to hear nothing about that," Gavin said, quickly.
+
+"Will I hide, then?"
+
+"I dare not advise you to do that. It would be wrong."
+
+Half a score of fugitives tore past the town-house, and were out of
+sight without a cry. There was a tread of heavier feet, and a dozen
+soldiers, with several policemen and two prisoners, appeared suddenly
+on the north side of the square.
+
+"Rob," cried the minister in desperation, "run!"
+
+When the soldiers reached the town-house, where they locked up their
+prisoners, Dow was skulking eastward, and Gavin running down the
+brae.
+
+"They're fechting," he was told, "they're fechting on the brae, the
+sojers is firing, a man's killed!"
+
+But this was an exaggeration.
+
+The brae, though short, is very steep. There is a hedge on one side of
+it, from which the land falls away, and on the other side a hillock.
+Gavin reached the scene to see the soldiers marching down the brae,
+guarding a small body of policemen. The armed weavers were retreating
+before them. A hundred women or more were on the hillock, shrieking
+and gesticulating. Gavin joined them, calling on them not to fling the
+stones they had begun to gather.
+
+The armed men broke into a rabble, flung down their weapons, and fled
+back towards the town-house. Here they almost ran against the soldiers
+in the square, who again forced them into the brae. Finding themselves
+about to be wedged between the two forces, some crawled through the
+hedge, where they were instantly seized by policemen. Others sought to
+climb up the hillock and then escape into the country. The policemen
+clambered after them. The men were too frightened to fight, but a
+woman seized a policeman by the waist and flung him head foremost
+among the soldiers. One of these shouted "Fire!" but the captain cried
+"No." Then came showers of missiles from the women. They stood their
+ground and defended the retreat of the scared men.
+
+Who flung the first stone is not known, but it is believed to have
+been the Egyptian. The policemen were recalled, and the whole body
+ordered to advance down the brae. Thus the weavers who had not escaped
+at once were driven before them, and soon hemmed in between the two
+bodies of soldiers, when they were easily captured. But for two
+minutes there was a thick shower of stones and clods of earth.
+
+It was ever afterwards painful to Gavin to recall this scene, but less
+on account of the shower of stones than because of the flight of one
+divit in it. He had been watching the handsome young captain,
+Halliwell, riding with his men; admiring him, too, for his coolness.
+This coolness exasperated the gypsy, who twice flung at Halliwell and
+missed him. He rode on smiling contemptuously.
+
+"Oh, if I could only fling straight!" the Egyptian moaned.
+
+Then she saw the minister by her side, and in the tick of a clock
+something happened that can never be explained. For the moment Gavin
+was so lost in misery over the probable effect of the night's rioting
+that he had forgotten where he was. Suddenly the Egyptian's beautiful
+face was close to his, and she pressed a divit into his hand, at the
+same time pointing at the officer, and whispering "Hit him."
+
+Gavin flung the clod of earth, and hit Halliwell on the head.
+
+I say I cannot explain this. I tell what happened, and add with
+thankfulness that only the Egyptian witnessed the deed. Gavin, I
+suppose, had flung the divit before he could stay his hand. Then he
+shrank in horror.
+
+"Woman!" he cried again.
+
+"You are a dear," she said, and vanished.
+
+By the time Gavin was breathing freely again the lock-up was crammed
+with prisoners, and the Riot Act had been read from the town-house
+stair. It is still remembered that the baron-bailie, to whom this duty
+fell, had got no further than, "Victoria, by the Grace of God," when
+the paper was struck out of his hands.
+
+When a stirring event occurs up here we smack our lips over it for
+months, and so I could still write a history of that memorable night
+in Thrums. I could tell how the doctor, a man whose shoulders often
+looked as if they had been caught in a shower of tobacco ash, brought
+me the news to the school-house, and now, when I crossed the fields to
+dumfounder Waster Lunny with it, I found Birse, the post, reeling off
+the story to him as fast as a fisher could let out line. I know who
+was the first woman on the Marywell brae to hear the horn, and how she
+woke her husband, and who heard it first at the Denhead and the
+Tenements, with what they immediately said and did. I had from Dite
+Deuchar's own lips the curious story of his sleeping placidly
+throughout the whole disturbance, and on wakening in the morning
+yoking to his loom as usual; and also his statement that such ill-luck
+was enough to shake a man's faith in religion. The police had
+knowledge that enabled them to go straight to the houses of the
+weavers wanted, but they sometimes brought away the wrong man, for
+such of the people as did not escape from the town had swopped houses
+for the night--a trick that served them better than all their drilling
+on the hill. Old Yuill's son escaped by burying himself in a
+peat-rick, and Snecky Hobart by pretending that he was a sack of
+potatoes. Less fortunate was Sanders Webster, the mole-catcher already
+mentioned. Sanders was really an innocent man. He had not even been in
+Thrums on the night of the rising against the manufacturers, but
+thinking that the outbreak was to be left unpunished, he wanted his
+share in the glory of it. So he had boasted of being a ringleader
+until many believed him, including the authorities. His braggadocio
+undid him. He was run to earth in a pig-sty, and got nine months. With
+the other arrests I need not concern myself, for they have no part in
+the story of the little minister.
+
+While Gavin was with the families whose breadwinners were now in the
+lock-up, a cell that was usually crammed on fair nights and empty for
+the rest of the year, the sheriff and Halliwell were in the round-room
+of the town-house, not in a good temper. They spoke loudly, and some
+of their words sank into the cell below.
+
+"The whole thing has been a fiasco," the sheriff was heard saying,
+"owing to our failing to take them by surprise. Why, three-fourths of
+those taken will have to be liberated, and we have let the worst
+offenders slip through our hands."
+
+"Well," answered Halliwell, who was wearing a heavy cloak, "I have
+brought your policemen into the place, and that is all I undertook to
+do."
+
+"You brought them, but at the expense of alarming the countryside. I
+wish we had come without you."
+
+"Nonsense! My men advanced like ghosts. Could your police have come
+down that brae alone to-night?"
+
+"Yes, because it would have been deserted. Your soldiers, I tell you,
+have done the mischief. This woman, who, so many of our prisoners
+admit, brought the news of our coming, must either have got it from
+one of your men or have seen them on the march."
+
+"The men did not know their destination. True, she might have seen us
+despite our precautions, but you forget that she told them how we were
+to act in the event of our being seen. That is what perplexes me."
+
+"Yes, and me too, for it was a close secret between you and me and
+Lord Rintoul and not half-a-dozen others."
+
+"Well, find the woman, and we shall get the explanation. If she is
+still in the town she cannot escape, for my men are everywhere."
+
+"She was seen ten minutes ago."
+
+"Then she is ours. I say, Riach, if I were you I would set all my
+prisoners free and take away a cart-load of their wives instead. I
+have only seen the backs of the men of Thrums, but, on my word, I very
+nearly ran away from the women. Hallo! I believe one of your police
+has caught our virago single-handed."
+
+So Halliwell exclaimed, hearing some one shout, "This is the rascal!"
+But it was not the Egyptian who was then thrust into the round-room.
+It was John Dunwoodie, looking very sly. Probably there was not, even
+in Thrums, a cannier man than Dunwoodie. His religious views were
+those of Cruickshanks, but he went regularly to church "on the
+off-chance of there being a God after all; so I'm safe, whatever side
+may be wrong."
+
+"This is the man," explained a policeman, "who brought the alarm. He
+admits himself having been in Tilliedrum just before we started."
+
+"Your name, my man?" the sheriff demanded.
+
+"It micht be John Dunwoodie," the tinsmith answered cautiously.
+
+"But is it?"
+
+"I dinna say it's no."
+
+"You were in Tilliedrum this evening?"
+
+"I micht hae been."
+
+"Were you?"
+
+"I'll swear to nothing."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I'm a canny man."
+
+"Into the cell with him," Halliwell cried, losing patience.
+
+"Leave him to me," said the sheriff. "I understand the sort of man.
+Now, Dunwoodie, what were you doing in Tilliedrum?"
+
+"I was taking my laddie down to be prenticed to a writer there,"
+answered Dunwoodie, falling into the sheriff's net.
+
+"What are you yourself?"
+
+"I micht be a tinsmith to trade."
+
+"And you, a mere tinsmith, dare to tell me that a lawyer was willing
+to take your son into his office? Be cautious, Dunwoodie."
+
+"Weel, then, the laddie's highly edicated and I hae siller, and that's
+how the writer was to take him and make a gentleman o' him."
+
+"I learn from the neighbours," the policeman explained, "that this is
+partly true, but what makes us suspect him is this. He left the laddie
+at Tilliedrum, and yet when he came home the first person he sees at
+the fireside is the laddie himself. The laddie had run home, and the
+reason plainly was that he had heard of our preparations and wanted to
+alarm the town."
+
+"There seems something in this, Dunwoodie," the sheriff said, "and if
+you cannot explain it I must keep you in custody."
+
+"I'll make a clean breast o't," Dunwoodie replied, seeing that in this
+matter truth was best. "The laddie was terrible against being made a
+gentleman, and when he saw the kind o' life he would hae to lead,
+clean hands, clean dickies, and no gutters on his breeks, his heart
+took mair scunner at genteelity than ever, and he ran hame. Ay, I was
+mad when I saw him at the fireside, but he says to me, 'How would you
+like to be a gentleman yoursel', father?' he says, and that so
+affected me 'at I'm to gie him his ain way."
+
+Another prisoner, Dave Langlands, was confronted with Dunwoodie.
+
+"John Dunwoodie's as innocent as I am mysel," Dave said, "and I'm most
+michty innocent. It wasna John but the Egyptian that gave the alarm. I
+tell you what, sheriff, if it'll make me innocenter-like I'll picture
+the Egyptian to you just as I saw her, and syne you'll be able to
+catch her easier."
+
+"You are an honest fellow," said the sheriff.
+
+"I only wish I had the whipping of him," growled Halliwell, who was of
+a generous nature.
+
+"For what business had she," continued Dave righteously, "to meddle in
+other folks' business? She's no a Thrums lassie, and so I say, 'Let
+the law take its course on her.'"
+
+"Will you listen to such a cur, Riach?" asked Halliwell.
+
+"Certainly. Speak out, Langlands."
+
+"Weel, then, I was in the windmill the nicht."
+
+"You were a watcher?"
+
+"I happened to be in the windmill wi' another man," Dave went on,
+avoiding the officer's question.
+
+"What was his name?" demanded Halliwell.
+
+"It was the Egyptian I was to tell you about," Dave said, looking to
+the sheriff.
+
+"Ah, yes, you only tell tales about women," said Halliwell.
+
+"Strange women," corrected Dave. "Weel, we was there, and it would
+maybe be twal o'clock, and we was speaking (but about lawful things)
+when we heard some ane running yont the road. I keeked through a hole
+in the door, and I saw it was an Egyptian lassie 'at I had never
+clapped een on afore. She saw the licht in the window, and she cried,
+'Hie, you billies in the windmill, the sojers is coming!' I fell in a
+fricht, but the other man opened the door, and again she cries, 'The
+sojers is coming; quick, or you'll be ta'en.' At that the other man up
+wi' his bonnet and ran, but I didna make off so smart."
+
+"You had to pick yourself up first," suggested the officer.
+
+"Sal, it was the lassie picked me up; ay, and she picked up a horn at
+the same time."
+
+"'Blaw on that,' she cried, 'and alarm the town.' But, sheriff, I
+didna do't. Na, I had ower muckle respect for the law."
+
+"In other words," said Halliwell, "you also bolted, and left the gypsy
+to blow the horn herself."
+
+"I dinna deny but what I made my feet my friend, but it wasna her that
+blew the horn. I ken that, for I looked back and saw her trying to
+do't, but she couldna, she didna ken the way."
+
+"Then who did blow it?"
+
+"The first man she met, I suppose. We a' kent that the horn was to be
+the signal except Wearywarld. He's police, so we kept it frae him."
+
+"That is all you saw of the woman?"
+
+"Ay, for I ran straucht to my garret, and there your men took me. Can
+I gae hame now, sheriff?"
+
+"No, you cannot. Describe the woman's appearance."
+
+"She had a heap o' rowan berries stuck in her hair, and, I think, she
+had on a green wrapper and a red shawl. She had a most extraordinary
+face. I canna exact describe it, for she would be lauchin' one second
+and syne solemn the next. I tell you her face changed as quick as you
+could turn the pages o' a book. Ay, here comes Wearywarld to speak up
+for me."
+
+Wearyworld entered cheerfully.
+
+"This is the local policeman," a Tilliedrum officer said; "we have
+been searching for him everywhere, and only found him now."
+
+"Where have you been?" asked the sheriff, wrathfully.
+
+"Whaur maist honest men is at this hour," replied Wearyworld; "in my
+bed."
+
+"How dared you ignore your duty at such a time?"
+
+"It's a long story," the policeman answered, pleasantly, in
+anticipation of a talk at last.
+
+"Answer me in a word."
+
+"In a word!" cried the policeman, quite crestfallen. "It canna be
+done. You'll need to cross-examine me, too. It's my lawful richt."
+
+"I'll take you to the Tilliedrum gaol for your share in this night's
+work if you do not speak to the purpose. Why did you not hasten to our
+assistance?"
+
+"As sure as death I never kent you was here. I was up the Roods on my
+rounds when I heard an awfu' din down in the square, and thinks I,
+there's rough characters about, and the place for honest folk is their
+bed. So to my bed I gaed, and I was in't when your men gripped me."
+
+"We must see into this before we leave. In the meantime you will act
+as a guide to my searchers. Stop! Do you know anything of this
+Egyptian?"
+
+"What Egyptian? Is't a lassie wi' rowans in her hair?"
+
+[Illustration: THE EGYPTIAN.]
+
+"The same. Have you seen her?"
+
+"That I have. There's nothing agin her, is there? Whatever it is, I'll
+uphaud she didna do't, for a simpler, franker-spoken crittur couldna
+be."
+
+"Never mind what I want her for. When did you see her?"
+
+"It would be about twal o'clock," began Wearyworld unctuously, "when I
+was in the Roods, ay, no lang afore I heard the disturbance in the
+square. I was standing in the middle o' the road, wondering how the
+door o' the windmill was swinging open, when she came up to me.
+
+"'A fine nicht for the time o' year,' I says to her, for nobody but
+the minister had spoken to me a' day.
+
+"'A very fine nicht,' says she, very frank, though she was breathing
+quick like as if she had been running. 'You'll be police?' says she.
+
+"'I am,' says I, 'and wha be you?'
+
+"'I'm just a puir gypsy lassie,' she says.
+
+"'And what's that in your hand?' says I.
+
+"'It's a horn I found in the wood,' says she, 'but it's rusty and
+winna blaw.'
+
+"I laughed at her ignorance, and says I, 'I warrant I could blaw it.'
+
+"'I dinna believe you,' says she.
+
+"'Gie me haud o't,' says I, and she gae it to me, and I blew some
+bonny blasts on't. Ay, you see she didna ken the way o't. 'Thank you
+kindly,' says she, and she ran awa without even minding to take the
+horn back again."
+
+"You incredible idiot!" cried the sheriff. "Then it was you who gave
+the alarm?"
+
+"What hae I done to madden you?" honest Wearyworld asked in
+perplexity.
+
+"Get out of my sight, sir!" roared the sheriff.
+
+But the captain laughed.
+
+"I like your doughty policeman, Riach," he said. "Hie, obliging
+friend, let us hear how this gypsy struck you. How was she dressed?"
+
+"She was snod, but no unca snod," replied Wearyworld, stiffly.
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"I mean she was couthie, but no sair in order."
+
+"What on earth is that?"
+
+"Weel, a tasty stocky, but gey orra put on."
+
+"What language are you speaking, you enigma?"
+
+"I'm saying she was naturally a bonny bit kimmer rather than happit up
+to the nines."
+
+"Oh, go away," cried Halliwell; whereupon Wearyworld descended the
+stair haughtily, declaring that the sheriff was an unreasonable man,
+and that he was a queer captain who did not understand the English
+language.
+
+"Can I gae hame now, sheriff?" asked Langlands, hopefully.
+
+"Take this fellow back to his cell," Riach directed shortly, "and
+whatever else you do, see that you capture this woman. Halliwell, I am
+going out to look for her myself. Confound it, what are you laughing
+at?"
+
+"At the way this vixen has slipped through your fingers."
+
+"Not quite that, sir, not quite that. She is in Thrums still, and I
+swear I'll have her before day breaks. See to it, Halliwell, that if
+she is brought here in my absence she does not slip through your
+fingers."
+
+"If she is brought here," said Halliwell, mocking him, "you must
+return and protect me. It would be cruelty to leave a poor soldier in
+the hands of a woman of Thrums."
+
+"She is not a Thrums woman. You have been told so a dozen times."
+
+"Then I am not afraid."
+
+In the round-room (which is oblong) there is a throne on which the
+bailie sits when he dispenses justice. It is swathed in red cloths
+that give it the appearance of a pulpit. Left to himself, Halliwell
+flung off his cloak and taking a chair near this dais rested his legs
+on the bare wooden table, one on each side of the lamp. He was still
+in this position when the door opened, and two policemen thrust the
+Egyptian into the room.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seven.
+
+HAS THE FOLLY OF LOOKING INTO A WOMAN'S EYES BY WAY OF TEXT.
+
+
+"This is the woman, captain," one of the policemen said in triumph;
+"and, begging your pardon, will you keep a grip of her till the
+sheriff comes back?"
+
+Halliwell did not turn his head.
+
+"You can leave her here," he said carelessly. "Three of us are not
+needed to guard a woman."
+
+"But she's a slippery customer."
+
+"You can go," said Halliwell; and the policemen withdrew slowly,
+eyeing their prisoner doubtfully until the door closed. Then the
+officer wheeled round languidly, expecting to find the Egyptian gaunt
+and muscular.
+
+"Now then," he drawled, "why----By Jove!"
+
+The gallant soldier was as much taken aback as if he had turned to
+find a pistol at his ear. He took his feet off the table. Yet he only
+saw the gypsy's girlish figure in its red and green, for she had
+covered her face with her hands. She was looking at him intently
+between her fingers, but he did not know this. All he did want to know
+just then was what was behind the hands.
+
+Before he spoke again she had perhaps made up her mind about him, for
+she began to sob bitterly. At the same time she slipped a finger over
+her ring.
+
+"Why don't you look at me?" asked Halliwell, selfishly.
+
+"I daurna."
+
+"Am I so fearsome?"
+
+"You're a sojer, and you would shoot me like a craw."
+
+Halliwell laughed, and taking her wrists in his hands, uncovered her
+face.
+
+"Oh, by Jove!" he said again, but this time to himself.
+
+As for the Egyptian, she slid the ring into her pocket, and fell back
+before the officer's magnificence.
+
+"Oh," she cried, "is all sojers like you?"
+
+There was such admiration in her eyes that it would have been
+self-contempt to doubt her. Yet having smiled complacently, Halliwell
+became uneasy.
+
+"Who on earth are you?" he asked, finding it wise not to look her in
+the face. "Why do you not answer me more quickly?"
+
+"Dinna be angry at that, captain," the Egyptian implored. "I promised
+my mither aye to count twenty afore I spoke, because she thocht I was
+ower glib. Captain, how is't that you're so fleid to look at me?"
+
+Thus put on his mettle, Halliwell again faced her, with the result
+that his question changed to "Where did you get those eyes?" Then was
+he indignant with himself.
+
+"What I want to know," he explained severely, "is how you were able to
+acquaint the Thrums people with our movements? That you must tell me
+at once, for the sheriff blames my soldiers. Come now, no counting
+twenty!"
+
+He was pacing the room now, and she had her face to herself. It said
+several things, among them that the officer evidently did not like
+this charge against his men.
+
+"Does the shirra blame the sojers?" exclaimed this quick-witted
+Egyptian. "Weel, that cows, for he has nane to blame but himsel'."
+
+"What!" cried Halliwell, delighted. "It was the sheriff who told
+tales? Answer me. You are counting a hundred this time."
+
+Perhaps the gypsy had two reasons for withholding her answer. If so,
+one of them was that as the sheriff had told nothing, she had a story
+to make up. The other was that she wanted to strike a bargain with the
+officer.
+
+"If I tell you," she said eagerly, "will you set me free?"
+
+"I may ask the sheriff to do so."
+
+"But he mauna see me," the Egyptian said in distress. "There's
+reasons, captain."
+
+"Why, surely you have not been before him on other occasions," said
+Halliwell, surprised.
+
+"No in the way you mean," muttered the gypsy, and for the moment her
+eyes twinkled. But the light in them went out when she remembered that
+the sheriff was near, and she looked desperately at the window as if
+ready to fling herself from it. She had very good reasons for not
+wishing to be seen by Riach, though fear that he would put her in gaol
+was not one of them.
+
+Halliwell thought it was the one cause of her woe, and great was his
+desire to turn the tables on the sheriff.
+
+"Tell me the truth," he said, "and I promise to befriend you."
+
+"Weel, then," the gypsy said, hoping still to soften his heart, and
+making up her story as she told it, "yestreen I met the shirra, and he
+telled me a' I hae telled the Thrums folk this nicht."
+
+"You can scarcely expect me to believe that. Where did you meet him?"
+
+"In Glen Quharity. He was riding on a horse."
+
+"Well, I allow he was there yesterday, and on horseback. He was on his
+way back to Tilliedrum from Lord Rintoul's place. But don't tell me
+that he took a gypsy girl into his confidence."
+
+"Ay, he did, without kenning. He was gieing his horse a drink when I
+met him, and he let me tell him his fortune. He said he would gaol me
+for an impostor if I didna tell him true, so I gaed about it
+cautiously, and after a minute or twa I telled him he was coming to
+Thrums the nicht to nab the rioters."
+
+"You are trifling with me," interposed the indignant soldier. "You
+promised to tell me not what you said to the sheriff, but how he
+disclosed our movements to you."
+
+"And that's just what I am telling you, only you hinna the rumelgumption
+to see it. How do you think fortunes is telled? First we get out o' the
+man, without his seeing what we're after, a' about himsel', and syne
+we repeat it to him. That's what I did wi' the shirra."
+
+"You drew the whole thing out of him without his knowing?"
+
+"'Deed I did, and he rode awa' saying I was a witch."
+
+The soldier heard with the delight of a schoolboy.
+
+"Now if the sheriff does not liberate you at my request," he said, "I
+will never let him hear the end of this story. He was right; you are a
+witch. You deceived the sheriff; yes, undoubtedly you are a witch."
+
+He looked at her with fun in his face, but the fun disappeared, and a
+wondering admiration took its place.
+
+"By Jove!" he said, "I don't wonder you bewitched the sheriff. I must
+take care or you will bewitch the captain, too."
+
+At this notion he smiled, but he also ceased looking at her. Suddenly
+the Egyptian again began to cry.
+
+"You're angry wi' me," she sobbed. "I wish I had never set een on
+you."
+
+"Why do you wish that?" Halliwell asked.
+
+"Fine you ken," she answered, and again covered her face with her
+hands.
+
+He looked at her undecidedly.
+
+"I am not angry with you," he said, gently. "You are an extraordinary
+girl."
+
+Had he really made a conquest of this beautiful creature? Her words
+said so, but had he? The captain could not make up his mind. He gnawed
+his moustache in doubt.
+
+There was silence, save for the Egyptian's sobs. Halliwell's heart was
+touched, and he drew nearer her.
+
+"My poor girl----"
+
+He stopped. Was she crying? Was she not laughing at him rather? He
+became red.
+
+The gypsy peeped at him between her fingers, and saw that he was of
+two minds. She let her hands fall from her face, and undoubtedly there
+were tears on her cheeks.
+
+"If you're no angry wi' me," she said, sadly, "how will you no look at
+me?"
+
+"I am looking at you now."
+
+He was very close to her, and staring into her wonderful eyes. I am
+older than the Captain, and those eyes have dazzled me.
+
+"Captain dear."
+
+She put her hand in his. His chest rose. He knew she was seeking to
+beguile him, but he could not take his eyes off hers. He was in a
+worse plight than a woman listening to the first whisper of love.
+
+Now she was further from him, but the spell held. She reached the
+door, without taking her eyes from his face. For several seconds he
+had been as a man mesmerised.
+
+Just in time he came to. It was when she turned from him to find the
+handle of the door. She was turning it when his hand fell on hers so
+suddenly that she screamed. He twisted her round.
+
+[Illustration: CAPTAIN HALLIWELL.]
+
+"Sit down there," he said hoarsely, pointing to the chair upon which
+he had flung his cloak. She dared not disobey. Then he leant against
+the door, his back to her, for just then he wanted no one to see his
+face. The gypsy sat very still and a little frightened.
+
+Halliwell opened the door presently, and called to the soldier on duty
+below.
+
+"Davidson, see if you can find the sheriff. I want him. And
+Davidson----"
+
+The captain paused.
+
+"Yes," he muttered, and the old soldier marvelled at his words, "it is
+better. Davidson, lock this door on the outside."
+
+Davidson did as he was ordered, and again the Egyptian was left alone
+with Halliwell.
+
+"Afraid of a woman!" she said, contemptuously, though her heart sank
+when she heard the key turn in the lock.
+
+"I admit it," he answered, calmly.
+
+He walked up and down the room, and she sat silently watching him.
+
+"That story of yours about the sheriff was not true," he said at
+last.
+
+"I suspect it wasna," answered the Egyptian coolly. "Hae you been
+thinking about it a' this time? Captain, I could tell you what you're
+thinking now. You're wishing it had been true, so that the ane o' you
+couldna lauch at the other."
+
+"Silence!" said the captain, and not another word would he speak until
+he heard the sheriff coming up the stair. The Egyptian trembled at his
+step, and rose in desperation.
+
+"Why is the door locked?" cried the sheriff, shaking it.
+
+"All right," answered Halliwell; "the key is on your side."
+
+At that moment the Egyptian knocked the lamp off the table, and the
+room was at once in darkness. The officer sprang at her, and, catching
+her by the skirt, held on.
+
+"Why are you in darkness?" asked the sheriff, as he entered.
+
+"Shut the door," cried Halliwell. "Put your back to it."
+
+"Don't tell me the woman has escaped?"
+
+"I have her, I have her! She capsized the lamp, the little jade. Shut
+the door."
+
+Still keeping firm hold of her, as he thought, the captain relit the
+lamp with his other hand. It showed an extraordinary scene. The door
+was shut, and the sheriff was guarding it. Halliwell was clutching the
+cloth of the bailie's seat. There was no Egyptian.
+
+A moment passed before either man found his tongue.
+
+"Open the door. After her!" cried Halliwell.
+
+But the door would not open. The Egyptian had fled and locked it
+behind her.
+
+What the two men said to each other, it would not be fitting to tell.
+When Davidson, who had been gossiping at the corner of the town-house,
+released his captain and the sheriff, the gypsy had been gone for some
+minutes.
+
+"But she shan't escape us," Riach cried, and hastened out to assist in
+the pursuit.
+
+Halliwell was in such a furious temper that he called up Davidson and
+admonished him for neglect of duty.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eight.
+
+3 A.M.--MONSTROUS AUDACITY OF THE WOMAN.
+
+
+Not till the stroke of three did Gavin turn homeward, with the legs of
+a ploughman, and eyes rebelling against over-work. Seeking to comfort
+his dejected people, whose courage lay spilt on the brae, he had been
+in as many houses as the policemen. The soldiers marching through the
+wynds came frequently upon him, and found it hard to believe that he
+was always the same one. They told afterwards that Thrums was
+remarkable for the ferocity of its women, and the number of its little
+ministers. The morning was nipping cold, and the streets were
+deserted, for the people had been ordered within doors. As he crossed
+the Roods, Gavin saw a gleam of red-coats. In the back wynd he heard a
+bugle blown. A stir in the Banker's close spoke of another seizure. At
+the top of the school wynd two policeman, of whom one was Wearyworld,
+stopped the minister with the flash of a lantern.
+
+"We dauredna let you pass, sir," the Tilliedrum man said, "without a
+good look at you. That's the orders."
+
+"I hereby swear," said Wearyworld, authoritatively, "that this is no
+the Egyptian. Signed, Peter Spens, policeman, called by the vulgar,
+Wearyworld. Mr. Dishart, you can pass, unless you'll bide a wee and
+gie us your crack."
+
+"You have not found the gypsy, then?" Gavin asked.
+
+"No," the other policeman said, "but we ken she's within cry o' this
+very spot, and escape she canna."
+
+"What mortal man can do," Wearyworld said, "we're doing: ay, and
+mair, but she's auld wecht, and may find bilbie in queer places. Mr.
+Dishart, my official opinion is that this Egyptian is fearsomely like
+my snuff-spoon. I've kent me drap that spoon on the fender, and be
+beat to find it in an hour. And yet, a' the time I was sure it was
+there. This is a gey mysterious world, and women's the uncanniest
+things in't. It's hardly mous to think how uncanny they are."
+
+"This one deserves to be punished," Gavin said, firmly; "she incited
+the people to riot."
+
+"She did," agreed Wearyworld, who was supping ravenously on
+sociability; "ay, she even tried her tricks on me, so that them that
+kens no better thinks she fooled me. But she's cracky. To gie her her
+due, she's cracky, and as for her being a cuttie, you've said yoursel,
+Mr. Dishart, that we're all desperately wicked. But we're sair tried.
+Has it ever struck you that the trouts bites best on the Sabbath?
+God's critturs tempting decent men."
+
+"Come alang," cried the Tilliedrum man, impatiently.
+
+"I'm coming, but I maun give Mr. Dishart permission to pass first. Hae
+you heard, Mr. Dishart," Wearyworld whispered, "that the Egyptian
+diddled baith the captain and the shirra? It's my official opinion
+that she's no better than a roasted onion, the which, if you grip it
+firm, jumps out o' sicht, leaving its coat in your fingers. Mr.
+Dishart, you can pass."
+
+The policeman turned down the school wynd, and Gavin, who had already
+heard exaggerated accounts of the strange woman's escape from the
+town-house, proceeded along the Tenements. He walked in the black
+shadows of the houses, though across the way there was the morning
+light.
+
+In talking of the gypsy, the little minister had, as it were, put on
+the black cap; but now, even though he shook his head angrily with
+every thought of her, the scene in Windyghoul glimmered before his
+eyes. Sometimes when he meant to frown he only sighed, and then
+having sighed he shook himself. He was unpleasantly conscious of his
+right hand, which had flung the divit. Ah, she was shameless, and it
+would be a bright day for Thrums that saw the last of her. He hoped
+the policemen would succeed in----. It was the gladsomeness of
+innocence that he had seen dancing in the moonlight. A mere woman
+could not be like that. How soft----. And she had derided him; he, the
+Auld Licht minister of Thrums, had been flouted before his people by a
+hussy. She was without reverence, she knew no difference between an
+Auld Licht minister, whose duty it was to speak and hers to listen,
+and herself. This woman deserved to be----. And the look she cast
+behind her as she danced and sang! It was sweet, so wistful; the
+presence of purity had silenced him. Purity! Who had made him fling
+that divit? He would think no more of her. Let it suffice that he knew
+what she was. He would put her from his thoughts. Was it a ring on her
+finger?
+
+Fifty yards in front of him Gavin saw the road end in a wall of
+soldiers. They were between him and the manse, and he was still in
+darkness. No sound reached him, save the echo of his own feet. But was
+it an echo? He stopped, and turned round sharply. Now he heard
+nothing, he saw nothing. Yet was not that a human figure standing
+motionless in the shadow behind?
+
+He walked on, and again heard the sound. Again he looked behind, but
+this time without stopping. The figure was following him. He stopped.
+So did it. He turned back, but it did not move. It was the Egyptian!
+
+Gavin knew her, despite the lane of darkness, despite the long cloak
+that now concealed even her feet, despite the hood over her head. She
+was looking quite respectable, but he knew her.
+
+He neither advanced to her nor retreated. Could the unhappy girl not
+see that she was walking into the arms of the soldiers? But doubtless
+she had been driven from all her hiding-places. For a moment Gavin had
+it in his heart to warn her. But it was only for a moment. The next a
+sudden horror shot through him. She was stealing toward him, so softly
+that he had not seen her start. The woman had designs on him! Gavin
+turned from her. He walked so quickly that judges would have said he
+ran.
+
+The soldiers, I have said, stood in the dim light. Gavin had almost
+reached them, when a little hand touched his arm.
+
+"Stop," cried the sergeant, hearing some one approaching, and then
+Gavin stepped out of the darkness with the gypsy on his arm.
+
+"It is you, Mr. Dishart," said the sergeant, "and your lady?"
+
+"I----," said Gavin.
+
+His lady pinched his arm.
+
+"Yes," she answered, in an elegant English voice that made Gavin stare
+at her, "but, indeed, I am sorry I ventured into the streets to-night.
+I thought I might be able to comfort some of these unhappy people,
+captain, but I could do little, sadly little."
+
+"It is no scene for a lady, ma'am, but your husband has----. Did you
+speak, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"Yes, I must inf----"
+
+"My dear," said the Egyptian, "I quite agree with you, so we need not
+detain the captain."
+
+"I'm only a sergeant, ma'am."
+
+"Indeed!" said the Egyptian, raising her pretty eyebrows, "and how
+long are you to remain in Thrums, sergeant?"
+
+"Only for a few hours, Mrs. Dishart. If this gypsy lassie had not
+given us so much trouble, we might have been gone by now."
+
+[Illustration: "I HOPE YOU WILL CATCH HER, SERGEANT."]
+
+"Ah, yes, I hope you will catch her, sergeant."
+
+"Sergeant," said Gavin, firmly, "I must----"
+
+"You must, indeed, dear," said the Egyptian, "for you are sadly tired.
+Good-night, sergeant."
+
+"Your servant, Mrs. Dishart. Your servant, sir."
+
+"But----," cried Gavin.
+
+"Come, love," said the Egyptian, and she walked the distracted
+minister through the soldiers and up the manse road.
+
+The soldiers left behind, Gavin flung her arm from him, and, standing
+still, shook his fist in her face.
+
+"You--you--woman!" he said.
+
+This, I think, was the last time he called her a woman.
+
+But she was clapping her hands merrily.
+
+"It was beautiful!" she exclaimed.
+
+"It was iniquitous!" he answered. "And I a minister!"
+
+"You can't help that," said the Egyptian, who pitied all ministers
+heartily.
+
+"No," Gavin said, misunderstanding her, "I could not help it. No blame
+attaches to me."
+
+"I meant that you could not help being a minister. You could have
+helped saving me, and I thank you so much."
+
+"Do not dare to thank me. I forbid you to say that I saved you. I did
+my best to hand you over to the authorities."
+
+"Then why did you not hand me over?"
+
+Gavin groaned.
+
+"All you had to say," continued the merciless Egyptian, "was, 'This is
+the person you are in search of.' I did not have my hand over your
+mouth. Why did you not say it?"
+
+"Forbear!" said Gavin, woefully.
+
+"It must have been," the gypsy said, "because you really wanted to
+help me."
+
+"Then it was against my better judgment," said Gavin.
+
+"I am glad of that," said the gypsy. "Mr. Dishart, I do believe you
+like me all the time."
+
+"Can a man like a woman against his will?" Gavin blurted out.
+
+"Of course he can," said the Egyptian, speaking as one who knew. "That
+is the very nicest way to be liked."
+
+Seeing how agitated Gavin was, remorse filled her, and she said in a
+wheedling voice--
+
+"It is all over, and no one will know."
+
+Passion sat on the minister's brow, but he said nothing, for the
+gypsy's face had changed with her voice, and the audacious woman was
+become a child.
+
+"I am very sorry," she said, as if he had caught her stealing jam. The
+hood had fallen back, and she looked pleadingly at him. She had the
+appearance of one who was entirely in his hands.
+
+There was a torrent of words in Gavin, but only these trickled
+forth--
+
+"I don't understand you."
+
+"You are not angry any more?" pleaded the Egyptian.
+
+"Angry!" he cried, with the righteous rage of one who when his leg is
+being sawn off is asked gently if it hurts him.
+
+"I know you are," she sighed, and the sigh meant that men are
+strange.
+
+"Have you no respect for law and order?" demanded Gavin.
+
+"Not much," she answered, honestly.
+
+He looked down the road to where the red-coats were still visible, and
+his face became hard. She read his thoughts.
+
+"No," she said, becoming a woman again, "It is not yet too late. Why
+don't you shout to them?"
+
+She was holding herself like a queen, but there was no stiffness in
+her. They might have been a pair of lovers, and she the wronged one.
+Again she looked timidly at him, and became beautiful in a new way.
+Her eyes said that he was very cruel, and she was only keeping back
+her tears till he had gone. More dangerous than her face was her
+manner, which gave Gavin the privilege of making her unhappy; it
+permitted him to argue with her; it never implied that though he raged
+at her he must stand afar off; it called him a bully, but did not end
+the conversation.
+
+Now (but perhaps I should not tell this) unless she is his wife a man
+is shot with a thrill of exultation every time a pretty woman allows
+him to upbraid her.
+
+"I do not understand you," Gavin repeated weakly, and the gypsy bent
+her head under this terrible charge.
+
+"Only a few hours ago," he continued, "you were a gypsy girl in a
+fantastic dress, barefooted----"
+
+The Egyptian's bare foot at once peeped out mischievously from beneath
+the cloak, then again retired into hiding.
+
+"You spoke as broadly," complained the minister, somewhat taken aback
+by this apparition, "as any woman in Thrums, and now you fling a cloak
+over your shoulders, and immediately become a fine lady. Who are
+you?"
+
+"Perhaps," answered the Egyptian, "it is the cloak that has bewitched
+me." She slipped out of it. "Ay, ay, ou losh!" she said, as if
+surprised, "it was just the cloak that did it, for now I'm a puir
+ignorant bit lassie again. My, certie, but claithes does make a differ
+to a woman!"
+
+This was sheer levity, and Gavin walked scornfully away from it.
+
+"Yet, if you will not tell me who you are," he said, looking over his
+shoulder, "tell me where you got the cloak."
+
+"Na faags," replied the gypsy out of the cloak. "Really, Mr. Dishart,
+you had better not ask," she added, replacing it over her.
+
+She followed him, meaning to gain the open by the fields to the north
+of the manse.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, holding out her hand, "if you are not to give me
+up."
+
+"I am not a policeman," replied Gavin, but he would not take her
+hand.
+
+"Surely, we part friends, then?" said the Egyptian, sweetly.
+
+"No," Gavin answered. "I hope never to see your face again."
+
+"I cannot help," the Egyptian said, with dignity, "your not liking my
+face." Then, with less dignity, she added, "There is a splotch of mud
+on your own, little minister; it came off the divit you flung at the
+captain."
+
+With this parting shot she tripped past him, and Gavin would not let
+his eyes follow her. It was not the mud on his face that distressed
+him, nor even the hand that had flung the divit. It was the word
+"little." Though even Margaret was not aware of it, Gavin's shortness
+had grieved him all his life. There had been times when he tried to
+keep the secret from himself. In his boyhood he had sought a remedy by
+getting his larger comrades to stretch him. In the company of tall men
+he was always self-conscious. In the pulpit he looked darkly at his
+congregation when he asked them who, by taking thought, could add a
+cubit to his stature. When standing on a hearthrug his heels were
+frequently on the fender. In his bedroom he has stood on a footstool
+and surveyed himself in the mirror. Once he fastened high heels to his
+boots, being ashamed to ask Hendry Munn to do it for him; but this
+dishonesty shamed him, and he tore them off. So the Egyptian had put a
+needle into his pride, and he walked to the manse gloomily.
+
+[Illustration: "SURELY, WE PART FRIENDS, THEN?"]
+
+Margaret was at her window, looking for him, and he saw her though she
+did not see him. He was stepping into the middle of the road to
+wave his hand to her, when some sudden weakness made him look towards
+the fields instead. The Egyptian saw him and nodded thanks for his
+interest in her, but he scowled and pretended to be studying the sky.
+Next moment he saw her running back to him.
+
+"There are soldiers at the top of the field," she cried. "I cannot
+escape that way."
+
+"There is no other way," Gavin answered.
+
+"Will you not help me again?" she entreated.
+
+She should not have said "again." Gavin shook his head, but pulled her
+closer to the manse dyke, for his mother was still in sight.
+
+"Why do you do that?" the girl asked, quickly, looking round to see if
+she were pursued. "Oh, I see," she said, as her eyes fell on the
+figure at the window.
+
+"It is my mother," Gavin said, though he need not have explained,
+unless he wanted the gypsy to know that he was a bachelor.
+
+"Only your mother?"
+
+"Only! Let me tell you she may suffer more than you for your behaviour
+to-night!"
+
+"How can she?"
+
+"If you are caught, will it not be discovered that I helped you to
+escape?"
+
+"But you said you did not."
+
+"Yes, I helped you," Gavin admitted. "My God! what would my
+congregation say if they knew I had let you pass yourself off as--as
+my wife?"
+
+He struck his brow, and the Egyptian had the propriety to blush.
+
+"It is not the punishment from men I am afraid of," Gavin said,
+bitterly, "but from my conscience. No, that is not true. I do fear
+exposure, but for my mother's sake. Look at her; she is happy, because
+she thinks me good and true; she has had such trials as you cannot
+know of, and now, when at last I seemed able to do something for her,
+you destroy her happiness. You have her life in your hands."
+
+The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of her feet tapped
+angrily on the dry ground. Then, child of impulse as she always was,
+she flashed an indignant glance at him, and walked quickly down the
+road.
+
+"Where are you going?" he cried.
+
+"To give myself up. You need not be alarmed; I will clear you."
+
+There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke without looking
+back.
+
+"Stop!" Gavin called, but she would not, until his hand touched her
+shoulder.
+
+"What do you want?" she asked.
+
+"Why--" whispered Gavin, giddily, "why--why do you not hide in the
+manse garden?--No one will look for you there."
+
+There were genuine tears in the gypsy's eyes now.
+
+"You are a good man," she said; "I like you."
+
+"Don't say that," Gavin cried in horror. "There is a summer-seat in
+the garden."
+
+[Illustration: "'WHAT DO YOU WANT?' SHE ASKED."]
+
+Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see if she took his
+advice, hastened to the manse. Once inside, he snibbed the door.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nine.
+
+THE WOMAN CONSIDERED IN ABSENCE--ADVENTURES OF A MILITARY CLOAK.
+
+
+About six o'clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the conviction
+that she had slept in. To her this was to ravel the day: a dire thing.
+The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had
+condensed morning worship into a sentence that she might make up on
+the clock.
+
+Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean, for
+Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and remain
+there till her fire was lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to
+early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered
+her vow, and then it was but a step to the window to survey the
+morning. To Margaret, who seldom went out, the weather was not of
+great moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought
+of it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide
+whether his companion should be an umbrella or a staff.
+
+On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain since
+Gavin came in. Forgetting that the water obscuring the outlook was on
+the other side of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her fist.
+It was of the soldiers she was thinking. They might have been awaiting
+her appearance at the window as their signal to depart, for hardly had
+she raised the blind when they began their march out of Thrums. From
+the manse she could not see them, but she heard them, and she saw some
+people at the Tenements run to their houses at sound of the drum.
+Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway
+to Tilliedrum. Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake
+in the manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat of the
+garden, however, there was another listener protected from her sight
+by thin spars.
+
+Despite the lateness of the hour Margaret was too soft-hearted to
+rouse Jean, who had lain down in her clothes, trembling for her
+father. She went instead into Gavin's room to look admiringly at him
+as he slept. Often Gavin woke to find that his mother had slipped in
+to save him the enormous trouble of opening a drawer for a clean
+collar, or of pouring the water into the basin with his own hand.
+Sometimes he caught her in the act of putting thick socks in the place
+of thin ones, and it must be admitted that her passion for keeping his
+belongings in boxes, and the boxes in secret places, and the secret
+places at the back of drawers, occasionally led to their being lost
+when wanted. "They are safe, at any rate, for I put them away some
+gait," was then Margaret's comfort, but less soothing to Gavin. Yet if
+he upbraided her in his hurry, it was to repent bitterly his temper
+the next instant, and to feel its effects more than she, temper being
+a weapon that we hold by the blade. When he awoke and saw her in his
+room he would pretend, unless he felt called upon to rage at her for
+self-neglect, to be still asleep, and then be filled with tenderness
+for her. A great writer has spoken sadly of the shock it would be to a
+mother to know her boy as he really is, but I think she often knows
+him better than he is known to cynical friends. We should be slower to
+think that the man at his worst is the real man, and certain that the
+better we are ourselves the less likely is he to be at his worst in
+our company. Every time he talks away his own character before us he
+is signifying contempt for ours.
+
+On this morning Margaret only opened Gavin's door to stand and look,
+for she was fearful of awakening him after his heavy night. Even
+before she saw that he still slept she noticed with surprise that, for
+the first time since he came to Thrums, he had put on his shutters.
+She concluded that he had done this lest the light should rouse him.
+He was not sleeping pleasantly, for now he put his open hand before
+his face, as if to guard himself, and again he frowned and seemed to
+draw back from something. He pointed his finger sternly to the north,
+ordering the weavers, his mother thought, to return to their homes,
+and then he muttered to himself so that she heard the words, "And if
+thy right hand offend thee cut it off, and cast it from thee, for it
+is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
+that thy whole body should be cast into hell." Then suddenly he bent
+forward, his eyes open and fixed on the window. Thus he sat, for the
+space of half a minute, like one listening with painful intentness.
+When he lay back Margaret slipped away. She knew he was living the
+night over again, but not of the divit his right hand had cast, nor of
+the woman in the garden.
+
+Gavin was roused presently by the sound of voices from Margaret's
+room, where Jean, who had now gathered much news, was giving it to her
+mistress. Jean's cheerfulness would have told him that her father was
+safe had he not wakened to thoughts of the Egyptian. I suppose he was
+at the window in an instant, unsnibbing the shutters and looking out
+as cautiously as a burglar might have looked in. The Egyptian was gone
+from the summer-seat. He drew a great breath.
+
+But his troubles were not over. He had just lifted his ewer of water
+when these words from the kitchen capsized it:--
+
+"Ay, an Egyptian. That's what the auld folk call a gypsy. Weel, Mrs.
+Dishart, she led police and sojers sic a dance through Thrums as would
+baffle description, though I kent the fits and fors o't as I dinna.
+Ay, but they gripped her in the end, and the queer thing is----"
+
+Gavin listened to no more. He suddenly sat down. The queer thing, of
+course, was that she had been caught in his garden. Yes, and doubtless
+queerer things about this hussy and her "husband" were being bawled
+from door to door. To the girl's probable sufferings he gave no heed.
+What kind of man had he been a few hours ago to yield to the
+machinations of a woman who was so obviously the devil? Now he saw his
+folly in the face.
+
+The tray in Jean's hands clattered against the dresser, and Gavin
+sprang from his chair. He thought it was his elders at the front
+door.
+
+In the parlour he found Margaret sorrowing for those whose mates had
+been torn from them, and Jean with a face flushed by talk. On ordinary
+occasions the majesty of the minister still cowed Jean, so that she
+could only gaze at him without shaking when in church, and then
+because she wore a veil. In the manse he was for taking a glance at
+sideways and then going away comforted, as a respectable woman may
+once or twice in a day look at her brooch in the pasteboard box as a
+means of helping her with her work. But with such a to-do in Thrums,
+and she the possessor of exclusive information, Jean's reverence for
+Gavin only took her to-day as far as the door, where she lingered half
+in the parlour and half in the lobby, her eyes turned politely from
+the minister, but her ears his entirely.
+
+"I thought I heard Jean telling you about the capture of the--of an
+Egyptian woman," Gavin said to his mother, nervously.
+
+"Did you cry to me?" Jean asked, turning round longingly. "But maybe
+the mistress will tell you about the Egyptian hersel."
+
+"Has she been taken to Tilliedrum?" Gavin asked in a hollow voice.
+
+"Sup up your porridge, Gavin," Margaret said. "I'll have no speaking
+about this terrible night till you've eaten something."
+
+"I have no appetite," the minister replied, pushing his plate from
+him. "Jean, answer me."
+
+"'Deed, then," said Jean willingly, "they hinna ta'en her to
+Tilliedrum."
+
+"For what reason?" asked Gavin, his dread increasing.
+
+"For the reason that they couldna catch her," Jean answered. "She
+spirited hersel awa', the magerful crittur."
+
+"What! But I heard you say----"
+
+"Ay, they had her aince, but they couldna keep her. It's like a witch
+story. They had her safe in the town-house, and baith shirra and
+captain guarding her, and syne in a clink she wasna there. A' nicht
+they looked for her, but she hadna left so muckle as a foot-print
+ahint her, and in the tail of the day they had to up wi' their tap in
+their lap and march awa without her."
+
+Gavin's appetite returned.
+
+"Has she been seen since the soldiers went away?" he asked, laying
+down his spoon with a new fear. "Where is she now?"
+
+"No human eye has seen her," Jean answered impressively. "Whaur is she
+now? Whaur does the flies vanish to in winter? We ken they're some
+gait, but whaur?"
+
+"But what are the people saying about her?"
+
+"Daft things," said Jean. "Old Charles Yuill gangs the length o'
+hinting that she's dead and buried."
+
+"She could not have buried herself, Jean," Margaret said, mildly.
+
+"I dinna ken. Charles says she's even capable o' that."
+
+Then Jean retired reluctantly (but leaving the door ajar) and Gavin
+fell to on his porridge. He was now so cheerful that Margaret
+wondered.
+
+"If half the stories about this gypsy be true," she said, "she must be
+more than a mere woman."
+
+"Less, you mean, mother," Gavin said, with conviction. "She is a
+woman, and a sinful one."
+
+"Did you see her, Gavin?"
+
+"I saw her. Mother, she flouted me!"
+
+"The daring tawpie!" exclaimed Margaret.
+
+"She is all that," said the minister.
+
+"Was she dressed just like an ordinary gypsy body? But you don't
+notice clothes much, Gavin."
+
+"I noticed hers," Gavin said, slowly, "she was in a green and red, I
+think, and barefooted."
+
+"Ay," shouted Jean from the kitchen, startling both of them; "but she
+had a lang grey-like cloak too. She was seen jouking up closes in't."
+
+Gavin rose, considerably annoyed, and shut the parlour door.
+
+"Was she as bonny as folks say?" asked Margaret. "Jean says they speak
+of her beauty as unearthly."
+
+"Beauty of her kind," Gavin explained learnedly, "is neither earthly
+nor heavenly." He was seeing things as they are very clearly now.
+"What," he said, "is mere physical beauty? Pooh!"
+
+"And yet," said Margaret, "the soul surely does speak through the face
+to some extent."
+
+"Do you really think so, mother?" Gavin asked, a little uneasily.
+
+"I have always noticed it," Margaret said, and then her son sighed.
+
+"But I would let no face influence me a jot," he said, recovering.
+
+"Ah, Gavin, I'm thinking I'm the reason you pay so little regard to
+women's faces. It's no natural."
+
+"You've spoilt me, you see, mother, for ever caring for another woman.
+I would compare her to you, and then where would she be?"
+
+"Sometime," Margaret said, "you'll think differently."
+
+"Never," answered Gavin, with a violence that ended the conversation.
+
+Soon afterwards he set off for the town, and in passing down the
+garden walk cast a guilty glance at the summer-seat. Something black
+was lying in one corner of it. He stopped irresolutely, for his mother
+was nodding to him from her window. Then he disappeared into the
+little arbour. What had caught his eye was a Bible. On the previous
+day, as he now remembered, he had been called away while studying in
+the garden, and had left his Bible on the summer-seat, a pencil
+between its pages. Not often probably had the Egyptian passed a night
+in such company.
+
+But what was this? Gavin had not to ask himself the question. The
+gypsy's cloak was lying neatly folded at the other end of the seat.
+Why had the woman not taken it with her? Hardly had he put this
+question when another stood in front of it. What was to be done with
+the cloak? He dared not leave it there for Jean to discover. He could
+not take it into the manse in daylight. Beneath the seat was a
+tool-chest without a lid, and into this he crammed the cloak. Then,
+having turned the box face downwards, he went about his duties. But
+many a time during the day he shivered to the marrow, reflecting
+suddenly that at this very moment Jean might be carrying the accursed
+thing (at arms' length, like a dog in disgrace) to his mother.
+
+Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid toll for taking
+the road with the Egyptian, follow the adventures of the cloak.
+Shortly after gloaming fell that night Jean encountered her master in
+the lobby of the manse. He was carrying something, and when he saw her
+he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed her openly she would have
+suspected nothing, but this made her look at him.
+
+"Why do you stare so, Jean?" Gavin asked, conscience-stricken, and
+he stood with his back to the wall until she had retired in
+bewilderment.
+
+"I have noticed her watching me sharply all day," he said to himself,
+though it was only he who had been watching her.
+
+Gavin carried the cloak to his bedroom, thinking to lock it away in
+his chest, but it looked so wicked lying there that he seemed to see
+it after the lid was shut.
+
+The garret was the best place for it. He took it out of the chest and
+was opening his door gently, when there was Jean again. She had been
+employed very innocently in his mother's room, but he said tartly--
+
+"Jean, I really cannot have this," which sent Jean to the kitchen with
+her apron at her eyes.
+
+Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and an hour afterwards
+was engaged on his sermon, when he distinctly heard some one in the
+garret. He ran up the ladder with a terrible brow for Jean, but it was
+not Jean; it was Margaret.
+
+"Mother," he said in alarm, "what are you doing here?"
+
+"I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin."
+
+"Yes, but--it is too cold for you. Did Jean--did Jean ask you to come
+up here?"
+
+"Jean? She knows her place better."
+
+Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his confidence in the
+garret had gone. He stole up the ladder again, dragged the cloak
+from its lurking place, and took it into the garden. He very nearly
+met Jean in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she fled
+precipitately, which he thought very suspicious.
+
+In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the cloak, but even now
+he was not done with it. He was wakened early by a noise of scraping
+in the garden, and his first thought was "Jean!" But peering from the
+window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog, which already had
+its teeth in the cloak.
+
+That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously carrying a
+brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the hill, and having dropped the
+parcel there, retired hurriedly. On his way home, nevertheless, he was
+over-taken by D. Fittis, who had been cutting down whins. Fittis had
+seen the parcel fall, and running after Gavin, returned it to him.
+Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then sat down gloomily on the cemetery
+dyke. Half an hour afterwards he flung the parcel into a Tillyloss
+garden.
+
+In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from Jean.
+
+"Do you remember, Gavin, that the Egyptian every one is still speaking
+of, wore a long cloak? Well, would you believe it, the cloak was
+Captain Halliwell's, and she took it from the town-house when she
+escaped. She is supposed to have worn it inside out. He did not
+discover that it was gone until he was leaving Thrums."
+
+"Mother, is this possible?" Gavin said.
+
+"The policeman, Wearyworld, has told it. He was ordered, it seems, to
+look for the cloak quietly, and to take any one into custody in whose
+possession it was found."
+
+"Has it been found?"
+
+"No."
+
+The minister walked out of the parlour, for he could not trust his
+face. What was to be done now? The cloak was lying in mason Baxter's
+garden, and Baxter was therefore, in all probability, within
+four-and-twenty hours of the Tilliedrum gaol.
+
+"Does Mr. Dishart ever wear a cap at nichts?" Femie Wilkie asked Sam'l
+Fairweather three hours later.
+
+"Na, na, he has ower muckle respect for his lum hat," answered Sam'l;
+"and richtly, for it's the crowning stone o' the edifice."
+
+"Then it couldna hae been him I met at the back o' Tillyloss the now,"
+said Femie, "though like him it was. He joukit back when he saw me."
+
+While Femie was telling her story in the Tenements, mason Baxter,
+standing at the window which looked into his garden, was shouting,
+"Wha's that in my yard?" There was no answer, and Baxter closed his
+window, under the impression that he had been speaking to a cat. The
+man in the cap then emerged from the corner where he had been
+crouching, and stealthily felt for something among the cabbages and
+pea sticks. It was no longer there, however, and by-and-by he retired
+empty-handed.
+
+"The Egyptian's cloak has been found," Margaret was able to tell Gavin
+next day. "Mason Baxter found it yesterday afternoon."
+
+"In his garden?" Gavin asked hurriedly.
+
+"No; in the quarry, he says, but according to Jean he is known not to
+have been at the quarry to-day. Some seem to think that the gypsy gave
+him the cloak for helping her to escape, and that he has delivered it
+up lest he should get into difficulties."
+
+"Whom has he given it to, mother?" Gavin asked.
+
+"To the policeman."
+
+"And has Wearyworld sent it back to Halliwell?"
+
+"Yes. He told Jean he sent it off at once, with the information that
+the masons had found it in the quarry."
+
+The next day was Sabbath, when a new trial, now to be told, awaited
+Gavin in the pulpit; but it had nothing to do with the cloak, of which
+I may here record the end. Wearyworld had not forwarded it to its
+owner; Meggy, his wife, took care of that. It made its reappearance in
+Thrums, several months after the riot, as two pairs of Sabbath breeks
+for her sons, James and Andrew.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Ten.
+
+FIRST SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.
+
+
+On the afternoon of the following Sabbath, as I have said, something
+strange happened in the Auld Licht pulpit. The congregation, despite
+their troubles, turned it over and peered at it for days, but had they
+seen into the inside of it they would have weaved few webs until the
+session had sat on the minister. The affair baffled me at the time,
+and for the Egyptian's sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it
+not one of Gavin's milestones. It includes the first of his memorable
+sermons against Woman.
+
+I was not in the Auld Licht church that day, but I heard of the sermon
+before night, and this, I think, is as good an opportunity as another
+for showing how the gossip about Gavin reached me up here in the Glen
+school-house. Since Margaret and her son came to the manse I had kept
+the vow made to myself and avoided Thrums. Only once had I ventured to
+the kirk, and then, instead of taking my old seat, the fourth from the
+pulpit, I sat down near the plate, where I could look at Margaret
+without her seeing me. To spare her that agony I even stole away as
+the last word of the benediction was pronounced, and my haste
+scandalised many, for with Auld Lichts it is not customary to retire
+quickly from the church after the manner of the godless U. P.'s (and
+the Free Kirk is little better), who have their hats in their hand
+when they rise for the benediction, so that they may at once pour out
+like a burst dam. We resume our seats, look straight before us, clear
+our throats and stretch out our hands for our womenfolk to put our
+hats into them. In time we do get out, but I am never sure how.
+
+One may gossip in a glen on Sabbaths, though not in a town, without
+losing his character, and I used to await the return of my neighbour,
+the farmer of Waster Lunny, and of Silva Birse, the Glen Quharity
+post, at the end of the school-house path. Waster Lunny was a man
+whose care in his leisure hours was to keep from his wife his great
+pride in her. His horse, Catlaw, on the other hand, he told outright
+what he thought of it, praising it to its face and blackguarding it as
+it deserved, and I have seen him when completely baffled by the brute,
+sit down before it on a stone and thus harangue: "You think you're
+clever, Catlaw, my lass, but you're mista'en. You're a thrawn limmer,
+that's what you are. You think you have blood in you. You hae blood!
+Gae away, and dinna blether. I tell you what, Catlaw, I met a man
+yestreen that kent your mither, and he says she was a feikie
+fushionless besom. What do you say to that?"
+
+As for the post, I will say no more of him than that his bitter topic
+was the unreasonableness of humanity, which treated him graciously
+when he had a letter for it, but scowled at him when he had none, "aye
+implying that I hae a letter, but keep it back."
+
+On the Sabbath evening after the riot, I stood at the usual place
+awaiting my friends, and saw before they reached me that they had
+something untoward to tell. The farmer, his wife and three children,
+holding each other's hands, stretched across the road. Birse was a
+little behind, but a conversation was being kept up by shouting. All
+were walking the Sabbath pace, and the family having started half a
+minute in advance, the post had not yet made up on them.
+
+"It's sitting to snaw," Waster Lunny said, drawing near, and just as I
+was to reply, "It is so," Silva slipped in the words before me.
+
+"You wasna at the kirk," was Elspeth's salutation. I had been at the
+Glen church, but did not contradict her, for it is Established, and so
+neither here nor there. I was anxious, too, to know what their long
+faces meant, and so asked at once--
+
+"Was Mr. Dishart on the riot?"
+
+"Forenoon, ay; afternoon, no," replied Waster Lunny, walking round his
+wife to get nearer me. "Dominie, a queery thing happened in the kirk
+this day, sic as----"
+
+"Waster Lunny," interrupted Elspeth sharply; "have you on your Sabbath
+shoon or have you no on your Sabbath shoon?"
+
+"Guid care you took I should hae the dagont oncanny things on,"
+retorted the farmer.
+
+"Keep out o' the gutter, then," said Elspeth, "on the Lord's day."
+
+"Him," said her man, "that is forced by a foolish woman to wear
+genteel 'lastic-sided boots canna forget them till he takes them aff.
+Whaur's the extra reverence in wearing shoon twa sizes ower sma?"
+
+"It mayna be mair reverent," suggested Birse, to whom Elspeth's
+kitchen was a pleasant place, "but it's grand, and you canna expect to
+be baith grand and comfortable."
+
+I reminded them that they were speaking of Mr. Dishart.
+
+"We was saying," began the post briskly, "that----"
+
+"It was me that was saying it," said Waster Lunny. "So, dominie----"
+
+"Haud your gabs, baith o' you," interrupted Elspeth. "You've been
+roaring the story to ane another till you're hoarse."
+
+"In the forenoon," Waster Lunny went on determinedly, "Mr. Dishart
+preached on the riot, and fine he was. Oh, dominie, you should hae
+heard him ladling it on to Lang Tammas, no by name but in sic a way
+that there was no mistaking wha he was preaching at, Sal! oh losh!
+Tammas got it strong."
+
+"But he's dull in the uptake," broke in the post, "by what I expected.
+I spoke to him after the sermon, and I says, just to see if he was
+properly humbled, 'Ay, Tammas,' I says, 'them that discourse was
+preached against, winna think themselves seven feet men for a while
+again.' 'Ay, Birse,' he answers, 'and glad I am to hear you admit it,
+for he had you in his eye.' I was fair scunnered at Tammas the day."
+
+"Mr. Dishart was preaching at the whole clanjamfray o' you," said
+Elspeth.
+
+"Maybe he was," said her husband, leering; "but you needna cast it at
+us, for, my certie, if the men got it frae him in the forenoon, the
+women got it in the afternoon."
+
+"He redd them up most michty," said the post. "Thae was his very words
+or something like them. 'Adam,' says he, 'was an erring man, but aside
+Eve he was respectable.'"
+
+"Ay, but it wasna a' women he meant," Elspeth explained, "for when he
+said that, he pointed his finger direct at T'nowhead's lassie, and I
+hope it'll do her good."
+
+"But I wonder," I said, "that Mr. Dishart chose such a subject to-day.
+I thought he would be on the riot at both services."
+
+"You'll wonder mair," said Elspeth, "when you hear what happened afore
+he began the afternoon sermon. But I canna get in a word wi' that man
+o' mine."
+
+"We've been speaking about it," said Birse, "ever since we left the
+kirk door. Tod, we've been sawing it like seed a' alang the glen."
+
+"And we meant to tell you about it at once," said Waster Lunny; "but
+there's aye so muckle to say about a minister. Dagont, to hae ane
+keeps a body out o' langour. Ay, but this breaks the drum. Dominie,
+either Mr. Dishart wasna weel, or he was in the devil's grip."
+
+This startled me, for the farmer was looking serious.
+
+"He was weel eneuch," said Birse, "for a heap o' fowk speired at Jean
+if he had ta'en his porridge as usual, and she admitted he had. But
+the lassie was skeered hersel', and said it was a mercy Mrs. Dishart
+wasna in the kirk."
+
+"Why was she not there?" I asked anxiously.
+
+"Oh, he winna let her out in sic weather."
+
+"I wish you would tell me what happened," I said to Elspeth.
+
+"So I will," she answered, "if Waster Lunny would haud his wheesht for
+a minute. You see the afternoon diet began in the ordinary way, and a'
+was richt until we came to the sermon. 'You will find my text,' he
+says, in his piercing voice, 'in the eighth chapter of Ezra.'"
+
+"And at thae words," said Waster Lunny, "my heart gae a loup, for Ezra
+is an unca ill book to find; ay, and so is Ruth."
+
+"I kent the books o' the Bible by heart," said Elspeth, scornfully,
+"when I was a sax year auld."
+
+"So did I," said Waster Lunny, "and I ken them yet, except when I'm
+hurried. When Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra he a sort o' keeked round the
+kirk to find out if he had puzzled onybody, and so there was a kind o'
+a competition among the congregation wha would lay hand on it first.
+That was what doited me. Ay, there was Ruth when she wasna wanted, but
+Ezra, dagont, it looked as if Ezra had jumped clean out o' the
+Bible."
+
+"You wasna the only distressed crittur," said his wife. "I was ashamed
+to see Eppie McLaren looking up the order o' the books at the
+beginning o' the Bible."
+
+"Tibbie Birse was even mair brazen," said the post, "for the sly
+cuttie opened at Kings and pretended it was Ezra."
+
+"None o' thae things would I do," said Waster Lunny, "and sal, I
+dauredna, for Davit Lunan was glowering over my shuther. Ay, you may
+scrowl at me, Elspeth Proctor, but as far back as I can mind, Ezra has
+done me. Mony a time afore I start for the kirk I take my Bible to a
+quiet place and look Ezra up. In the very pew I says canny to mysel',
+'Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job,' the which should be a help, but the
+moment the minister gi'es out that awfu' book, away goes Ezra like the
+Egyptian."
+
+"And you after her," said Elspeth, "like the weavers that wouldna
+fecht. You make a windmill of your Bible."
+
+"Oh, I winna admit I'm beat. Never mind, there's queer things in the
+world forby Ezra. How is cripples aye so puffed up mair than other
+folk? How does flour-bread aye fall on the buttered side?"
+
+"I will mind," Elspeth said, "for I was terrified the minister would
+admonish you frae the pulpit."
+
+"He couldna hae done that, for was he no baffled to find Ezra
+himsel'?"
+
+"Him no find Ezra!" cried Elspeth. "I hae telled you a dozen times he
+found it as easy as you could yoke a horse."
+
+"The thing can be explained in no other way," said her husband,
+doggedly, "if he was weel and in sound mind."
+
+"Maybe the dominie can clear it up," suggested the post, "him being a
+scholar."
+
+"Then tell me what happened," I asked.
+
+"Godsake, hae we no telled you?" Birse said. "I thocht we had."
+
+"It was a terrible scene," said Elspeth, giving her husband a shove.
+"As I said, Mr. Dishart gave out Ezra eighth. Weel, I turned it up in
+a jiffy, and syne looked cautiously to see how Eppie McLaren was
+getting on. Just at that minute I heard a groan frae the pulpit. It
+didna stop short o' a groan. Ay, you may be sure I looked quick at the
+minister, and there I saw a sicht that would hae made the grandest
+gape. His face was as white as a baker's, and he had a sort of fallen
+against the back o' the pulpit, staring demented-like at his open
+Bible."
+
+"And I saw him," said Birse, "put up his hand atween him and the Book,
+as if he thocht it was to jump at him."
+
+"Twice," said Elspeth, "he tried to speak, and twice he let the words
+fall."
+
+"That," says Waster Lunny, "the whole congregation admits, but I didna
+see it mysel', for a' this time you may picture me hunting savage-like
+for Ezra. I thocht the minister was waiting till I found it."
+
+"Hendry Munn," said Birse, "stood upon one leg, wondering whether he
+should run to the session-house for a glass of water."
+
+"But by that time," said Elspeth, "the fit had left Mr. Dishart, or
+rather it had ta'en a new turn. He grew red, and it's gospel that he
+stamped his foot."
+
+"He had the face of one using bad words," said the post. "He didna
+swear, of course, but that was the face he had on."
+
+"I missed it," said Waster Lunny, "for I was in full cry after Ezra,
+with the sweat running down my face."
+
+"But the most astounding thing has yet to be telled," went on Elspeth.
+"The minister shook himsel' like one wakening frae a nasty dream, and
+he cries in a voice of thunder, just as if he was shaking his fist at
+somebody----"
+
+"He cries," Birse interposed, cleverly, "he cries, 'You will find the
+text in Genesis, chapter three, verse six.'"
+
+"Yes," said Elspeth, "first he gave out one text, and then he gave out
+another, being the most amazing thing to my mind that ever happened in
+the town of Thrums. What will our children's children think o't? I
+wouldna hae missed it for a pound note."
+
+"Nor me," said Waster Lunny, "though I only got the tail o't. Dominie,
+no sooner had he said Genesis third and sixth, than I laid my finger
+on Ezra. Was it no provoking? Onybody can turn up Genesis, but it
+needs an able-bodied man to find Ezra."
+
+"He preached on the Fall," Elspeth said, "for an hour and twenty-five
+minutes, but powerful though he was I would rather he had telled us
+what made him gie the go-by to Ezra."
+
+"All I can say," said Waster Lunny, "is that I never heard him mair
+awe-inspiring. Whaur has he got sic a knowledge of women? He riddled
+them, he fair riddled them, till I was ashamed o' being married."
+
+"It's easy kent whaur he got his knowledge of women," Birse explained,
+"it's a' in the original Hebrew. You can howk ony mortal thing out o'
+the original Hebrew, the which all ministers hae at their finger ends.
+What else makes them ken to jump a verse now and then when giving out
+a psalm?"
+
+"It wasna women like me he denounced," Elspeth insisted, "but young
+lassies that leads men astray wi' their abominable wheedling ways."
+
+"Tod," said her husband, "if they try their hands on Mr. Dishart
+they'll meet their match."
+
+"They will," chuckled the post. "The Hebrew's a grand thing, though
+teuch, I'm telled, michty teuch."
+
+"His sublimest burst," Waster Lunny came back to tell me, "was about
+the beauty o' the soul being everything and the beauty o' the face no
+worth a snuff. What a scorn he has for bonny faces and toom souls! I
+dinna deny but what a bonny face fell takes me, but Mr. Dishart
+wouldna gie a blade o' grass for't. Ay, and I used to think that in
+their foolishness about women there was dagont little differ atween
+the unlearned and the highly edicated."
+
+The gossip about Gavin brought hitherto to the school-house had been
+as bread to me, but this I did not like. For a minister to behave thus
+was as unsettling to us as a change of Government to Londoners, and I
+decided to give my scholars a holiday on the morrow and tramp into the
+town for fuller news. But all through the night it snowed, and next
+day, and then intermittently for many days, and every fall took the
+school miles farther away from Thrums. Birse and the crows had now the
+glen road to themselves, and even Birse had twice or thrice to bed
+with me. At these times had he not been so interested in describing
+his progress through the snow, maintaining that the crying want of our
+glen road was palings for postmen to kick their feet against, he must
+have wondered why I always turned the talk to the Auld Licht
+minister.
+
+"Ony explanation o' his sudden change o' texts?" Birse said, repeating
+my question. "Tod, and there is and to spare, for I hear tell there's
+saxteen explanations in the Tenements alone. As Tammas Haggart says,
+that's a blessing, for if there had just been twa explanations the
+kirk micht hae split on them."
+
+"Ay," he said at another time, "twa or three even dared to question
+the minister, but I'm thinking they made nothing o't. The majority
+agrees that he was just inspired to change his text. But Lang Tammas
+is dour. Tammas telled the session a queer thing. He says that after
+the diet o' worship on that eventful afternoon Mr. Dishart carried the
+Bible out o' the pulpit instead o' leaving that duty as usual to the
+kirk-officer. Weel, Tammas, being precentor, has a richt, as you ken,
+to leave the kirk by the session-house door, just like the minister
+himsel'. He did so that afternoon, and what, think you, did he see? He
+saw Mr. Dishart tearing a page out o' the Bible, and flinging it
+savagely into the session-house fire. You dinna credit it? Weel, it's
+staggering, but there's Hendry Munn's evidence too. Hendry took his
+first chance o' looking up Ezra in the minister's Bible, and, behold,
+the page wi' the eighth chapter was gone. Them that thinks Tammas
+wasna blind wi' excitement hauds it had been Ezra eighth that gaed
+into the fire. Onyway, there's no doubt about the page's being
+missing, for whatever excitement Tammas was in, Hendry was as cool as
+ever."
+
+A week later Birse told me that the congregation had decided to regard
+the incident as adding lustre to their kirk. This was largely, I fear,
+because it could then be used to belittle the Established minister.
+That fervent Auld Licht, Snecky Hobart, feeling that Gavin's action
+was unsound, had gone on the following Sabbath to the parish kirk and
+sat under Mr. Duthie. But Mr. Duthie was a close reader, so that
+Snecky flung himself about in his pew in misery. The minister
+concluded his sermon with these words: "But on this subject I will say
+no more at present." "Because you canna," Snecky roared, and strutted
+out of the church. Comparing the two scenes, it is obvious that the
+Auld Lichts had won a victory. After preaching impromptu for an hour
+and twenty-five minutes, it could never be said of Gavin that he
+needed to read. He became more popular than ever. Yet the change of
+texts was not forgotten. If in the future any other indictments were
+brought against him, it would certainly be pinned to them.
+
+I marvelled long over Gavin's jump from Ezra to Genesis, and at this
+his first philippic against Woman, but I have known the cause for many
+a year. The Bible was the one that had lain on the summer-seat while
+the Egyptian hid there. It was the great pulpit Bible which remains in
+the church as a rule, but Gavin had taken it home the previous day to
+make some of its loose pages secure with paste. He had studied from it
+on the day preceding the riot, but had used a small Bible during the
+rest of the week. When he turned in the pulpit to Ezra, where he had
+left the large Bible open in the summer-seat, he found this scrawled
+across chapter eight:--
+
+"I will never tell who flung the clod at Captain Halliwell. But why
+did you fling it? I will never tell that you allowed me to be called
+Mrs. Dishart before witnesses. But is not this a Scotch marriage?
+Signed, Babbie the Egyptian."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eleven.
+
+TELLS IN A WHISPER OF MAN'S FALL DURING THE CURLING SEASON.
+
+
+No snow could be seen in Thrums by the beginning of the year, though
+clods of it lay in Waster Lunny's fields, where his hens wandered all
+day as if looking for something they had dropped. A black frost had
+set in, and one walking on the glen road could imagine that through
+the cracks in it he saw a loch glistening. From my door I could hear
+the roar of curling stones at Rashie-bog, which is almost four miles
+nearer Thrums. On the day I am recalling, I see that I only made one
+entry in my diary, "At last bought Waster Lunny's bantams." Well do I
+remember the transaction, and no wonder, for I had all but bought the
+bantams every day for a six months.
+
+About noon the doctor's dogcart was observed by all the Tenements
+standing at the Auld Licht manse. The various surmises were wrong.
+Margaret had not been suddenly taken ill; Jean had not swallowed a
+darning-needle; the minister had not walked out at his study window in
+a moment of sublime thought. Gavin stepped into the dogcart, which at
+once drove off in the direction of Rashie-bog, but equally in error
+were those who said that the doctor was making a curler of him.
+
+There was, however, ground for gossip; for Thrums folk seldom called
+in a doctor until it was too late to cure them, and McQueen was not
+the man to pay social visits. Of his skill we knew fearsome stories,
+as that, by looking at Archie Allardyce, who had come to broken bones
+on a ladder, he discovered which rung Archie fell from. When he
+entered a stuffy room he would poke his staff through the window to
+let in fresh air, and then fling down a shilling to pay for the
+breakage. He was deaf in the right ear, and therefore usually took the
+left side of prosy people, thus, as he explained, making a blessing of
+an affliction. "A pity I don't hear better?" I have heard him say.
+"Not at all. If my misfortune, as you call it, were to be removed, you
+can't conceive how I should miss my deaf ear." He was a fine fellow,
+though brusque, and I never saw him without his pipe until two days
+before we buried him, which was five-and-twenty years ago come
+Martinmas.
+
+"We're all quite weel," Jean said apprehensively as she answered his
+knock on the manse door, and she tried to be pleasant, too, for well
+she knew that, if a doctor willed it, she could have fever in five
+minutes.
+
+"Ay, Jean, I'll soon alter that," he replied ferociously. "Is the
+master in?"
+
+"He's at his sermon," Jean said with importance.
+
+To interrupt the minister at such a moment seemed sacrilege to her,
+for her up-bringing had been good. Her mother had once fainted in the
+church, but though the family's distress was great, they neither bore
+her out, nor signed to the kirk-officer to bring water. They propped
+her up in the pew in a respectful attitude, joining in the singing
+meanwhile, and she recovered in time to look up 2nd Chronicles, 21st
+and 7th.
+
+"Tell him I want to speak to him at the door," said the doctor
+fiercely, "or I'll bleed you this minute."
+
+McQueen would not enter, because his horse might have seized the
+opportunity to return stablewards. At the houses where it was
+accustomed to stop, it drew up of its own accord, knowing where the
+Doctor's "cases" were as well as himself, but it resented new
+patients.
+
+"You like misery, I think, Mr. Dishart," McQueen said when Gavin came
+to him, "at least I am always finding you in the thick of it, and
+that is why I am here now. I have a rare job for you if you will jump
+into the machine. You know Nanny Webster, who lives on the edge of
+Windyghoul? No, you don't, for she belongs to the other kirk. Well, at
+all events, you knew her brother, Sanders, the mole-catcher?"
+
+"I remember him. You mean the man who boasted so much about seeing a
+ball at Lord Rintoul's place?"
+
+"The same, and, as you may know, his boasting about maltreating
+policemen whom he never saw led to his being sentenced to nine months
+in gaol lately."
+
+"That is the man," said Gavin. "I never liked him."
+
+"No, but his sister did," McQueen answered, drily, "and with reason,
+for he was her breadwinner, and now she is starving."
+
+"Anything I can give her----"
+
+"Would be too little, sir."
+
+"But the neighbours----"
+
+"She has few near her, and though the Thrums poor help each other
+bravely, they are at present nigh as needy as herself. Nanny is coming
+to the poorhouse, Mr. Dishart."
+
+"God help her!" exclaimed Gavin.
+
+"Nonsense," said the doctor, trying to make himself a hard man. "She
+will be properly looked after there, and--and in time she will like
+it."
+
+"Don't let my mother hear you speaking of taking an old woman to that
+place," Gavin said, looking anxiously up the stair. I cannot pretend
+that Margaret never listened.
+
+"You all speak as if the poorhouse was a gaol," the doctor said
+testily. "But so far as Nanny is concerned, everything is arranged. I
+promised to drive her to the poorhouse to-day, and she is waiting for
+me now. Don't look at me as if I was a brute. She is to take some of
+her things with her to the poorhouse and the rest is to be left until
+Sanders's return, when she may rejoin him. At least we said that to
+her to comfort her."
+
+"You want me to go with you?"
+
+"Yes, though I warn you it may be a distressing scene; indeed, the
+truth is that I am loth to face Nanny alone to-day. Mr. Duthie should
+have accompanied me, for the Websters are Established Kirk; ay, and so
+he would if Rashie-bog had not been bearing. A terrible snare this
+curling, Mr. Dishart"--here the doctor sighed--"I have known Mr.
+Duthie wait until midnight struck on Sabbath and then be off to
+Rashie-bog with a torch."
+
+"I will go with you," Gavin said, putting on his coat.
+
+"Jump in then. You won't smoke? I never see a respectable man not
+smoking, sir, but I feel indignant with him for such sheer waste of
+time."
+
+Gavin smiled at this, and Snecky Hobart, who happened to be keeking
+over the manse dyke, bore the news to the Tenements.
+
+"I'll no sleep the nicht," Snecky said, "for wondering what made the
+minister lauch. Ay, it would be no trifle."
+
+A minister, it is certain, who wore a smile on his face would never
+have been called to the Auld Licht kirk, for life is a wrestle with
+the devil, and only the frivolous think to throw him without taking
+off their coats. Yet, though Gavin's zeal was what the congregation
+reverenced, many loved him privately for his boyishness. He could
+unbend at marriages, of which he had six on the last day of the year,
+and at every one of them he joked (the same joke) like a layman. Some
+did not approve of his playing at the teetotum for ten minutes with
+Kitty Dundas's invalid son, but the way Kitty boasted about it would
+have disgusted anybody. At the present day there are probably a score
+of Gavins in Thrums, all called after the little minister, and there
+is one Gavinia, whom he hesitated to christen. He made humorous
+remarks (the same remark) about all these children, and his smile as
+he patted their heads was for thinking over when one's work was done
+for the day.
+
+The doctor's horse clattered up the Backwynd noisily, as if a minister
+behind made no difference to it. Instead of climbing the Roods,
+however, the nearest way to Nanny's, it went westward, which Gavin, in
+a reverie, did not notice. The truth must be told. The Egyptian was
+again in his head.
+
+"Have I fallen deaf in the left ear, too?" said the doctor. "I see
+your lips moving, but I don't catch a syllable."
+
+Gavin started, coloured, and flung the gypsy out of the trap.
+
+"Why are we not going up the Roods?" he asked.
+
+"Well," said the doctor slowly, "at the top of the Roods there is a
+stance for circuses, and this old beast of mine won't pass it. You
+know, unless you are behind in the clashes and clavers of Thrums, that
+I bought her from the manager of a travelling show. She was the horse
+('Lightning' they called her) that galloped round the ring at a mile
+an hour, and so at the top of the Roods she is still unmanageable. She
+once dragged me to the scene of her former triumphs, and went
+revolving round it, dragging the machine after her."
+
+"If you had not explained that," said Gavin, "I might have thought
+that you wanted to pass by Rashie-bog."
+
+The doctor, indeed, was already standing up to catch a first glimpse
+of the curlers.
+
+"Well," he admitted, "I might have managed to pass the circus ring,
+though what I have told you is true. However, I have not come this way
+merely to see how the match is going. I want to shame Mr. Duthie for
+neglecting his duty. It will help me to do mine, for the Lord knows I
+am finding it hard, with the music of these stones in my ears."
+
+"I never saw it played before," Gavin said, standing up in his turn.
+"What a din they make! McQueen, I believe they are fighting!"
+
+"No, no," said the excited doctor, "they are just a bit daft. That's
+the proper spirit for the game. Look, that's the baron-bailie near
+standing on his head, and there's Mr. Duthie off his head a'
+thegither. Yon's twa weavers and a mason cursing the laird, and the
+man wi' the besom is the Master of Crumnathie."
+
+"A democracy, at all events," said Gavin.
+
+"By no means," said the doctor, "it's an aristocracy of intellect. Gee
+up, Lightning, or the frost will be gone before we are there."
+
+"It is my opinion, doctor," said Gavin, "that you will have bones to
+set before that game is finished. I can see nothing but legs now."
+
+"Don't say a word against curling, sir, to me," said McQueen, whom the
+sight of a game in which he must not play had turned crusty.
+"Dangerous! It's the best medicine I know of. Look at that man coming
+across the field. It is Jo Strachan. Well, sir, curling saved Jo's
+life after I had given him up. You don't believe me? Hie, Jo, Jo
+Strachan, come here and tell the minister how curling put you on your
+legs again."
+
+Strachan came forward, a tough, little, wizened man, with red flannel
+round his ears to keep out the cold.
+
+"It's gospel what the doctor says, Mr. Dishart," he declared. "Me and
+my brither Sandy was baith ill, and in the same bed, and the doctor
+had hopes o' Sandy, but nane o' me. Ay, weel, when I heard that, I
+thocht I micht as weel die on the ice as in my bed, so I up and on wi'
+my claethes. Sandy was mad at me, for he was no curler, and he says,
+'Jo Strachan, if you gang to Rashie-bog you'll assuredly be brocht
+hame a corp.' I didna heed him, though, and off I gaed."
+
+"And I see you did not die," said Gavin.
+
+"Not me," answered the fish cadger, with a grin. "Na, but the joke o't
+is, it was Sandy that died."
+
+"Not the joke, Jo," corrected the doctor, "the moral."
+
+"Ay, the moral; I'm aye forgetting the word."
+
+McQueen, enjoying Gavin's discomfiture, turned Lightning down the
+Rashie-bog road, which would be impassable as soon as the thaw came.
+In summer Rashie-bog is several fields in which a cart does not sink
+unless it stands still, but in winter it is a loch with here and there
+a spring where dead men are said to lie. There are no rushes at its
+east end, and here the dogcart drew up near the curlers, a crowd of
+men dancing, screaming, shaking their fists and sweeping, while half a
+hundred onlookers got in their way, gesticulating and advising.
+
+"Hold me tight," the doctor whispered to Gavin, "or I'll be leaving
+you to drive Nanny to the poorhouse by yourself."
+
+He had no sooner said this than he tried to jump out of the trap.
+
+"You donnert fule, John Robbie," he shouted to a player, "soop her up,
+man, soop her up; no, no, dinna, dinna; leave her alane. Bailie, leave
+her alane, you blazing idiot. Mr. Dishart, let me go; what do you
+mean, sir, by hanging on to my coat tails? Dang it all, Duthie's
+winning. He has it, he has it!"
+
+"You're to play, doctor?" some cried, running to the dogcart. "We hae
+missed you sair."
+
+"Jeames, I--I--. No, I daurna."
+
+"Then we get our licks. I never saw the minister in sic form. We can
+do nothing against him."
+
+"Then," cried McQueen, "I'll play. Come what will, I'll play. Let go
+my tails, Mr. Dishart, or I'll cut them off. Duty? Fiddlesticks!"
+
+"Shame on you, sir," said Gavin; "yes, and on you others who would
+entice him from his duty."
+
+"Shame!" the doctor cried. "Look at Mr. Duthie. Is he ashamed? And
+yet that man has been reproving me for a twelvemonths because I've
+refused to become one of his elders. Duthie," he shouted, "think shame
+of yourself for curling this day."
+
+Mr. Duthie had carefully turned his back to the trap, for Gavin's
+presence in it annoyed him. We seldom care to be reminded of our duty
+by seeing another do it. Now, however, he advanced to the dogcart,
+taking the far side of Gavin.
+
+"Put on your coat, Mr. Duthie," said the doctor, "and come with me to
+Nanny Webster's. You promised."
+
+Mr. Duthie looked quizzically at Gavin, and then at the sky.
+
+"The thaw may come at any moment," he said.
+
+"I think the frost is to hold," said Gavin.
+
+"It may hold over to-morrow," Mr. Duthie admitted; "but to-morrow's
+the Sabbath, and so a lost day."
+
+"A what?" exclaimed Gavin, horrified.
+
+"I only mean," Mr. Duthie answered, colouring, "that we can't curl on
+the Lord's day. As for what it may be like on Monday, no one can say.
+No, doctor, I won't risk it. We're in the middle of a game, man."
+
+Gavin looked very grave.
+
+"I see what you are thinking, Mr. Dishart," the old minister said
+doggedly; "but then, you don't curl. You are very wise. I have
+forbidden my sons to curl."
+
+"Then you openly snap your fingers at your duty, Mr. Duthie?" said the
+doctor, loftily. ("You can let go my tails now, Mr. Dishart, for the
+madness has passed.")
+
+"None of your virtuous airs, McQueen," said Mr. Duthie, hotly. "What
+was the name of the doctor that warned women never to have bairns
+while it was hauding?"
+
+"And what," retorted McQueen, "was the name of the minister that told
+his session he would neither preach nor pray while the black frost
+lasted?"
+
+"Hoots, doctor," said Duthie, "don't lose your temper because I'm in
+such form."
+
+"Don't lose yours, Duthie, because I aye beat you."
+
+"You beat me, McQueen! Go home, sir, and don't talk havers. Who beat
+you at----"
+
+"Who made you sing small at----"
+
+"Who won----"
+
+"Who----"
+
+"Who----"
+
+"I'll play you on Monday for whatever you like!" shrieked the doctor.
+
+"If it holds," cried the minister, "I'll be here the whole day. Name
+the stakes yourself. A stone?"
+
+"No," the doctor said, "but I'll tell you what we'll play for. You've
+been dinging me doited about that eldership, and we'll play for't. If
+you win I accept office."
+
+"Done," said the minister, recklessly.
+
+The dogcart was now turned toward Windyghoul, its driver once more
+good-humoured, but Gavin silent.
+
+"You would have been the better of my deaf ear just now, Mr. Dishart,"
+McQueen said after the loch had been left behind. "Aye, and I'm
+thinking my pipe would soothe you. But don't take it so much to heart,
+man. I'll lick him easily. He's a decent man, the minister, but vain
+of his play, ridiculously vain. However, I think the sight of you, in
+the place that should have been his, has broken his nerve for this
+day, and our side may win yet."
+
+"I believe," Gavin said, with sudden enlightenment, "that you brought
+me here for that purpose."
+
+"Maybe," chuckled the doctor; "maybe." Then he changed the subject
+suddenly. "Mr. Dishart," he asked, "were you ever in love?"
+
+"Never!" answered Gavin violently.
+
+"Well, well," said the doctor, "don't terrify the horse. I have been
+in love myself. It's bad, but it's nothing to curling."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twelve.
+
+TRAGEDY OF A MUD HOUSE.
+
+
+The dogcart bumped between the trees of Caddam, flinging Gavin and the
+doctor at each other as a wheel rose on some beech-root or sank for a
+moment in a pool. I suppose the wood was a pretty sight that day, the
+pines only white where they had met the snow, as if the numbed painter
+had left his work unfinished, the brittle twigs snapping overhead, the
+water as black as tar. But it matters little what the wood was like.
+Within a squirrel's leap of it an old woman was standing at the door
+of a mud house listening for the approach of the trap that was to take
+her to the poorhouse. Can you think of the beauty of the day now?
+
+Nanny was not crying. She had redd up her house for the last time and
+put on her black merino. Her mouth was wide open while she listened.
+If you had addressed her you would have thought her polite and stupid.
+Look at her. A flabby-faced woman she is now, with a swollen body, and
+no one has heeded her much these thirty years. I can tell you
+something; it is almost droll. Nanny Webster was once a gay flirt, and
+in Airlie Square there is a weaver with an unsteady head who thought
+all the earth of her. His loom has taken a foot from his stature, and
+gone are Nanny's raven locks on which he used to place his adoring
+hand. Down in Airlie Square he is weaving for his life, and here is
+Nanny, ripe for the poorhouse, and between them is the hill where they
+were lovers. That is all the story save that when Nanny heard the
+dogcart she screamed.
+
+No neighbour was with her. If you think this hard, it is because you
+do not understand. Perhaps Nanny had never been very lovable except to
+one man, and him, it is said, she lost through her own vanity; but
+there was much in her to like. The neighbours, of whom there were two
+not a hundred yards away, would have been with her now but they feared
+to hurt her feelings. No heart opens to sympathy without letting in
+delicacy, and these poor people knew that Nanny would not like them to
+see her being taken away. For a week they had been aware of what was
+coming, and they had been most kind to her, but that hideous word, the
+poorhouse, they had not uttered. Poorhouse is not to be spoken in
+Thrums, though it is nothing to tell a man that you see death in his
+face. Did Nanny think they knew where she was going? was a question
+they whispered to each other, and her suffering eyes cut scars on
+their hearts. So now that the hour had come they called their children
+into their houses and pulled down their blinds.
+
+"If you would like to see her by yourself," the doctor said eagerly to
+Gavin, as the horse drew up at Nanny's gate, "I'll wait with the
+horse. Not," he added, hastily, "that I feel sorry for her. We are
+doing her a kindness."
+
+They dismounted together, however, and Nanny, who had run from the
+trap into the house, watched them from her window.
+
+McQueen saw her and said glumly, "I should have come alone, for if you
+pray she is sure to break down. Mr. Dishart, could you not pray
+cheerfully?"
+
+"You don't look very cheerful yourself," Gavin said sadly.
+
+"Nonsense," answered the doctor. "I have no patience with this false
+sentiment. Stand still, Lightning, and be thankful you are not your
+master to-day."
+
+The door stood open, and Nanny was crouching against the opposite wall
+of the room, such a poor, dull kitchen, that you would have thought
+the furniture had still to be brought into it. The blanket and the
+piece of old carpet that was Nanny's coverlet were already packed in
+her box. The plate rack was empty. Only the round table and the two
+chairs, and the stools and some pans were being left behind.
+
+"Well, Nanny," the doctor said, trying to bluster, "I have come, and
+you see Mr. Dishart is with me."
+
+Nanny rose bravely. She knew the doctor was good to her, and she
+wanted to thank him. I have not seen a great deal of the world myself,
+but often the sweet politeness of the aged poor has struck me as
+beautiful. Nanny dropped a curtesy, an ungainly one maybe, but it was
+an old woman giving the best she had.
+
+"Thank you kindly, sirs," she said; and then two pairs of eyes dropped
+before hers.
+
+"Please to take a chair," she added timidly. It is strange to know
+that at that awful moment, for let none tell me it was less than
+awful, the old woman was the one who could speak.
+
+Both men sat down, for they would have hurt Nanny by remaining
+standing. Some ministers would have known the right thing to say to
+her, but Gavin dared not let himself speak. I have again to remind you
+that he was only one-and-twenty.
+
+"I'm drouthy, Nanny," the doctor said, to give her something to do,
+"and I would be obliged for a drink of water."
+
+Nanny hastened to the pan that stood behind her door, but stopped
+before she reached it.
+
+"It's toom," she said. "I--I didna think I needed to fill it this
+morning." She caught the doctor's eye, and could only half restrain a
+sob. "I couldna help that," she said, apologetically. "I'm richt angry
+at myself for being so ungrateful like."
+
+The doctor thought it best that they should depart at once. He rose.
+
+"Oh, no, doctor," cried Nanny in alarm.
+
+"But you are ready?"
+
+"Ay," she said, "I have been ready this twa hours, but you micht wait
+a minute. Hendry Munn and Andrew Allardyce is coming yont the road,
+and they would see me."
+
+"Wait, doctor," Gavin said.
+
+"Thank you kindly, sir," answered Nanny.
+
+"But Nanny," the doctor said, "you must remember what I told you about
+the poo--, about the place you are going to. It is a fine house, and
+you will be very happy in it."
+
+"Ay, I'll be happy in't," Nanny faltered, "but, doctor, if I could
+just hae bidden on here though I wasna happy!"
+
+"Think of the food you will get; broth nearly every day."
+
+"It--it'll be terrible enjoyable," Nanny said.
+
+"And there will be pleasant company for you always," continued the
+doctor, "and a nice room to sit in. Why, after you have been there a
+week, you won't be the same woman."
+
+"That's it!" cried Nanny with sudden passion. "Na, na; I'll be a woman
+on the poor's rates. Oh, mither, mither, you little thocht when you
+bore me that I would come to this!"
+
+"Nanny," the doctor said, rising again, "I am ashamed of you."
+
+"I humbly speir your forgiveness, sir," she said, "and you micht bide
+just a wee yet. I've been ready to gang these twa hours, but now that
+the machine is at the gate, I dinna ken how it is, but I'm terrible
+sweer to come awa'. Oh, Mr. Dishart, it's richt true what the doctor
+says about the--the place, but I canna just take it in. I'm--I'm gey
+auld."
+
+"You will often get out to see your friends," was all Gavin could
+say.
+
+"Na, na, na," she cried, "dinna say that; I'll gang, but you mauna bid
+me ever come out, except in a hearse. Dinna let onybody in Thrums look
+on my face again."
+
+"We must go," said the doctor firmly. "Put on your mutch, Nanny."
+
+"I dinna need to put on a mutch," she answered, with a faint flush of
+pride. "I have a bonnet."
+
+She took the bonnet from her bed, and put it on slowly.
+
+"Are you sure there's naebody looking?" she asked.
+
+The doctor glanced at the minister, and Gavin rose.
+
+"Let us pray," he said, and the three went down on their knees.
+
+It was not the custom of Auld Licht ministers to leave any house
+without offering up a prayer in it, and to us it always seemed that
+when Gavin prayed, he was at the knees of God. The little minister
+pouring himself out in prayer in a humble room, with awed people
+around him who knew much more of the world than he, his voice at times
+thick and again a squeal, and his hands clasped not gracefully, may
+have been only a comic figure, but we were old-fashioned, and he
+seemed to make us better men. If I only knew the way, I would draw him
+as he was, and not fear to make him too mean a man for you to read
+about. He had not been long in Thrums before he knew that we talked
+much of his prayers, and that doubtless puffed him up a little.
+Sometimes, I daresay, he rose from his knees feeling that he had
+prayed well to-day, which is a dreadful charge to bring against any
+one. But it was not always so, nor was it so now.
+
+I am not speaking harshly of this man, whom I have loved beyond all
+others, when I say that Nanny came between him and his prayer. Had he
+been of God's own image, unstained, he would have forgotten all else
+in his Maker's presence, but Nanny was speaking too, and her words
+choked his. At first she only whispered, but soon what was eating her
+heart burst out painfully, and she did not know that the minister had
+stopped.
+
+They were such moans as these that brought him back to earth:--
+
+"I'll hae to gang.... I'm a base woman no' to be mair thankfu' to them
+that is so good to me.... I dinna like to prig wi' them to take a
+roundabout road, and I'm sair fleid a' the Roods will see me.... If it
+could just be said to poor Sanders when he comes back that I died
+hurriedly, syne he would be able to haud up his head.... Oh,
+mither!... I wish terrible they had come and ta'en me at nicht....
+It's a dogcart, and I was praying it micht be a cart, so that they
+could cover me wi' straw."
+
+"This is more than I can stand," the doctor cried.
+
+Nanny rose frightened.
+
+"I've tried you, sair," she said, "but, oh, I'm grateful, and I'm
+ready now."
+
+They all advanced toward the door without another word, and Nanny even
+tried to smile. But in the middle of the floor something came over
+her, and she stood there. Gavin took her hand, and it was cold. She
+looked from one to the other, her mouth opening and shutting.
+
+"I canna help it," she said.
+
+"It's cruel hard," muttered the doctor. "I knew this woman when she
+was a lassie."
+
+The little minister stretched out his hands.
+
+"Have pity on her, O God!" he prayed, with the presumptuousness of
+youth.
+
+Nanny heard the words.
+
+"Oh, God," she cried, "you micht!"
+
+God needs no minister to tell Him what to do, but it was His will that
+the poorhouse should not have this woman. He made use of a strange
+instrument, no other than the Egyptian, who now opened the mudhouse
+door.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirteen.
+
+SECOND COMING OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
+
+
+The gypsy had been passing the house, perhaps on her way to Thrums for
+gossip, and it was only curiosity, born suddenly of Gavin's cry, that
+made her enter. On finding herself in unexpected company she retained
+hold of the door, and to the amazed minister she seemed for a moment
+to have stepped into the mud house from his garden. Her eyes danced,
+however, as they recognised him, and then he hardened. "This is no
+place for you," he was saying fiercely, when Nanny, too distraught to
+think, fell crying at the Egyptian's feet.
+
+"They are taking me to the poorhouse," she sobbed; "dinna let them,
+dinna let them."
+
+The Egyptian's arms clasped her, and the Egyptian kissed a sallow
+cheek that had once been as fair as yours, madam, who may read this
+story. No one had caressed Nanny for many years, but do you think she
+was too poor and old to care for these young arms around her neck?
+There are those who say that women cannot love each other, but it is
+not true. Woman is not undeveloped man, but something better, and
+Gavin and the doctor knew it as they saw Nanny clinging to her
+protector. When the gypsy turned with flashing eyes to the two men she
+might have been a mother guarding her child.
+
+"How dare you!" she cried, stamping her foot; and they quaked like
+malefactors.
+
+"You don't see----" Gavin began, but her indignation stopped him.
+
+"You coward!" she said.
+
+Even the doctor had been impressed, so that he now addressed the gypsy
+respectfully.
+
+"This is all very well," he said, "but a woman's sympathy----"
+
+"A woman!--ah, if I could be a man for only five minutes!"
+
+She clenched her little fists, and again turned to Nanny.
+
+"You poor dear," she said tenderly, "I won't let them take you away."
+
+She looked triumphantly at both minister and doctor, as one who had
+foiled them in their cruel designs.
+
+"Go!" she said, pointing grandly to the door.
+
+"Is this the Egyptian of the riots," the doctor said in a low voice to
+Gavin, "or is she a queen? Hoots, man, don't look so shamefaced. We
+are not criminals. Say something."
+
+Then to the Egyptian Gavin said firmly--
+
+"You mean well, but you are doing this poor woman a cruelty in holding
+out hopes to her that cannot be realised. Sympathy is not meal and
+bedclothes, and these are what she needs."
+
+"And you who live in luxury," retorted the girl, "would send her to
+the poorhouse for them. I thought better of you!"
+
+"Tuts!" said the doctor, losing patience, "Mr. Dishart gives more than
+any other man in Thrums to the poor, and he is not to be preached to
+by a gypsy. We are waiting for you, Nanny."
+
+"Ay, I'm coming," said Nanny, leaving the Egyptian. "I'll hae to gang,
+lassie. Dinna greet for me."
+
+But the Egyptian said, "No, you are not going. It is these men who are
+going. Go, sirs, and leave us."
+
+"And you will provide for Nanny?" asked the doctor contemptuously.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And where is the siller to come from?"
+
+"That is my affair, and Nanny's. Begone, both of you. She shall never
+want again. See how the very mention of your going brings back life to
+her face."
+
+"I won't begone," the doctor said roughly, "till I see the colour of
+your siller."
+
+"Oh, the money," said the Egyptian scornfully. She put her hand into
+her pocket confidently, as if used to well-filled purses, but could
+only draw out two silver pieces.
+
+"I had forgotten," she said aloud, though speaking to herself.
+
+"I thought so," said the cynical doctor. "Come, Nanny."
+
+"You presume to doubt me!" the Egyptian said, blocking his way to the
+door.
+
+"How could I presume to believe you?" he answered. "You are a beggar
+by profession, and yet talk as if----pooh, nonsense."
+
+"I would live on terrible little," Nanny whispered, "and Sanders will
+be out again in August month."
+
+"Seven shillings a week," rapped out the doctor.
+
+"Is that all?" the Egyptian asked. "She shall have it."
+
+"When?"
+
+"At once. No, it is not possible to-night, but to-morrow I will bring
+five pounds; no, I will send it; no, you must come for it."
+
+"And where, O daughter of Dives, do you reside?" the doctor asked.
+
+No doubt the Egyptian could have found a ready answer had her pity for
+Nanny been less sincere; as it was, she hesitated, wanting to
+propitiate the doctor, while holding her secret fast.
+
+"I only asked," McQueen said, eyeing her curiously, "because when I
+make an appointment I like to know where it is to be held. But I
+suppose you are suddenly to rise out of the ground as you have done
+to-day, and did six weeks ago."
+
+"Whether I rise out of the ground or not," the gypsy said, keeping her
+temper with an effort, "there will be a five-pound note in my hand.
+You will meet me to-morrow about this hour at--say the Kaims of
+Cushie?"
+
+"No," said the doctor after a moment's pause; "I won't. Even if I went
+to the Kaims I should not find you there. Why can you not come to
+me?"
+
+"Why do you carry a woman's hair," replied the Egyptian, "in that
+locket on your chain?"
+
+Whether she was speaking of what she knew, or this was only a chance
+shot, I cannot tell, but the doctor stepped back from her hastily, and
+could not help looking down at the locket.
+
+"Yes," said the Egyptian calmly, "it is still shut; but why do you
+sometimes open it at nights?"
+
+"Lassie," the old doctor cried, "are you a witch?"
+
+"Perhaps," she said; "but I ask for no answer to my questions. If you
+have your secrets, why may I not have mine? Now will you meet me at
+the Kaims?"
+
+"No; I distrust you more than ever. Even if you came, it would be to
+play with me as you have done already. How can a vagrant have five
+pounds in her pocket when she does not have five shillings on her
+back?"
+
+"You are a cruel, hard man," the Egyptian said, beginning to lose
+hope. "But, see," she cried, brightening, "look at this ring. Do you
+know its value?"
+
+She held up her finger, but the stone would not live in the dull
+light.
+
+"I see it is gold," the doctor said cautiously, and she smiled at the
+ignorance that made him look only at the frame.
+
+"Certainly, it is gold," said Gavin, equally stupid.
+
+"Mercy on us!" Nanny cried; "I believe it's what they call a
+diamond."
+
+"How did you come by it?" the doctor asked suspiciously.
+
+"I thought we had agreed not to ask each other questions," the
+Egyptian answered drily. "But, see, I will give it to you to hold in
+hostage. If I am not at the Kaims to get it back you can keep it."
+
+The doctor took the ring in his hand and examined it curiously.
+
+"There is a quirk in this," he said at last, "that I don't like. Take
+back your ring, lassie. Mr. Dishart, give Nanny your arm, and I'll
+carry her box to the machine."
+
+Now all this time Gavin had been in the dire distress of a man
+possessed of two minds, of which one said, "This is a true woman," and
+the other, "Remember the seventeenth of October." They were at war
+within him, and he knew that he must take a side, yet no sooner had he
+cast one out than he invited it back. He did not answer the doctor.
+
+"Unless," McQueen said, nettled by his hesitation, "you trust this
+woman's word."
+
+Gavin tried honestly to weigh those two minds against each other, but
+could not prevent impulse jumping into one of the scales.
+
+"You do trust me," the Egyptian said, with wet eyes; and now that he
+looked on her again--
+
+"Yes," he said firmly, "I trust you," and the words that had been so
+difficult to say were the right words. He had no more doubt of it.
+
+"Just think a moment first," the doctor warned him. "I decline to have
+anything to do with this matter. You will go to the Kaims for the
+siller?"
+
+"If it is necessary," said Gavin.
+
+"It is necessary," the Egyptian said.
+
+"Then I will go."
+
+Nanny took his hand timidly, and would have kissed it had he been less
+than a minister.
+
+"You dare not, man," the doctor said gruffly, "make an appointment
+with this gypsy. Think of what will be said in Thrums."
+
+I honour Gavin for the way in which he took this warning. For him, who
+was watched from the rising of his congregation to their lying down,
+whose every movement was expected to be a text to Thrums, it was no
+small thing that he had promised. This he knew, but he only reddened
+because the doctor had implied an offensive thing in a woman's
+presence.
+
+"You forget yourself, doctor," he said sharply.
+
+"Send some one in your place," advised the doctor, who liked the
+little minister.
+
+"He must come himself and alone," said the Egyptian. "You must both
+give me your promise not to mention who is Nanny's friend, and she
+must promise too."
+
+"Well," said the doctor, buttoning up his coat, "I cannot keep my
+horse freezing any longer. Remember, Mr. Dishart, you take the sole
+responsibility of this."
+
+"I do," said Gavin, "and with the utmost confidence."
+
+"Give him the ring then, lassie," said McQueen.
+
+She handed the minister the ring, but he would not take it.
+
+"I have your word," he said; "that is sufficient."
+
+Then the Egyptian gave him the first look that he could think of
+afterwards without misgivings.
+
+"So be it," said the doctor. "Get the money, and I will say nothing
+about it, unless I have reason to think that it has been dishonestly
+come by. Don't look so frightened at me, Nanny. I hope for your sake
+that her stocking-foot is full of gold."
+
+"Surely it's worth risking," Nanny said, not very brightly, "when the
+minister's on her side."
+
+"Ay, but on whose side, Nanny?" asked the doctor. "Lassie, I bear you
+no grudge; will you not tell me who you are?"
+
+"Only a puir gypsy, your honour," said the girl, becoming mischievous
+now that she had gained her point; "only a wandering hallen-shaker,
+and will I tell you your fortune, my pretty gentleman?"
+
+"No, you shan't," replied the doctor, plunging his hands so hastily
+into his pockets that Gavin laughed.
+
+"I don't need to look at your hand," said the gypsy, "I can read your
+fortune in your face."
+
+She looked at him fixedly, so that he fidgeted.
+
+"I see you," said the Egyptian in a sepulchral voice, and speaking
+slowly, "become very frail. Your eyesight has almost gone. You are
+sitting alone in a cauld room, cooking your ain dinner ower a feeble
+fire. The soot is falling down the lum. Your bearish manners towards
+women have driven the servant lassie frae your house, and your wife
+beats you."
+
+"Ay, you spoil your prophecy there," the doctor said, considerably
+relieved, "for I'm not married; my pipe's the only wife I ever had."
+
+"You will be married by that time," continued the Egyptian, frowning
+at this interruption, "for I see your wife. She is a shrew. She
+marries you in your dotage. She lauchs at you in company. She doesna
+allow you to smoke."
+
+"Away with you, you jade," cried the doctor in a fury, and feeling
+nervously for his pipe. "Mr. Dishart, you had better stay and arrange
+this matter as you choose, but I want a word with you outside."
+
+"And you're no angry wi' me, doctor, are you?" asked Nanny wistfully.
+"You've been richt good to me, but I canna thole the thocht o' that
+place. And, oh, doctor, you winna tell naebody that I was so near taen
+to it?"
+
+In the garden McQueen said to Gavin:--
+
+"You may be right, Mr. Dishart, in this matter, for there is this in
+our favour, that the woman can gain nothing by tricking us. She did
+seem to feel for Nanny. But who can she be? You saw she could put on
+and off the Scotch tongue as easily as if it were a cap."
+
+"She is as much a mystery to me as to you," Gavin answered, "but she
+will give me the money, and that is all I ask of her."
+
+"Ay, that remains to be seen. But take care of yourself; a man's
+second childhood begins when a woman gets hold of him."
+
+"Don't alarm yourself about me, doctor. I daresay she is only one of
+those gypsies from the South. They are said to be wealthy, many of
+them, and even, when they like, to have a grand manner. The Thrums
+people had no doubt but that she was what she seemed to be."
+
+"Ay, but what does she seem to be? Even that puzzles me. And then
+there is this mystery about her which she admits herself, though
+perhaps only to play with us."
+
+"Perhaps," said Gavin, "she is only taking precautions against her
+discovery by the police. You must remember her part in the riots."
+
+"Yes, but we never learned how she was able to play that part.
+Besides, there is no fear in her, or she would not have ventured back
+to Thrums. However, good luck attend you. But be wary. You saw how she
+kept her feet among her shalls and wills? Never trust a Scotch man or
+woman who does not come to grief among them."
+
+The doctor took his seat in the dogcart.
+
+"And, Mr. Dishart," he called out, "that was all nonsense about the
+locket."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fourteen.
+
+THE MINISTER DANCES TO THE WOMAN'S PIPING.
+
+
+Gavin let the doctor's warnings fall in the grass. In his joy over
+Nanny's deliverance he jumped the garden gate, whose hinges were of
+yarn, and cleverly caught his hat as it was leaving his head in
+protest. He then re-entered the mud house staidly. Pleasant was the
+change. Nanny's home was as a clock that had been run out, and is set
+going again. Already the old woman was unpacking her box, to increase
+the distance between herself and the poorhouse. But Gavin only saw her
+in the background, for the Egyptian, singing at her work, had become
+the heart of the house. She had flung her shawl over Nanny's
+shoulders, and was at the fireplace breaking peats with the leg of a
+stool. She turned merrily to the minister to ask him to chop up his
+staff for firewood, and he would have answered wittily but could not.
+Then, as often, the beauty of the Egyptian surprised him into silence.
+I could never get used to her face myself in the after-days. It has
+always held me wondering, like my own Glen Quharity on a summer day,
+when the sun is lingering and the clouds are on the march, and the
+glen is never the same for two minutes, but always so beautiful as to
+make me sad. Never will I attempt to picture the Egyptian as she
+seemed to Gavin while she bent over Nanny's fire, never will I
+describe my glen. Yet a hundred times have I hankered after trying to
+picture both.
+
+An older minister, believing that Nanny's anguish was ended, might
+have gone on his knees and finished the interrupted prayer, but now
+Gavin was only doing this girl's bidding.
+
+"Nanny and I are to have a dish of tea, as soon as we have set things
+to rights," she told him. "Do you think we should invite the minister,
+Nanny?"
+
+"We couldna dare," Nanny answered quickly. "You'll excuse her, Mr.
+Dishart, for the presumption?"
+
+"Presumption!" said the Egyptian, making a face.
+
+"Lassie," Nanny said, fearful to offend her new friend, yet horrified
+at this affront to the minister, "I ken you mean weel, but Mr.
+Dishart'll think you're putting yoursel' on an equality wi' him." She
+added in a whisper, "Dinna be so free; he's the Auld Licht minister."
+
+The gypsy bowed with mock awe, but Gavin let it pass. He had, indeed,
+forgotten that he was anybody in particular, and was anxious to stay
+to tea.
+
+"But there is no water," he remembered, "and is there any tea?"
+
+"I am going out for them and for some other things," the Egyptian
+explained. "But no," she continued, reflectively, "if I go for the
+tea, you must go for the water."
+
+"Lassie," cried Nanny, "mind wha you're speaking to. To send a
+minister to the well!"
+
+"I will go," said Gavin, recklessly lifting the pitcher. "The well is
+in the wood, I think?"
+
+"Gie me the pitcher, Mr. Dishart," said Nanny, in distress. "What a
+town there would be if you was seen wi't!"
+
+"Then he must remain here and keep the house till we come back," said
+the Egyptian, and thereupon departed, with a friendly wave of her hand
+to the minister.
+
+"She's an awfu' lassie," Nanny said, apologetically, "but it'll just
+be the way she has been brought up."
+
+[Illustration: "DO YOU THINK WE SHOULD INVITE THE MINISTER, NANNY?"]
+
+"She has been very good to you, Nanny."
+
+"She has; leastwise, she promises to be. Mr. Dishart, she's awa'; what
+if she doesna come back?"
+
+Nanny spoke nervously, and Gavin drew a long face.
+
+"I think she will," he said faintly. "I am confident of it," he added
+in the same voice.
+
+"And has she the siller?"
+
+"I believe in her," said Gavin, so doggedly that his own words
+reassured him. "She has an excellent heart."
+
+"Ay," said Nanny, to whom the minister's faith was more than the
+Egyptian's promise, "and that's hardly natural in a gaen-aboot body.
+Yet a gypsy she maun be, for naebody would pretend to be ane that
+wasna. Tod, she proved she was an Egyptian by dauring to send you to
+the well."
+
+This conclusive argument brought her prospective dower so close to
+Nanny's eyes that it hid the poorhouse.
+
+"I suppose she'll gie you the money," she said, "and syne you'll gie
+me the seven shillings a week?"
+
+"That seems the best plan," Gavin answered.
+
+"And what will you gie it me in?" Nanny asked, with something on her
+mind. "I would be terrible obliged if you gae it to me in saxpences."
+
+"Do the smaller coins go farther?" Gavin asked, curiously.
+
+"Na, it's no that. But I've heard tell o' folk giving away half-crowns
+by mistake for twa-shilling bits; ay, and there's something dizzying
+in ha'en fower-and-twenty pennies in one piece; it has sic terrible
+little bulk. Sanders had aince a gold sovereign, and he looked at it
+so often that it seemed to grow smaller and smaller in his hand till
+he was feared it micht just be a half after all."
+
+Her mind relieved on this matter, the old woman set off for the well.
+A minute afterwards Gavin went to the door to look for the gypsy, and,
+behold, Nanny was no further than the gate. Have you who read ever
+been sick near to death, and then so far recovered that you could once
+again stand at your window? If so, you have not forgotten how the
+beauty of the world struck you afresh, so that you looked long and
+said many times, "How fair a world it is!" like one who had made a
+discovery. It was such a look that Nanny gave to the hill and Caddam
+while she stood at her garden gate.
+
+Gavin returned to the fire and watched a girl in it in an officer's
+cloak playing at hide and seek with soldiers. After a time he
+sighed, then looked round sharply to see who had sighed, then,
+absent-mindedly, lifted the empty kettle and placed it on the
+glowing peats. He was standing glaring at the kettle, his arms folded,
+when Nanny returned from the well.
+
+"I've been thinking," she said, "o' something that proves the lassie
+to be just an Egyptian. Ay, I noticed she wasna nane awed when I said
+you was the Auld Licht minister. Weel, I'se uphaud that came frae her
+living ower muckle in the open air. Is there no' a smell o' burning in
+the house?"
+
+"I have noticed it," Gavin answered, sniffing, "since you came in. I
+was busy until then, putting on the kettle. The smell is becoming
+worse."
+
+Nanny had seen the empty kettle on the fire as he began to speak, and
+so solved the mystery. Her first thought was to snatch the kettle out
+of the blaze, but remembering who had put it there, she dared not. She
+sidled toward the hearth instead, and saying craftily, "Ay, here it
+is; it's a clout among the peats," softly laid the kettle on the
+earthen floor. It was still red with sparks, however, when the gypsy
+reappeared.
+
+"Who burned the kettle?" she asked, ignoring Nanny's signs.
+
+"Lassie," Nanny said, "it was me;" but Gavin, flushing, confessed his
+guilt.
+
+"Oh, you stupid!" exclaimed the Egyptian, shaking her two ounces of
+tea (which then cost six shillings the pound) in his face.
+
+At this Nanny wrung her hands, crying, "That's waur than swearing."
+
+"If men," said the gypsy, severely, "would keep their hands in their
+pockets all day, the world's affairs would be more easily managed."
+
+"Wheesht!" cried Nanny, "if Mr. Dishart cared to set his mind to it,
+he could make the kettle boil quicker than you or me. But his thochts
+is on higher things."
+
+"No higher than this," retorted the gypsy, holding her hand level with
+her brow. "Confess, Mr. Dishart, that this is the exact height of what
+you were thinking about. See, Nanny, he is blushing as if I meant that
+he had been thinking about me. He cannot answer, Nanny: we have found
+him out."
+
+"And kindly of him it is no to answer," said Nanny, who had been
+examining the gypsy's various purchases; "for what could he answer,
+except that he would need to be sure o' living a thousand years afore
+he could spare five minutes on you or me? Of course it would be
+different if we sat under him."
+
+"And yet," said the Egyptian, with great solemnity, "he is to drink
+tea at that very table. I hope you are sensible of the honour,
+Nanny."
+
+"Am I no?" said Nanny, whose education had not included sarcasm. "I'm
+trying to keep frae thinking o't till he's gone, in case I should let
+the teapot fall."
+
+"You have nothing to thank me for, Nanny," said Gavin, "but much for
+which to thank this--this----"
+
+"This haggarty-taggarty Egyptian," suggested the girl. Then, looking
+at Gavin curiously, she said, "But my name is Babbie."
+
+"That's short for Barbara," said Nanny; "but Babbie what?"
+
+"Yes, Babbie Watt," replied the gypsy, as if one name were as good as
+another.
+
+"Weel, then, lift the lid off the kettle, Babbie," said Nanny, "for
+it's boiling ower."
+
+Gavin looked at Nanny with admiration and envy, for she had said
+Babbie as coolly as if it was the name of a pepper-box.
+
+Babbie tucked up her sleeves to wash Nanny's cups and saucers, which
+even in the most prosperous days of the mud house had only been in use
+once a week, and Gavin was so eager to help that he bumped his head on
+the plate-rack.
+
+"Sit there," said Babbie, authoritatively, pointing, with a cup in her
+hand, to a stool, "and don't rise till I give you permission."
+
+To Nanny's amazement, he did as he was bid.
+
+"I got the things in the little shop you told me of," the Egyptian
+continued, addressing the mistress of the house, "but the horrid man
+would not give them to me until he had seen my money."
+
+"Enoch would be suspicious o' you," Nanny explained, "you being an
+Egyptian."
+
+"Ah," said Babbie, with a side-glance at the minister, "I am only an
+Egyptian. Is that why you dislike me, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+Gavin hesitated foolishly over his answer, and the Egyptian, with a
+towel round her waist, made a pretty gesture of despair.
+
+"He neither likes you nor dislikes you," Nanny explained; "you forget
+he's a minister."
+
+"That is what I cannot endure," said Babbie, putting the towel to her
+eyes, "to be neither liked nor disliked. Please hate me, Mr. Dishart,
+if you cannot lo--ove me."
+
+Her face was behind the towel, and Gavin could not decide whether it
+was the face or the towel that shook with agitation. He gave Nanny a
+look that asked, "Is she really crying?" and Nanny telegraphed back,
+"I question it."
+
+"Come, come," said the minister, gallantly, "I did not say that I
+disliked you."
+
+Even this desperate compliment had not the desired effect, for the
+gypsy continued to sob behind her screen.
+
+"I can honestly say," went on Gavin, as solemnly as if he were making
+a statement in a court of justice, "that I like you."
+
+Then the Egyptian let drop her towel, and replied with equal
+solemnity:
+
+"Oh, tank oo! Nanny, the minister says me is a dood 'ittle dirl."
+
+"He didna gang that length," said Nanny, sharply, to cover Gavin's
+confusion. "Set the things, Babbie, and I'll make the tea."
+
+The Egyptian obeyed demurely, pretending to wipe her eyes every time
+Gavin looked at her. He frowned at this, and then she affected to be
+too overcome to go on with her work.
+
+"Tell me, Nanny," she asked presently, "what sort of man this Enoch
+is, from whom I bought the things?"
+
+"He is not very regular, I fear," answered Gavin, who felt that he had
+sat silent and self-conscious on his stool too long.
+
+"Do you mean that he drinks?" asked Babbie.
+
+"No, I mean regular in his attendance."
+
+The Egyptian's face showed no enlightenment.
+
+"His attendance at church," Gavin explained.
+
+"He's far frae it," said Nanny, "and as a body kens, Joe Cruickshanks,
+the atheist, has the wite o' that. The scoundrel telled Enoch that the
+great ministers in Edinbury and London believed in no hell except sic
+as your ain conscience made for you, and ever since syne Enoch has
+been careless about the future state."
+
+"Ah," said Babbie, waving the Church aside, "what I want to know is
+whether he is a single man."
+
+"He is not," Gavin replied; "but why do you want to know that?"
+
+"Because single men are such gossips. I am sorry he is not single, as
+I want him to repeat to everybody what I told him."
+
+"Trust him to tell Susy," said Nanny, "and Susy to tell the town."
+
+"His wife is a gossip?"
+
+"Ay, she's aye tonguing, especially about her teeth. They're folk wi'
+siller, and she has a set o' false teeth. It's fair scumfishing to
+hear her blawing about thae teeth, she's so fleid we dinna ken that
+they're false."
+
+Nanny had spoken jealously, but suddenly she trembled with apprehension.
+
+"Babbie," she cried, "you didna speak about the poorhouse to Enoch?"
+
+The Egyptian shook her head, though of the poorhouse she had been
+forced to speak, for Enoch, having seen the doctor going home alone,
+insisted on knowing why.
+
+"But I knew," the gypsy said, "that the Thrums people would be very
+unhappy until they discovered where you get the money I am to give
+you, and as that is a secret, I hinted to Enoch that your benefactor
+is Mr. Dishart."
+
+"You should not have said that," interposed Gavin. "I cannot foster
+such a deception."
+
+"They will foster it without your help," the Egyptian said. "Besides,
+if you choose, you can say you get the money from a friend."
+
+"Ay, you can say that," Nanny entreated with such eagerness that
+Babbie remarked a little bitterly:
+
+"There is no fear of Nanny's telling any one that the friend is a
+gypsy girl."
+
+"Na, na," agreed Nanny, again losing Babbie's sarcasm. "I winna let
+on. It's so queer to be befriended by an Egyptian."
+
+"It is scarcely respectable," Babbie said.
+
+"It's no," answered simple Nanny.
+
+I suppose Nanny's unintentional cruelty did hurt Babbie as much as
+Gavin thought. She winced, and her face had two expressions, the one
+cynical, the other pained. Her mouth curled as if to tell the minister
+that gratitude was nothing to her, but her eyes had to struggle to
+keep back a tear. Gavin was touched, and she saw it, and for a moment
+they were two people who understood each other.
+
+"I, at least," Gavin said in a low voice, "will know who is the
+benefactress, and think none the worse of her because she is a
+gypsy."
+
+At this Babbie smiled gratefully to him, and then both laughed, for
+they had heard Nanny remarking to the kettle, "But I wouldna hae been
+nane angry if she had telled Enoch that the minister was to take his
+tea here. Susy'll no believe't though I tell her, as tell her I
+will."
+
+To Nanny the table now presented a rich appearance, for besides the
+teapot there were butter and loaf-bread and cheesies: a biscuit of
+which only Thrums knows the secret.
+
+"Draw in your chair, Mr. Dishart," she said, in suppressed excitement.
+
+"Yes," said Babbie, "you take this chair, Mr. Dishart, and Nanny will
+have that one, and I can sit humbly on the stool."
+
+But Nanny held up her hands in horror.
+
+"Keep us a'!" she exclaimed; "the lassie thinks her and me is to sit
+down wi' the minister! We're no to gang that length, Babbie; we're
+just to stand and serve him, and syne we'll sit down when he has
+risen."
+
+"Delightful!" said Babbie, clapping her hands. "Nanny, you kneel on
+that side of him, and I will kneel on this. You will hold the butter
+and I the biscuits."
+
+But Gavin, as this girl was always forgetting, was a lord of
+creation.
+
+"Sit down both of you at once!" he thundered, "I command you."
+
+[Illustration: "SIT DOWN, BOTH OF YOU, AT ONCE!"]
+
+Then the two women fell into their seats; Nanny in terror, Babbie
+affecting it.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Fifteen.
+
+THE MINISTER BEWITCHED--SECOND SERMON AGAINST WOMEN.
+
+
+To Nanny it was a dizzying experience to sit at the head of her own
+table, and, with assumed calmness, invite the minister not to spare
+the loaf-bread. Babbie's prattle, and even Gavin's answers, were but
+an indistinct noise to her, to be as little regarded, in the
+excitement of watching whether Mr. Dishart noticed that there was a
+knife for the butter, as the music of the river by a man who is
+catching trout. Every time Gavin's cup went to his lips Nanny
+calculated (correctly) how much he had drunk, and yet, when the right
+moment arrived, she asked in the English voice that is fashionable at
+ceremonies, "if his cup was toom."
+
+Perhaps it was well that Nanny had these matters to engross her, for
+though Gavin spoke freely, he was saying nothing of lasting value, and
+some of his remarks to the Egyptian, if preserved for the calmer
+contemplation of the morrow, might have seemed frivolous to himself.
+Usually his observations were scrambled for, like ha'pence at a
+wedding, but to-day they were only for one person. Infected by the
+Egyptian's high spirits, Gavin had laid aside the minister with his
+hat, and what was left was only a young man. He who had stamped his
+feet at thought of a soldier's cloak now wanted to be reminded of it.
+The little minister, who used to address himself in terms of scorn
+every time he wasted an hour, was at present dallying with a teaspoon.
+He even laughed boisterously, flinging back his head, and little knew
+that behind Nanny's smiling face was a terrible dread, because his
+chair had once given way before.
+
+Even though our thoughts are not with our company, the mention of our
+name is a bell to which we usually answer. Hearing hers Nanny
+started.
+
+"You can tell me, Nanny," the Egyptian had said, with an arch look at
+the minister. "Oh, Nanny, for shame! How can you expect to follow our
+conversation when you only listen to Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"She is saying, Nanny," Gavin broke in, almost gaily for a minister,
+"that she saw me recently wearing a cloak. You know I have no such
+thing."
+
+"Na," Nanny answered artlessly, "you have just the thin brown coat wi'
+the braid round it, forby the ane you have on the now."
+
+"You see," Gavin said to Babbie, "I could not have a new neckcloth,
+not to speak of a cloak, without everybody in Thrums knowing about it.
+I dare say Nanny knows all about the braid, and even what it cost."
+
+"Three bawbees the yard at Kyowowy's shop," replied Nanny, promptly,
+"and your mother sewed it on. Sam'l Fairweather has the marrows o't on
+his top coat. No that it has the same look on him."
+
+"Nevertheless," Babbie persisted, "I am sure the minister has a cloak;
+but perhaps he is ashamed of it. No doubt it is hidden away in the
+garret."
+
+"Na, we would hae kent o't if it was there," said Nanny.
+
+"But it may be in a chest, and the chest may be locked," the Egyptian
+suggested.
+
+"Ay, but the kist in the garret isna locked," Nanny answered.
+
+"How do you get to know all these things, Nanny?" asked Gavin,
+sighing.
+
+[Illustration: "'HE ISN'T MARRIED?' ASKED BABBIE."]
+
+"Your congregation tells me. Naebody would lay by news about a
+minister."
+
+"But how do they know?"
+
+"I dinna ken. They just find out, because they're so fond o' you."
+
+"I hope they will never become so fond of me as that," said Babbie.
+"Still, Nanny, the minister's cloak is hidden somewhere."
+
+"Losh, what would make him hod it?" demanded the old woman. "Folk that
+has cloaks doesna bury them in boxes."
+
+At the word "bury" Gavin's hand fell on the table, and he returned to
+Nanny apprehensively.
+
+"That would depend on how the cloak was got," said the cruel Egyptian.
+"If it was not his own----"
+
+"Lassie," cried Nanny, "behave yoursel'."
+
+"Or if he found it in his possession against his will?" suggested
+Gavin, slyly. "He might have got it from some one who picked it up
+cheap."
+
+"From his wife, for instance," said Babbie, whereupon Gavin suddenly
+became interested in the floor.
+
+"Ay, ay, the minister was hitting at you there, Babbie," Nanny
+explained, "for the way you made off wi' the captain's cloak. The
+Thrums folk wondered less at your taking it than at your no keeping
+it. It's said to be michty grand."
+
+"It was rather like the one the minister's wife gave him," said
+Babbie.
+
+"The minister has neither a wife nor a cloak," retorted Nanny.
+
+"He isn't married?" asked Babbie, the picture of incredulity.
+
+Nanny gathered from the minister's face that he deputed to her the
+task of enlightening this ignorant girl, so she replied with emphasis,
+"Na, they hinna got him yet, and I'm cheated if it doesna tak them all
+their time."
+
+Thus do the best of women sell their sex for nothing.
+
+"I did wonder," said the Egyptian, gravely, "at any mere woman's
+daring to marry such a minister."
+
+"Ay," replied Nanny, spiritedly, "but there's dauring limmers wherever
+there's a single man."
+
+"So I have often suspected," said Babbie, duly shocked. "But, Nanny, I
+was told the minister had a wife, by one who said he saw her."
+
+"He lied, then," answered Nanny turning to Gavin for further
+instructions.
+
+"But, see, the minister does not deny the horrid charge himself."
+
+"No, and for the reason he didna deny the cloak: because it's no worth
+his while. I'll tell you wha your friend had seen. It would be
+somebody that would like to be Mrs. Dishart. There's a hantle o' that
+kind. Ay, lassie, but wishing winna land a woman in a manse."
+
+"It was one of the soldiers," Babbie said, "who told me about her. He
+said Mr. Dishart introduced her to him."
+
+"Sojers!" cried Nanny. "I could never thole the name o' them. Sanders
+in his young days hankered after joining them, and so he would, if it
+hadna been for the fechting. Ay, and now they've ta'en him awa to the
+gaol, and sworn lies about him. Dinna put any faith in sojers,
+lassie."
+
+"I was told," Babbie went on, "that the minister's wife was rather
+like me."
+
+"Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Nanny, so fervently that all three
+suddenly sat back from the table.
+
+"I'm no meaning," Nanny continued hurriedly, fearing to offend her
+benefactress, "but what you're the bonniest tid I ever saw out o' an
+almanack. But you would ken Mr. Dishart's contempt for bonny faces if
+you had heard his sermon against them. I didna hear it mysel', for I'm
+no Auld Licht, but it did the work o' the town for an aucht days."
+
+If Nanny had not taken her eyes off Gavin for the moment she would
+have known that he was now anxious to change the topic. Babbie saw it,
+and became suspicious.
+
+"When did he preach against the wiles of women, Nanny?"
+
+"It was long ago," said Gavin, hastily.
+
+"No so very lang syne," corrected Nanny. "It was the Sabbath after the
+sojers was in Thrums; the day you changed your text so hurriedly. Some
+thocht you wasna weel, but Lang Tammas----"
+
+"Thomas Whamond is too officious," Gavin said with dignity. "I forbid
+you, Nanny, to repeat his story."
+
+"But what made you change your text?" asked Babbie.
+
+"You see he winna tell," Nanny said, wistfully. "Ay, I dinna deny but
+what I would like richt to ken. But the session's as puzzled as
+yoursel', Babbie."
+
+"Perhaps more puzzled," answered the Egyptian, with a smile that
+challenged Gavin's frowns to combat and overthrow them. "What
+surprises me, Mr. Dishart, is that such a great man can stoop to see
+whether women are pretty or not. It was very good of you to remember
+me to-day. I suppose you recognized me by my frock?"
+
+"By your face," he replied, boldly; "by your eyes."
+
+"Nanny," exclaimed the Egyptian, "did you hear what the minister
+said?"
+
+"Woe is me," answered Nanny, "I missed it."
+
+"He says he would know me anywhere by my eyes."
+
+"So would I mysel'," said Nanny.
+
+"Then what colour are they, Mr. Dishart?" demanded Babbie. "Don't
+speak, Nanny, for I want to expose him."
+
+She closed her eyes tightly. Gavin was in a quandary. I suppose he had
+looked at her eyes too long to know much about them.
+
+"Blue," he guessed at last.
+
+"Na, they're black," said Nanny, who had doubtless known this for an
+hour. I am always marvelling over the cleverness of women, as every
+one must see who reads this story.
+
+"No but what they micht be blue in some lichts," Nanny added, out of
+respect to the minister.
+
+"Oh, don't defend him, Nanny," said Babbie, looking reproachfully at
+Gavin. "I don't see that any minister has a right to denounce women
+when he is so ignorant of his subject. I will say it, Nanny, and you
+need not kick me beneath the table."
+
+Was not all this intoxicating to the little minister, who had never
+till now met a girl on equal terms? At twenty-one a man is a musical
+instrument given to the other sex, but it is not as instruments
+learned at school, for when She sits down to it she cannot tell what
+tune she is about to play. That is because she has no notion of what
+the instrument is capable. Babbie's kind-heartedness, her gaiety, her
+coquetry, her moments of sadness, had been a witch's fingers, and
+Gavin was still trembling under their touch. Even in being taken to
+task by her there was a charm, for every pout of her mouth, every
+shake of her head, said, "You like me, and therefore you have given me
+the right to tease you." Men sign these agreements without reading
+them. But, indeed, man is a stupid animal at the best, and thinks all
+his life that he did not propose until he blurted out, "I love you."
+
+It was later than it should have been when the minister left the mud
+house, and even then he only put on his hat because Babbie said that
+she must go.
+
+"But not your way," she added. "I go into the wood and vanish. You
+know, Nanny, I live up a tree."
+
+"Dinna say that," said Nanny, anxiously, "or I'll be fleid about the
+siller."
+
+"Don't fear about it. Mr. Dishart will get some of it to-morrow at the
+Kaims. I would bring it here, but I cannot come so far to-morrow."
+
+[Illustration: "I HAVE READ MY FORTUNE."]
+
+"Then I'll hae peace to the end o' my days," said the old woman, "and,
+Babbie, I wish the same to you wi' all my heart."
+
+"Ah," Babbie replied, mournfully, "I have read my fortune, Nanny, and
+there is not much happiness in it."
+
+"I hope that is not true," Gavin said, simply.
+
+They were standing at the door, and she was looking toward the hill,
+perhaps without seeing it. All at once it came to Gavin that this
+fragile girl might have a history far sadder and more turbulent than
+his.
+
+"Do you really care?" she asked, without looking at him.
+
+"Yes," he said stoutly, "I care."
+
+"Because you do not know me," she said.
+
+"Because I do know you," he answered.
+
+Now she did look at him.
+
+"I believe," she said, making a discovery, "that you misunderstand me
+less than those who have known me longer."
+
+This was a perilous confidence, for it at once made Gavin say
+"Babbie."
+
+"Ah," she answered, frankly, "I am glad to hear that. I thought you
+did not really like me, because you never called me by my name."
+
+Gavin drew a great breath.
+
+"That was not the reason," he said.
+
+The reason was now unmistakable.
+
+"I was wrong," said the Egyptian, a little alarmed; "you do not
+understand me at all."
+
+She returned to Nanny, and Gavin set off, holding his head high, his
+brain in a whirl. Five minutes afterwards, when Nanny was at the fire,
+the diamond ring on her little finger, he came back, looking like one
+who had just seen sudden death.
+
+"I had forgotten," he said, with a fierceness aimed at himself, "that
+to-morrow is the Sabbath."
+
+"Need that make any difference?" asked the gypsy.
+
+"At this hour on Monday," said Gavin, hoarsely, "I will be at the
+Kaims."
+
+He went away without another word, and Babbie watched him from the
+window. Nanny had not looked up from the ring.
+
+"What a pity he is a minister!" the girl said, reflectively. "Nanny,
+you are not listening."
+
+The old woman was making the ring flash by the light of the fire.
+
+"Nanny, do you hear me? Did you see Mr. Dishart come back?"
+
+"I heard the door open," Nanny answered, without taking her greedy
+eyes off the ring. "Was it him? Whaur did you get this, lassie?"
+
+"Give it me back, Nanny, I am going now."
+
+But Nanny did not give it back; she put her other hand over it to
+guard it, and there she crouched, warming herself not at the fire, but
+at the ring.
+
+"Give it me, Nanny."
+
+"It winna come off my finger." She gloated over it, nursed it, kissed
+it.
+
+"I must have it, Nanny."
+
+The Egyptian put her hand lightly on the old woman's shoulder, and
+Nanny jumped up, pressing the ring to her bosom. Her face had become
+cunning and ugly; she retreated into a corner.
+
+"Nanny, give me back my ring or I will take it from you."
+
+The cruel light of the diamond was in Nanny's eyes for a moment, and
+then, shuddering, she said, "Tak your ring awa, tak it out o' my
+sicht."
+
+In the meantime Gavin was trudging home gloomily composing his second
+sermon against women. I have already given the entry in my own diary
+for that day: this is his:--"Notes on Jonah. Exchanged vol. xliii.,
+'European Magazine,' for Owen's 'Justification' (_per_ flying
+stationer). Began Second Samuel. Visited Nanny Webster." There is no
+mention of the Egyptian.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Sixteen.
+
+CONTINUED MISBEHAVIOUR OF THE EGYPTIAN WOMAN.
+
+
+By the following Monday it was known at many looms that something sat
+heavily on the Auld Licht minister's mind. On the previous day he had
+preached his second sermon of warning to susceptible young men, and
+his first mention of the word "woman" had blown even the sleepy heads
+upright. Now he had salt fish for breakfast, and on clearing the table
+Jean noticed that his knife and fork were uncrossed. He was observed
+walking into a gooseberry bush by Susy Linn, who possessed the pioneer
+spring-bed of Thrums, and always knew when her man jumped into it by
+suddenly finding herself shot to the ceiling. Lunan, the tinsmith, and
+two women, who had the luck to be in the street at the time, saw him
+stopping at Dr. McQueen's door, as if about to knock, and then turning
+smartly away. His hat blew off in the school wynd, where a wind
+wanders ever, looking for hats, and he chased it so passionately that
+Lang Tammas went into Allardyce's smiddy to say--
+
+"I dinna like it. Of course he couldna afford to lose his hat, but he
+should hae run after it mair reverently."
+
+Gavin, indeed, was troubled. He had avoided speaking of the Egyptian
+to his mother. He had gone to McQueen's house to ask the doctor to
+accompany him to the Kaims, but with the knocker in his hand he
+changed his mind, and now he was at the place of meeting alone. It was
+a day of thaw, nothing to be heard from a distance but the swish of
+curling-stones through water on Rashie-bog, where the match for the
+eldership was going on. Around him, Gavin saw only dejected firs with
+drops of water falling listlessly from them, clods of snow, and grass
+that rustled as if animals were crawling through it. All the roads
+were slack.
+
+I suppose no young man to whom society has not become a cheap thing
+can be in Gavin's position, awaiting the coming of an attractive girl,
+without giving thought to what he should say to her. When in the
+pulpit or visiting the sick, words came in a rush to the little
+minister, but he had to set his teeth to determine what to say to the
+Egyptian.
+
+This was because he had not yet decided which of two women she was.
+Hardly had he started on one line of thought when she crossed his
+vision in a new light, and drew him after her.
+
+Her "Need that make any difference?" sang in his ear like another
+divit, cast this time at religion itself, and now he spoke aloud,
+pointing his finger at a fir: "I said at the mud house that I believed
+you because I knew you. To my shame be it said that I spoke falsely.
+How dared you bewitch me? In your presence I flung away the precious
+hours in frivolity; I even forgot the Sabbath. For this I have myself
+to blame. I am an unworthy preacher of the Word. I sinned far more
+than you who have been brought up godlessly from your cradle.
+Nevertheless, whoever you are, I call upon you, before we part never
+to meet again, to repent of your----"
+
+And then it was no mocker of the Sabbath he was addressing, but a
+woman with a child's face, and there were tears in her eyes. "Do you
+care?" she was saying, and again he answered, "Yes, I care." This
+girl's name was not Woman, but Babbie.
+
+Now Gavin made an heroic attempt to look upon both these women at
+once. "Yes, I believe in you," he said to them, "but henceforth you
+must send your money to Nanny by another messenger. You are a gypsy
+and I am a minister; and that must part us. I refuse to see you again.
+I am not angry with you, but as a minister----"
+
+It was not the disappearance of one of the women that clipped this
+argument short; it was Babbie singing--
+
+  "It fell on a day, on a bonny summer day,
+    When the corn grew green and yellow,
+  That there fell out a great dispute
+    Between Argyle and Airly.
+
+  "The Duke of Montrose has written to Argyle
+    To come in the morning early,
+  An' lead in his men by the back o' Dunkeld
+    To plunder the bonny house o' Airly."
+
+"Where are you?" cried Gavin in bewilderment.
+
+"I am watching you from my window so high," answered the Egyptian; and
+then the minister, looking up, saw her peering at him from a fir.
+
+"How did you get up there?" he asked in amazement.
+
+"On my broomstick," Babbie replied, and sang on--
+
+  "The lady looked o'er her window sae high,
+    And oh! but she looked weary,
+  And there she espied the great Argyle
+    Come to plunder the bonny house o' Airly."
+
+"What are you doing there?" Gavin said, wrathfully.
+
+"This is my home," she answered. "I told you I lived in a tree."
+
+"Come down at once," ordered Gavin. To which the singer responded--
+
+  "'Come down, come down, Lady Margaret,' he says;
+    'Come down and kiss me fairly
+  Or before the morning clear day light
+    I'll no leave a standing stane in Airly.'"
+
+"If you do not come down this instant," Gavin said in a rage, "and
+give me what I was so foolish as to come for, I----"
+
+The Egyptian broke in--
+
+  "'I wouldna kiss thee, great Argyle,
+    I wouldna kiss thee fairly;
+  I wouldna kiss thee, great Argyle,
+    Gin you shouldna leave a standing stane in Airly.'"
+
+"You have deceived Nanny," Gavin cried, hotly, "and you have brought
+me here to deride me. I will have no more to do with you."
+
+He walked away quickly, but she called after him, "I am coming down. I
+have the money," and next moment a snowball hit his hat.
+
+"That is for being cross," she explained, appearing so unexpectedly at
+his elbow that he was taken aback. "I had to come close up to you
+before I flung it, or it would have fallen over my shoulder. Why are
+you so nasty to-day? and, oh, do you know you were speaking to
+yourself?"
+
+"You are mistaken," said Gavin, severely. "I was speaking to you."
+
+"You didn't see me till I began to sing, did you?"
+
+"Nevertheless I was speaking to you, or rather, I was saying to myself
+what----"
+
+"What you had decided to say to me?" said the delighted gypsy. "Do you
+prepare your talk like sermons? I hope you have prepared something
+nice for me. If it is very nice I may give you this bunch of holly."
+
+She was dressed as he had seen her previously, but for a cluster of
+holly berries at her breast.
+
+"I don't know that you will think it nice," the minister answered,
+slowly, "but my duty----"
+
+"If it is about duty," entreated Babbie, "don't say it. Don't, and I
+will give you the berries."
+
+She took the berries from her dress, smiling triumphantly the while
+like one who had discovered a cure for duty; and instead of pointing
+the finger of wrath at her, Gavin stood expectant.
+
+"But no," he said, remembering who he was, and pushing the gift from
+him, "I will not be bribed. I must tell you----"
+
+"Now," said the Egyptian, sadly, "I see you are angry with me. Is it
+because I said I lived in a tree? Do forgive me for that dreadful
+lie."
+
+She had gone on her knees before he could stop her, and was gazing
+imploringly at him, with her hands clasped.
+
+"You are mocking me again," said Gavin, "but I am not angry with you.
+Only you must understand----"
+
+She jumped up and put her fingers to her ears.
+
+"You see I can hear nothing," she said.
+
+"Listen while I tell you----"
+
+"I don't hear a word. Why do you scold me when I have kept my promise?
+If I dared to take my fingers from my ears I would give you the money
+for Nanny. And, Mr. Dishart, I must be gone in five minutes."
+
+"In five minutes!" echoed Gavin, with such a dismal face that Babbie
+heard the words with her eyes, and dropped her hands.
+
+"Why are you in such haste?" he asked, taking the five pounds
+mechanically, and forgetting all that he had meant to say.
+
+"Because they require me at home," she answered, with a sly glance at
+her fir. "And, remember, when I run away you must not follow me."
+
+"I won't," said Gavin, so promptly that she was piqued.
+
+"Why not?" she asked. "But of course you only came here for the money.
+Well, you have got it. Good-bye."
+
+"You know that was not what I meant," said Gavin, stepping after her.
+"I have told you already that whatever other people say, I trust you.
+I believe in you, Babbie."
+
+"Was that what you were saying to the tree?" asked the Egyptian,
+demurely. Then, perhaps thinking it wisest not to press this point,
+she continued irrelevantly, "It seems such a pity that you are a
+minister."
+
+"A pity to be a minister!" exclaimed Gavin, indignantly. "Why, why,
+you--why, Babbie, how have you been brought up?"
+
+"In a curious way," Babbie answered, shortly, "but I can't tell you
+about that just now. Would you like to hear all about me?" Suddenly
+she seemed to have become confidential.
+
+"Do you really think me a gypsy?" she asked.
+
+"I have tried not to ask myself that question."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because it seems like doubting your word."
+
+"I don't see how you can think of me at all without wondering who I
+am."
+
+"No, and so I try not to think of you at all."
+
+"Oh, I don't know that you need do that."
+
+"I have not quite succeeded."
+
+The Egyptian's pique had vanished, but she may have thought that the
+conversation was becoming dangerous, for she said abruptly--
+
+"Well, I sometimes think about you."
+
+"Do you?" said Gavin, absurdly gratified. "What do you think about
+me?"
+
+"I wonder," answered the Egyptian, pleasantly, "which of us is the
+taller."
+
+Gavin's fingers twitched with mortification, and not only his fingers
+but his toes.
+
+"Let us measure," she said, sweetly, putting her back to his. "You are
+not stretching your neck, are you?"
+
+But the minister broke away from her.
+
+"There is one subject," he said, with great dignity, "that I allow no
+one to speak of in my presence, and that is my--my height."
+
+His face was as white as his cravat when the surprised Egyptian next
+looked at him, and he was panting like one who has run a mile. She
+was ashamed of herself, and said so.
+
+"It is a topic I would rather not speak about," Gavin answered,
+dejectedly, "especially to you."
+
+He meant that he would rather be a tall man in her company than in any
+other, and possibly she knew this, though all she answered was--
+
+"You wanted to know if I am really a gypsy. Well, I am."
+
+"An ordinary gypsy?"
+
+"Do you think me ordinary?"
+
+"I wish I knew what to think of you."
+
+"Ah, well, that is my forbidden topic. But we have a good many ideas
+in common after all, have we not, though you are only a minis--I mean,
+though I am only a gypsy?"
+
+There fell between them a silence that gave Babbie time to remember
+she must go.
+
+"I have already stayed too long," she said. "Give my love to Nanny,
+and say that I am coming to see her soon, perhaps on Monday. I don't
+suppose you will be there on Monday, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"I--I cannot say."
+
+"No, you will be too busy. Are you to take the holly berries?"
+
+"I had better not," said Gavin, dolefully.
+
+"Oh, if you don't want them----"
+
+"Give them to me," he said, and as he took them his hand shook.
+
+"I know why you are looking so troubled," said the Egyptian, archly.
+"You think I am to ask you the colour of my eyes, and you have
+forgotten again."
+
+He would have answered, but she checked him.
+
+"Make no pretence," she said, severely; "I know you think they are
+blue."
+
+She came close to him until her face almost touched his.
+
+"Look hard at them," she said, solemnly, "and after this you may
+remember that they are black, black, black!"
+
+At each repetition of the word she shook her head in his face. She was
+adorable. Gavin's arms--but they met on nothing. She had run away.
+
+When the little minister had gone, a man came from behind a tree and
+shook his fist in the direction taken by the gypsy. It was Rob Dow,
+black with passion.
+
+"It's the Egyptian!" he cried. "You limmer, wha are you that hae got
+haud o' the minister?"
+
+He pursued her, but she vanished as from Gavin in Windyghoul.
+
+"A common Egyptian!" he muttered when he had to give up the search.
+"But take care, you little devil," he called aloud; "take care; if I
+catch you playing pranks wi' that man again I'll wring your neck like
+a hen's!"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Seventeen.
+
+INTRUSION OF HAGGART INTO THESE PAGES AGAINST THE AUTHOR'S WISH.
+
+
+Margaret having heard the doctor say that one may catch cold in the
+back, had decided instantly to line Gavin's waistcoat with flannel.
+She was thus engaged, with pins in her mouth and the scissors hiding
+from her every time she wanted them, when Jean, red and flurried,
+abruptly entered the room.
+
+"There! I forgot to knock at the door again," Jean exclaimed, pausing
+contritely.
+
+"Never mind. Is it Rob Dow wanting the minister?" asked Margaret, who
+had seen Rob pass the manse dyke.
+
+"Na, he wasna wanting to see the minister."
+
+"Ah, then, he came to see you, Jean," said Margaret, archly.
+
+"A widow man!" cried Jean, tossing her head. "But Rob Dow was in no
+condition to be friendly wi' onybody the now."
+
+"Jean, you don't mean that he has been drinking again?"
+
+"I canna say he was drunk."
+
+"Then what condition was he in?"
+
+"He was in a--a swearing condition," Jean answered, guardedly. "But
+what I want to speir at you is, can I gang down to the Tenements for a
+minute? I'll run there and back."
+
+"Certainly you can go, Jean, but you must not run. You are always
+running. Did Dow bring you word that you were wanted in the
+Tenements?"
+
+"No exactly, but I--I want to consult Tammas Haggart about--about
+something."
+
+"About Dow, I believe, Jean?"
+
+"Na, but about something he has done. Oh, ma'am, you surely dinna
+think I would take a widow man?"
+
+It was the day after Gavin's meeting with the Egyptian at the Kaims,
+and here is Jean's real reason for wishing to consult Haggart. Half an
+hour before she hurried to the parlour she had been at the kitchen
+door wondering whether she should spread out her washing in the garret
+or risk hanging it in the courtyard. She had just decided on the
+garret when she saw Rob Dow morosely regarding her from the gateway.
+
+"Whaur is he?" growled Rob.
+
+"He's out, but it's no for me to say whaur he is," replied Jean, whose
+weakness was to be considered a church official. "No that I ken,"
+truthfulness compelled her to add, for she had an ambition to be
+everything she thought Gavin would like a woman to be.
+
+Rob seized her wrists viciously and glowered into her face.
+
+"You're ane o' them," he said.
+
+"Let me go. Ane o' what?"
+
+"Ane o' thae limmers called women."
+
+"Sal," retorted Jean with spirit, "you're ane o' thae brutes called
+men. You're drunk, Rob Dow."
+
+"In the legs maybe, but no higher. I haud a heap."
+
+"Drunk again, after all your promises to the minister! And you said
+yoursel' that he had pulled you out o' hell by the root."
+
+"It's himsel' that has flung me back again," Rob said, wildly. "Jean
+Baxter, what does it mean when a minister carries flowers in his
+pouch; ay, and takes them out to look at them ilka minute?"
+
+"How do you ken about the holly?" asked Jean, off her guard.
+
+"You limmer," said Dow, "you've been in his pouches."
+
+"It's a lie!" cried the outraged Jean. "I just saw the holly this
+morning in a jug on his chimley."
+
+"Carefully put by? Is it hod on the chimley? Does he stand looking at
+it? Do you tell me he's fond-like o't?"
+
+"Mercy me!" Jean exclaimed, beginning to shake; "wha is she, Rob
+Dow?"
+
+"Let me see it first in its jug," Rob answered, slyly, "and syne I may
+tell you."
+
+This was not the only time Jean had been asked to show the minister's
+belongings. Snecky Hobart, among others, had tried on Gavin's hat in
+the manse kitchen, and felt queer for some time afterwards. Women had
+been introduced on tiptoe to examine the handle of his umbrella. But
+Rob had not come to admire. He snatched the holly from Jean's hands,
+and casting it on the ground pounded it with his heavy boots, crying,
+"Greet as you like, Jean. That's the end o' his flowers, and if I had
+the tawpie he got them frae I would serve her in the same way."
+
+"I'll tell him what you've done," said terrified Jean, who had tried
+to save the berries at the expense of her fingers.
+
+"Tell him," Dow roared; "and tell him what I said too. Ay, and tell
+him I was at the Kaims yestreen. Tell him I'm hunting high and low for
+an Egyptian woman."
+
+He flung recklessly out of the courtyard, leaving Jean looking blankly
+at the mud that had been holly lately. Not his act of sacrilege was
+distressing her, but his news. Were these berries a love token? Had
+God let Rob Dow say they were a gypsy's love token, and not slain
+him?
+
+That Rob spoke of the Egyptian of the riots Jean never doubted. It was
+known that the minister had met this woman in Nanny Webster's house,
+but was it not also known that he had given her such a talking-to as
+she could never come above? Many could repeat the words in which he
+had announced to Nanny that his wealthy friends in Glasgow were to
+give her all she needed. They could also tell how majestic he looked
+when he turned the Egyptian out of the house. In short, Nanny having
+kept her promise of secrecy, the people had been forced to construct
+the scene in the mud house for themselves, and it was only their story
+that was known to Jean.
+
+She decided that, so far as the gypsy was concerned, Rob had talked
+trash. He had seen the holly in the minister's hand, and, being in
+drink, had mixed it up with the gossip about the Egyptian. But that
+Gavin had preserved the holly because of the donor was as obvious to
+Jean as that the vase in her hand was empty. Who could she be? No
+doubt all the single ladies in Thrums were in love with him, but that,
+Jean was sure, had not helped them a step forward.
+
+To think was to Jean a waste of time. Discovering that she had been
+thinking, she was dismayed. There were the wet clothes in the basket
+looking reproachfully at her. She hastened back to Gavin's room with
+the vase, but it too had eyes, and they said, "When the minister
+misses his holly he will question you." Now Gavin had already smiled
+several times to Jean, and once he had marked passages for her in her
+"Pilgrim's Progress," with the result that she prized the marks more
+even than the passages. To lose his good opinion was terrible to her.
+In her perplexity she decided to consult wise Tammas Haggart, and
+hence her appeal to Margaret.
+
+To avoid Chirsty, the humourist's wife, Jean sought Haggart at his
+workshop window, which was so small that an old book sufficed for its
+shutter. Haggart, whom she could see distinctly at his loom, soon
+guessed from her knocks and signs (for he was strangely quick in the
+uptake) that she wanted him to open the window.
+
+"I want to speak to you confidentially," Jean said in a low voice. "If
+you saw a grand man gey fond o' a flower, what would you think?"
+
+"I would think, Jean," Haggart answered, reflectively, "that he had
+gien siller for't; ay, I would wonder----"
+
+"What would you wonder?"
+
+"I would wonder how muckle he paid."
+
+"But if he was a--a minister, and keepit the flower--say it was a
+common rose--fond-like on his chimley, what would you think?"
+
+"I would think it was a black-burning disgrace for a minister to be
+fond o' flowers."
+
+"I dinna haud wi' that."
+
+"Jean," said Haggart, "I allow no one to contradict me."
+
+"It wasna my design. But, Tammas, if a--a minister was fond o' a
+particular flower--say a rose--and you destroyed it by an accident,
+when he wasna looking, what would you do?"
+
+"I would gie him another rose for't."
+
+"But if you didna want him to ken you had meddled wi't on his chimley,
+what would you do?"
+
+"I would put the new rose on the chimley, and he would never ken the
+differ."
+
+"That's what I'll do," muttered Jean, but she said aloud--
+
+"But it micht be that particular rose he liked?"
+
+"Havers, Jean. To a thinking man one rose is identical wi' another
+rose. But how are you speiring?"
+
+"Just out o' curiosity, and I maun be stepping now. Thank you kindly,
+Tammas, for your humour."
+
+"You're welcome," Haggart answered, and closed his window.
+
+That day Rob Dow spent in misery, but so little were his fears
+selfish that he scarcely gave a thought to his conduct at the manse.
+For an hour he sat at his loom with his arms folded. Then he slouched
+out of the house, cursing little Micah, so that a neighbour cried "You
+drucken scoundrel!" after him. "He may be a wee drunk," said Micah in
+his father's defence, "but he's no mortal." Rob wandered to the Kaims
+in search of the Egyptian, and returned home no happier. He flung
+himself upon his bed and dared Micah to light the lamp. About gloaming
+he rose, unable to keep his mouth shut on his thoughts any longer, and
+staggered to the Tenements to consult Haggart. He found the
+humourist's door ajar, and Wearyworld listening at it. "Out o' the
+road!" cried Rob, savagely, and flung the policeman into the gutter.
+
+"That was ill-dune, Rob Dow," Wearyworld said, picking himself up
+leisurely.
+
+"I'm thinking it was weel-dune," snarled Rob.
+
+"Ay," said Wearyworld, "we needna quarrel about a difference o'
+opeenion; but, Rob----"
+
+Dow, however, had already entered the house and slammed the door.
+
+"Ay, ay," muttered Wearyworld, departing, "you micht hae stood still,
+Rob, and argued it out wi' me."
+
+In less than an hour after his conversation with Jean at the window it
+had suddenly struck Haggart that the minister she spoke of must be Mr.
+Dishart. In two hours he had confided his suspicions to Chirsty. In
+ten minutes she had filled the house with gossips. Rob arrived to find
+them in full cry.
+
+"Ay, Rob," said Chirsty, genially, for gossip levels ranks, "you're
+just in time to hear a query about the minister."
+
+"Rob," said the Glen Quharity post, from whom I subsequently got the
+story, "Mr. Dishart has fallen in--in--what do you call the thing,
+Chirsty?"
+
+Birse knew well what the thing was called, but the word is a staggerer
+to say in company.
+
+"In love," answered Chirsty, boldly.
+
+"Now we ken what he was doing in the country yestreen," said Snecky
+Hobart, "the which has been bothering us sair."
+
+"The manse is fu' o' the flowers she sends him," said Tibbie Craik.
+"Jean's at her wits'-end to ken whaur to put them a'."
+
+"Wha is she?"
+
+It was Rob Dow who spoke. All saw he had been drinking, or they might
+have wondered at his vehemence. As it was, everybody looked at every
+other body, and then everybody sighed.
+
+"Ay, wha is she?" repeated several.
+
+"I see you ken nothing about her," said Rob, much relieved; and he
+then lapsed into silence.
+
+"We ken a' about her," said Snecky, "except just wha she is. Ay,
+that's what we canna bottom. Maybe you could guess, Tammas?"
+
+"Maybe I could, Sneck," Haggart replied, cautiously; "but on that
+point I offer no opinion."
+
+"If she bides on the Kaims road," said Tibbie Craik, "she maun be a
+farmer's dochter. What say you to Bell Finlay?"
+
+"Na; she's U. P. But it micht be Loups o' Malcolm's sister. She's
+promised to Muckle Haws; but no doubt she would gie him the go-by at a
+word frae the minister."
+
+"It's mair likely," said Chirsty, "to be the factor at the Spittal's
+lassie. The factor has a grand garden, and that would account for such
+basketfuls o' flowers."
+
+"Whaever she is," said Birse, "I'm thinking he could hae done
+better."
+
+"I'll be fine pleased wi' ony o' them," said Tibbie, who had a magenta
+silk, and so was jealous of no one.
+
+"It hasna been proved," Haggart pointed out, "that the flowers came
+frae thae parts. She may be sending them frae Glasgow."
+
+"I aye understood it was a Glasgow lady," said Snecky. "He'll be like
+the Tilliedrum minister that got a lady to send him to the college on
+the promise that he would marry her as soon as he got a kirk. She made
+him sign a paper."
+
+"The far-seeing limmer," exclaimed Chirsty. "But if that's what Mr.
+Dishart has done, how has he kept it so secret?"
+
+"He wouldna want the women o' the congregation to ken he was promised
+till after they had voted for him."
+
+"I dinna haud wi' that explanation o't," said Haggart, "but I may tell
+you that I ken for sure she's a Glasgow leddy. Lads, ministers is near
+aye bespoke afore they're licensed. There's a michty competition for
+them in the big toons. Ay, the leddies just stand at the college
+gates, as you may say, and snap them up as they come out."
+
+"And just as well for the ministers, I'se uphaud," said Tibbie, "for
+it saves them a heap o' persecution when they come to the like o'
+Thrums. There was Mr. Meiklejohn, the U. P. minister: he was no sooner
+placed than every genteel woman in the town was persecuting him. The
+Miss Dobies was the maist shameless; they fair hunted him."
+
+"Ay," said Snecky; "and in the tail o' the day ane o' them snacked him
+up. Billies, did you ever hear o' a minister being refused?"
+
+"Never."
+
+"Weel, then, I have; and by a widow woman too. His name was Samson,
+and if it had been Tamson she would hae ta'en him. Ay, you may look,
+but it's true. Her name was Turnbull, and she had another gent after
+her, name o' Tibbets. She couldna make up her mind atween them, and
+for a while she just keeped them dangling on. Ay, but in the end she
+took Tibbets. And what, think you, was her reason? As you ken, thae
+grand folk has their initials on their spoons and nichtgowns. Ay,
+weel, she thocht it would be mair handy to take Tibbets, because if
+she had ta'en the minister the _T's_ would have had to be changed to
+_S's_. It was thoctfu' o' her."
+
+"Is Tibbets living?" asked Haggart sharply.
+
+"No; he's dead."
+
+"What," asked Haggart, "was the corp to trade?"
+
+"I dinna ken."
+
+"I thocht no," said Haggart, triumphantly. "Weel, I warrant he was a
+minister too. Ay, catch a woman giving up a minister, except for
+another minister."
+
+All were looking on Haggart with admiration, when a voice from the
+door cried--
+
+"Listen, and I'll tell you a queerer ane than that."
+
+"Dagont," cried Birse, "it's Wearywarld, and he has been hearkening.
+Leave him to me."
+
+When the post returned, the conversation was back at Mr. Dishart.
+
+"Yes, lathies," Haggart was saying, "daftness about women comes to
+all, gentle and simple, common and colleged, humourists and no
+humourists. You say Mr. Dishart has preached ower muckle at women to
+stoop to marriage, but that makes no differ. Mony a humorous thing hae
+I said about women, and yet Chirsty has me. It's the same wi'
+ministers. A' at aince they see a lassie no' unlike ither lassies,
+away goes their learning, and they skirl out, 'You dawtie!' That's
+what comes to all."
+
+"But it hasna come to Mr. Dishart," cried Rob Dow, jumping to his
+feet. He had sought Haggart to tell him all, but now he saw the wisdom
+of telling nothing. "I'm sick o' your blathers. Instead o' the
+minister's being sweethearting yesterday, he was just at the Kaims
+visiting the gamekeeper. I met him in the Wast town-end, and gaed
+there and back wi' him."
+
+"That's proof it's a Glasgow leddy," said Snecky.
+
+"I tell you there's no leddy ava!" swore Rob.
+
+"Yea, and wha sends the baskets o' flowers, then?"
+
+"There was only one flower," said Rob, turning to his host.
+
+"I aye understood," said Haggart heavily, "that there was only one
+flower."
+
+"But though there was just ane," persisted Chirsty, "what we want to
+ken is wha gae him it."
+
+"It was me that gae him it," said Rob; "it was growing on the
+roadside, and I plucked it and gae it to him."
+
+The company dwindled away shamefacedly, yet unconvinced; but Haggart
+had courage to say slowly--
+
+"Yes, Rob, I had aye a notion that he got it frae you."
+
+Meanwhile, Gavin, unaware that talk about him and a woman unknown had
+broken out in Thrums, was gazing, sometimes lovingly and again with
+scorn, at a little bunch of holly-berries which Jean had gathered from
+her father's garden. Once she saw him fling them out of his window,
+and then she rejoiced. But an hour afterwards she saw him pick them
+up, and then she mourned. Nevertheless, to her great delight, he
+preached his third sermon against Woman on the following Sabbath. It
+was universally acknowledged to be the best of the series. It was also
+the last.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Eighteen.
+
+CADDAM--LOVE LEADING TO A RUPTURE.
+
+
+Gavin told himself not to go near the mud house on the following
+Monday; but he went. The distance is half a mile, and the time he took
+was two hours. This was owing to his setting out due west to reach a
+point due north; yet with the intention of deceiving none save
+himself. His reason had warned him to avoid the Egyptian, and his
+desires had consented to be dragged westward because they knew he had
+started too soon. When the proper time came they knocked reason on the
+head and carried him straight to Caddam. Here reason came to, and
+again began to state its case. Desires permitted him to halt, as if to
+argue the matter out, but were thus tolerant merely because from where
+he stood he could see Nanny's doorway. When Babbie emerged from it
+reason seems to have made one final effort, for Gavin quickly took
+that side of a tree which is loved of squirrels at the approach of an
+enemy. He looked round the tree-trunk at her, and then reason
+discarded him. The gypsy had two empty pans in her hands. For a second
+she gazed in the minister's direction, then demurely leaped the ditch
+of leaves that separated Nanny's yard from Caddam, and strolled into
+the wood. Discovering with indignation that he had been skulking
+behind the tree, Gavin came into the open. How good of the Egyptian,
+he reflected, to go to the well for water, and thus save the old
+woman's arms! Reason shouted from near the manse (he only heard the
+echo) that he could still make up on it. "Come along," said his
+desires, and marched him prisoner to the well.
+
+The path which Babbie took that day is lost in blaeberry leaves now,
+and my little maid and I lately searched for an hour before we found
+the well. It was dry, choked with broom and stones, and broken rusty
+pans, but we sat down where Babbie and Gavin had talked, and I stirred
+up many memories. Probably two of those pans, that could be broken in
+the hands to-day like shortbread, were Nanny's, and almost certainly
+the stones are fragments from the great slab that used to cover the
+well. Children like to peer into wells to see what the world is like
+at the other side, and so this covering was necessary. Rob Angus was
+the strong man who bore the stone to Caddam, flinging it a yard before
+him at a time. The well had also a wooden lid with leather hinges, and
+over this the stone was dragged.
+
+Gavin arrived at the well in time to offer Babbie the loan of his
+arms. In her struggle she had taken her lips into her mouth, but in
+vain did she tug at the stone, which refused to do more than turn
+round on the wood. But for her presence, the minister's efforts would
+have been equally futile. Though not strong, however, he had the
+national horror of being beaten before a spectator, and once at school
+he had won a fight by telling his big antagonist to come on until the
+boy was tired of pummelling him. As he fought with the stone now,
+pains shot through his head, and his arms threatened to come away at
+the shoulders; but remove it he did.
+
+"How strong you are!" Babbie said with open admiration.
+
+I am sure no words of mine could tell how pleased the minister was;
+yet he knew he was not strong, and might have known that she had seen
+him do many things far more worthy of admiration without admiring
+them. This, indeed, is a sad truth, that we seldom give our love to
+what is worthiest in its object.
+
+"How curious that we should have met here," Babbie said, in her
+dangerously friendly way, as they filled the pans. "Do you know I
+quite started when your shadow fell suddenly on the stone. Did you
+happen to be passing through the wood?"
+
+"No," answered truthful Gavin, "I was looking for you. I thought you
+saw me from Nanny's door."
+
+"Did you? I only saw a man hiding behind a tree, and of course I knew
+it could not be you."
+
+Gavin looked at her sharply, but she was not laughing at him.
+
+"It was I," he admitted; "but I was not exactly hiding behind the
+tree."
+
+"You had only stepped behind it for a moment," suggested the
+Egyptian.
+
+Her gravity gave way to laughter under Gavin's suspicious looks, but
+the laughing ended abruptly. She had heard a noise in the wood, Gavin
+heard it too, and they both turned round in time to see two ragged
+boys running from them. When boys are very happy they think they must
+be doing wrong, and in a wood, of which they are among the natural
+inhabitants, they always take flight from the enemy, adults, if given
+time. For my own part, when I see a boy drop from a tree I am as
+little surprised as if he were an apple or a nut. But Gavin was
+startled, picturing these spies handing in the new sensation about him
+at every door, as a district visitor distributes tracts. The gypsy
+noted his uneasiness and resented it.
+
+"What does it feel like to be afraid?" she asked, eyeing him.
+
+"I am afraid of nothing," Gavin answered, offended in turn.
+
+"Yes, you are. When you saw me come out of Nanny's you crept behind a
+tree; when these boys showed themselves you shook. You are afraid of
+being seen with me. Go away, then; I don't want you."
+
+"Fear," said Gavin, "is one thing, and prudence is another."
+
+"Another name for it," Babbie interposed.
+
+"Not at all; but I owe it to my position to be careful. Unhappily, you
+do not seem to feel--to recognise--to know----"
+
+"To know what?"
+
+"Let us avoid the subject."
+
+"No," the Egyptian said, petulantly. "I hate not to be told things.
+Why must you be 'prudent?'"
+
+"You should see," Gavin replied, awkwardly, "that there is a--a
+difference between a minister and a gypsy."
+
+"But if I am willing to overlook it?" asked Babbie, impertinently.
+
+Gavin beat the brushwood mournfully with his staff.
+
+"I cannot allow you," he said, "to talk disrespectfully of my calling.
+It is the highest a man can follow. I wish----"
+
+He checked himself; but he was wishing she could see him in his
+pulpit.
+
+"I suppose," said the gypsy, reflectively, "one must be very clever to
+be a minister."
+
+"As for that----" answered Gavin, waving his hand grandly.
+
+"And it must be nice, too," continued Babbie, "to be able to speak for
+a whole hour to people who can neither answer nor go away. Is it true
+that before you begin to preach you lock the door to keep the
+congregation in?"
+
+"I must leave you if you talk in that way."
+
+"I only wanted to know."
+
+"Oh, Babbie, I am afraid you have little acquaintance with the inside
+of churches. Do you sit under anybody?"
+
+"Do I sit under anybody?" repeated Babbie, blankly.
+
+Is it any wonder that the minister sighed? "Whom do you sit under?"
+was his form of salutation to strangers.
+
+"I mean, where do you belong?" he said.
+
+"Wanderers," Babbie answered, still misunderstanding him, "belong to
+nowhere in particular."
+
+"I am only asking you if you ever go to church?"
+
+"Oh, that is what you mean. Yes, I go often."
+
+"What church?"
+
+"You promised not to ask questions."
+
+"I only mean what denomination do you belong to?"
+
+"Oh, the--the----Is there an English church denomination?"
+
+Gavin groaned.
+
+"Well, that is my denomination," said Babbie, cheerfully. "Some day,
+though, I am coming to hear you preach. I should like to see how you
+look in your gown."
+
+"We don't wear gowns."
+
+"What a shame! But I am coming, nevertheless. I used to like going to
+church in Edinburgh."
+
+"You have lived in Edinburgh?"
+
+"We gypsies have lived everywhere," Babbie said, lightly, though she
+was annoyed at having mentioned Edinburgh.
+
+"But all gypsies don't speak as you do," said Gavin, puzzled again. "I
+don't understand you."
+
+"Of course you dinna," replied Babbie, in broad Scotch. "Maybe, if you
+did, you would think that it's mair imprudent in me to stand here
+cracking clavers wi' the minister than for the minister to waste his
+time cracking wi' me."
+
+"Then why do it?"
+
+"Because----Oh, because prudence and I always take different roads."
+
+"Tell me who you are, Babbie," the minister entreated; "at least, tell
+me where your encampment is."
+
+"You have warned me against imprudence," she said.
+
+"I want," Gavin continued, earnestly, "to know your people, your
+father and mother."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Because," he answered, stoutly, "I like their daughter."
+
+At that Babbie's fingers played on one of the pans, and, for the
+moment, there was no more badinage in her.
+
+"You are a good man," she said, abruptly; "but you will never know my
+parents."
+
+"Are they dead?"
+
+"They may be; I cannot tell."
+
+"This is all incomprehensible to me."
+
+"I suppose it is. I never asked any one to understand me."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Gavin, excitedly; "but the time has come when I
+must know everything of you that is to be known."
+
+Babbie receded from him in quick fear.
+
+"You must never speak to me in that way again," she said, in a warning
+voice.
+
+"In what way?"
+
+Gavin knew what way very well, but he thirsted to hear in her words
+what his own had implied. She did not choose to oblige him, however.
+
+"You never will understand me," she said. "I daresay I might be more
+like other people now, if--if I had been brought up differently. Not,"
+she added, passionately, "that I want to be like others. Do you never
+feel, when you have been living a humdrum life for months, that you
+must break out of it, or go crazy?"
+
+Her vehemence alarmed Gavin, who hastened to reply--
+
+"My life is not humdrum. It is full of excitement, anxieties,
+pleasures, and I am too fond of the pleasures. Perhaps it is because I
+have more of the luxuries of life than you that I am so content with
+my lot."
+
+"Why, what can you know of luxuries?"
+
+"I have eighty pounds a year."
+
+Babbie laughed. "Are ministers so poor?" she asked, calling back her
+gravity.
+
+"It is a considerable sum," said Gavin, a little hurt, for it was the
+first time he had ever heard any one speak disrespectfully of eighty
+pounds.
+
+The Egyptian looked down at her ring, and smiled.
+
+"I shall always remember your saying that," she told him, "after we
+have quarrelled."
+
+"We shall not quarrel," said Gavin, decidedly.
+
+"Oh, yes, we shall."
+
+"We might have done so once, but we know each other too well now."
+
+"That is why we are to quarrel."
+
+"About what?" said the minister. "I have not blamed you for deriding
+my stipend, though how it can seem small in the eyes of a gypsy----"
+
+"Who can afford," broke in Babbie, "to give Nanny seven shillings a
+week?"
+
+"True," Gavin said, uncomfortably, while the Egyptian again toyed with
+her ring. She was too impulsive to be reticent except now and then,
+and suddenly she said, "You have looked at this ring before now. Do
+you know that if you had it on your finger you would be more worth
+robbing than with eighty pounds in each of your pockets?"
+
+"Where did you get it?" demanded Gavin, fiercely.
+
+"I am sorry I told you that," the gypsy said, regretfully.
+
+"Tell me how you got it," Gavin insisted, his face now hard.
+
+"Now, you see, we are quarrelling."
+
+"I must know."
+
+"Must know! You forget yourself," she said haughtily.
+
+"No, but I have forgotten myself too long. Where did you get that
+ring?"
+
+"Good afternoon to you," said the Egyptian, lifting her pans.
+
+"It is not good afternoon," he cried, detaining her. "It is good-bye
+for ever, unless you answer me."
+
+"As you please," she said. "I will not tell you where I got my ring.
+It is no affair of yours."
+
+"Yes, Babbie, it is."
+
+She was not, perhaps, greatly grieved to hear him say so, for she made
+no answer.
+
+"You are no gypsy," he continued, suspiciously.
+
+"Perhaps not," she answered, again taking the pans.
+
+"This dress is but a disguise."
+
+"It may be. Why don't you go away and leave me?"
+
+"I am going," he replied, wildly. "I will have no more to do with you.
+Formerly I pitied you, but----"
+
+He could not have used a word more calculated to rouse the Egyptian's
+ire, and she walked away with her head erect. Only once did she look
+back, and it was to say--
+
+"This is prudence--now."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Nineteen.
+
+CIRCUMSTANCES LEADING TO THE FIRST SERMON IN APPROVAL OF WOMEN.
+
+
+A young man thinks that he alone of mortals is impervious to love, and
+so the discovery that he is in it suddenly alters his views of his own
+mechanism. It is thus not unlike a rap on the funny-bone. Did Gavin
+make this discovery when the Egyptian left him? Apparently he only
+came to the brink of it and stood blind. He had driven her from him
+for ever, and his sense of loss was so acute that his soul cried out
+for the cure rather than for the name of the malady.
+
+In time he would have realised what had happened, but time was denied
+him, for just as he was starting for the mud house Babbie saved his
+dignity by returning to him. It was not her custom to fix her eyes on
+the ground as she walked, but she was doing so now, and at the same
+time swinging the empty pans. Doubtless she had come back for more
+water, in the belief that Gavin had gone. He pronounced her name with
+a sense of guilt, and she looked up surprised, or seemingly surprised,
+to find him still there.
+
+"I thought you had gone away long ago," she said stiffly.
+
+"Otherwise," asked Gavin the dejected, "you would not have come back
+to the well?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I am very sorry. Had you waited another moment I should have been
+gone."
+
+This was said in apology, but the wilful Egyptian chose to change its
+meaning.
+
+"You have no right to blame me for disturbing you," she declared with
+warmth.
+
+"I did not. I only----"
+
+"You could have been a mile away by this time. Nanny wanted more
+water."
+
+Babbie scrutinised the minister sharply as she made this statement.
+Surely her conscience troubled her, for on his not answering
+immediately she said, "Do you presume to disbelieve me? What could
+have made me return except to fill the pans again?"
+
+"Nothing," Gavin admitted eagerly, "and I assure you----"
+
+Babbie should have been grateful to his denseness, but it merely set
+her mind at rest.
+
+"Say anything against me you choose," she told him. "Say it as
+brutally as you like, for I won't listen."
+
+She stopped to hear his response to that, and she looked so cold that
+it almost froze on Gavin's lips.
+
+"I had no right," he said, dolefully, "to speak to you as I did."
+
+"You had not," answered the proud Egyptian. She was looking away from
+him to show that his repentance was not even interesting to her.
+However, she had forgotten already not to listen.
+
+"What business is it of mine?" asked Gavin, amazed at his late
+presumption, "whether you are a gypsy or no?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"And as for the ring----"
+
+Here he gave her an opportunity of allowing that his curiosity about
+the ring was warranted. She declined to help him, however, and so he
+had to go on.
+
+"The ring is yours," he said, "and why should you not wear it?"
+
+"Why, indeed?"
+
+"I am afraid I have a very bad temper."
+
+He paused for a contradiction, but she nodded her head in agreement.
+
+"And it is no wonder," he continued, "that you think me a--a brute."
+
+"I'm sure it is not."
+
+"But, Babbie, I want you to know that I despise myself for my base
+suspicions. No sooner did I see them than I loathed them and myself
+for harbouring them. Despite this mystery, I look upon you as a
+noble-hearted girl. I shall always think of you so."
+
+This time Babbie did not reply.
+
+"That was all I had to say," concluded Gavin, "except that I hope you
+will not punish Nanny for my sins. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye," said the Egyptian, who was looking at the well.
+
+The minister's legs could not have heard him give the order to march,
+for they stood waiting.
+
+"I thought," said the Egyptian, after a moment, "that you said you
+were going."
+
+"I was only--brushing my hat," Gavin answered with dignity. "You want
+me to go?"
+
+She bowed, and this time he did set off.
+
+"You can go if you like," she remarked now.
+
+He turned at this.
+
+"But you said----" he began, diffidently.
+
+"No, I did not," she answered, with indignation.
+
+He could see her face at last.
+
+"You--you are crying!" he exclaimed, in bewilderment.
+
+"Because you are so unfeeling," sobbed Babbie.
+
+"What have I said, what have I done?" cried Gavin, in an agony of
+self-contempt. "Oh, that I had gone away at once!"
+
+"That is cruel."
+
+"What is?"
+
+"To say that."
+
+"What did I say?"
+
+"That you wished you had gone away."
+
+"But surely," the minister faltered, "you asked me to go."
+
+"How can you say so?" asked the gypsy, reproachfully.
+
+Gavin was distracted. "On my word," he said, earnestly, "I thought you
+did. And now I have made you unhappy. Babbie, I wish I were anybody
+but myself; I am a hopeless lout."
+
+"Now you are unjust," said Babbie, hiding her face.
+
+"Again? To you?"
+
+"No, you stupid," she said, beaming on him in her most delightful
+manner, "to yourself!"
+
+She gave him both her hands impetuously, and he did not let them go
+until she added:
+
+"I am so glad that you are reasonable at last. Men are so much more
+unreasonable than women, don't you think?"
+
+"Perhaps we are," Gavin said, diplomatically.
+
+"Of course you are. Why, every one knows that. Well, I forgive you;
+only remember, you have admitted that it was all your fault?"
+
+She was pointing her finger at him like a schoolmistress, and Gavin
+hastened to answer--
+
+"You were not to blame at all."
+
+"I like to hear you say that," explained the representative of the
+more reasonable sex, "because it was really all my fault."
+
+"No, no."
+
+"Yes, it was; but of course I could not say so until you had asked my
+pardon. You must understand that?"
+
+The representative of the less reasonable sex could not understand it,
+but he agreed recklessly, and it seemed so plain to the woman that she
+continued confidentially--
+
+"I pretended that I did not want to make it up, but I did."
+
+"Did you?" asked Gavin, elated.
+
+"Yes, but nothing could have induced me to make the first advance. You
+see why?"
+
+"Because I was so unreasonable?" asked Gavin, doubtfully.
+
+"Yes, and nasty. You admit you were nasty?"
+
+"Undoubtedly, I have an evil temper. It has brought me to shame many
+times."
+
+"Oh, I don't know," said the Egyptian, charitably. "I like it. I
+believe I admire bullies."
+
+"Did I bully you?"
+
+"I never knew such a bully. You quite frightened me."
+
+Gavin began to be less displeased with himself.
+
+"You are sure," inquired Babbie, "that you had no right to question me
+about the ring?"
+
+"Certain," answered Gavin.
+
+"Then I will tell you all about it," said Babbie, "for it is natural
+that you should want to know."
+
+He looked eagerly at her, and she had become serious and sad.
+
+"I must tell you at the same time," she said, "who I am, and
+then--then we shall never see each other any more."
+
+"Why should you tell me?" cried Gavin, his hand rising to stop her.
+
+"Because you have a right to know," she replied, now too much in
+earnest to see that she was yielding a point. "I should prefer not to
+tell you; yet there is nothing wrong in my secret, and it may make you
+think of me kindly when I have gone away."
+
+"Don't speak in that way, Babbie, after you have forgiven me."
+
+"Did I hurt you? It was only because I know that you cannot trust me
+while I remain a mystery. I know you would try to trust me, but
+doubts would cross your mind. Yes, they would; they are the shadows
+that mysteries cast. Who can believe a gypsy if the odds are against
+her?"
+
+"I can," said Gavin; but she shook her head, and so would he had he
+remembered three recent sermons of his own preaching.
+
+"I had better tell you all," she said, with an effort.
+
+"It is my turn now to refuse to listen to you," exclaimed Gavin, who
+was only a chivalrous boy. "Babbie, I should like to hear your story,
+but until you want to tell it to me I will not listen to it. I have
+faith in your honour, and that is sufficient."
+
+It was boyish, but I am glad Gavin said it; and now Babbie admired
+something in him that deserved admiration. His faith, no doubt, made
+her a better woman.
+
+"I admit that I would rather tell you nothing just now," she said,
+gratefully. "You are sure you will never say again that you don't
+understand me?"
+
+"Quite sure," said Gavin, bravely. "And by-and-by you will offer to
+tell me of your free will?"
+
+"Oh, don't let us think of the future," answered Babbie. "Let us be
+happy for the moment."
+
+This had been the Egyptian's philosophy always, but it was ill-suited
+for Auld Licht ministers, as one of them was presently to discover.
+
+"I want to make one confession, though," Babbie continued, almost
+reluctantly. "When you were so nasty a little while ago, I didn't go
+back to Nanny's. I stood watching you from behind a tree, and then,
+for an excuse to come back, I--I poured out the water. Yes, and I told
+you another lie. I really came back to admit that it was all my fault,
+if I could not get you to say that it was yours. I am so glad you gave
+in first."
+
+She was very near him, and the tears had not yet dried on her eyes.
+They were laughing eyes, eyes in distress, imploring eyes. Her pale
+face, smiling, sad, dimpled, yet entreating forgiveness, was the one
+prominent thing in the world to him just then. He wanted to kiss her.
+He would have done it as soon as her eyes rested on his, but she
+continued without regarding him--
+
+"How mean that sounds! Oh, if I were a man I should wish to be
+everything that I am not, and nothing that I am. I should scorn to be
+a liar, I should choose to be open in all things, I should try to
+fight the world honestly. But I am only a woman, and so--well, that is
+the kind of man I should like to marry."
+
+"A minister may be all these things," said Gavin, breathlessly.
+
+"The man I could love," Babbie went on, not heeding him, almost
+forgetting that he was there, "must not spend his days in idleness as
+the men I know do."
+
+"I do not."
+
+"He must be brave, no mere worker among others, but a leader of men."
+
+"All ministers are."
+
+"Who makes his influence felt."
+
+"Assuredly."
+
+"And takes the side of the weak against the strong, even though the
+strong be in the right."
+
+"Always my tendency."
+
+"A man who has a mind of his own, and having once made it up stands to
+it in defiance even of----"
+
+"Of his session."
+
+"Of the world. He must understand me."
+
+"I do."
+
+"And be my master."
+
+"It is his lawful position in the house."
+
+"He must not yield to my coaxing or tempers."
+
+"It would be weakness."
+
+"But compel me to do his bidding; yes, even thrash me if----"
+
+"If you won't listen to reason. Babbie," cried Gavin, "I am that
+man!"
+
+Here the inventory abruptly ended, and these two people found
+themselves staring at each other, as if of a sudden they had heard
+something dreadful. I do not know how long they stood thus, motionless
+and horrified. I cannot tell even which stirred first. All I know is
+that almost simultaneously they turned from each other and hurried out
+of the wood in opposite directions.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty.
+
+END OF THE STATE OF INDECISION.
+
+
+Long before I had any thought of writing this story, I had told it so
+often to my little maid that she now knows some of it better than I.
+If you saw me looking up from my paper to ask her, "What was it that
+Birse said to Jean about the minister's flowers?" or, "Where was
+Hendry Munn hidden on the night of the riots?" and heard her confident
+answers, you would conclude that she had been in the thick of these
+events, instead of born many years after them. I mention this now
+because I have reached a point where her memory contradicts mine. She
+maintains that Rob Dow was told of the meeting in the wood by the two
+boys whom it disturbed, while my own impression is that he was a
+witness of it. If she is right, Rob must have succeeded in frightening
+the boys into telling no other person, for certainly the scandal did
+not spread in Thrums. After all, however, it is only important to know
+that Rob did learn of the meeting. Its first effect was to send him
+sullenly to the drink.
+
+Many a time since these events have I pictured what might have been
+their upshot had Dow confided their discovery to me. Had I suspected
+why Rob was grown so dour again, Gavin's future might have been very
+different. I was meeting Rob now and again in the glen, asking, with
+an affected carelessness he did not bottom, for news of the little
+minister, but what he told me was only the gossip of the town; and
+what I should have known, that Thrums might never know it, he kept to
+himself. I suppose he feared to speak to Gavin, who made several
+efforts to reclaim him, but without avail.
+
+Yet Rob's heart opened for a moment to one man, or rather was forced
+open by that man. A few days after the meeting at the well, Rob was
+bringing the smell of whisky with him down Banker's Close when he ran
+against a famous staff, with which the doctor pinned him to the wall.
+
+"Ay," said the outspoken doctor, looking contemptuously into Rob's
+bleary eyes, "so this is what your conversion amounts to? Faugh! Rob
+Dow, if you were half a man the very thought of what Mr. Dishart has
+done for you would make you run past the public houses."
+
+"It's the thocht o' him that sends me running to them," growled Rob,
+knocking down the staff. "Let me alane."
+
+"What do you mean by that?" demanded McQueen, hooking him this time.
+
+"Speir at himsel'; speir at the woman."
+
+"What woman?"
+
+"Take your staff out o' my neck."
+
+"Not till you tell me why you, of all people, are speaking against the
+minister."
+
+Torn by a desire for a confidant and loyalty to Gavin, Rob was already
+in a fury.
+
+"Say again," he burst forth, "that I was speaking agin the minister
+and I'll practise on you what I'm awid to do to her."
+
+"Who is she?"
+
+"Wha's wha?"
+
+"The woman whom the minister----?"
+
+"I said nothing about a woman," said poor Rob, alarmed for Gavin.
+"Doctor, I'm ready to swear afore a bailie that I never saw them
+thegither at the Kaims."
+
+"The Kaims!" exclaimed the doctor suddenly enlightened. "Pooh! you
+only mean the Egyptian. Rob, make your mind easy about this. I know
+why he met her there."
+
+"Do you ken that she has bewitched him; do you ken I saw him trying to
+put his arms round her; do you ken they have a trysting-place in
+Caddam wood?"
+
+This came from Rob in a rush, and he would fain have called it all
+back.
+
+"I'm drunk, doctor, roaring drunk," he said, hastily, "and it wasna
+the minister I saw ava; it was another man."
+
+Nothing more could the doctor draw from Rob, but he had heard
+sufficient to smoke some pipes on. Like many who pride themselves on
+being recluses, McQueen loved the gossip that came to him uninvited;
+indeed, he opened his mouth to it as greedily as any man in Thrums. He
+respected Gavin, however, too much to find this new dish palatable,
+and so his researches to discover whether other Auld Lichts shared
+Rob's fears were conducted with caution. "Is there no word of your
+minister's getting a wife yet?" he asked several, but only got for
+answers, "There's word o' a Glasgow leddy's sending him baskets o'
+flowers," or "He has his een open, but he's taking his time; ay, he's
+looking for the blade o' corn in the stack o' chaff."
+
+This convinced McQueen that the congregation knew nothing of the
+Egyptian, but it did not satisfy him, and he made an opportunity of
+inviting Gavin into the surgery. It was, to the doctor, the cosiest
+nook in his house, but to me and many others a room that smelled of
+hearses. On the top of the pipes and tobacco tins that littered the
+table there usually lay a death certificate, placed there deliberately
+by the doctor to scare his sister, who had a passion for putting the
+surgery to rights.
+
+"By the way," McQueen said, after he and Gavin had talked a little
+while, "did I ever advise you to smoke?"
+
+"It is your usual form of salutation," Gavin answered, laughing. "But
+I don't think you ever supplied me with a reason."
+
+"I daresay not. I am too experienced a doctor to cheapen my
+prescriptions in that way. However, here is one good reason. I have
+noticed, sir, that at your age a man is either a slave to a pipe or to
+a woman. Do you want me to lend you a pipe now?"
+
+"Then I am to understand," asked Gavin, slyly, "that your locket came
+into your possession in your pre-smoking days, and that you merely
+wear it from habit?"
+
+"Tuts!" answered the doctor, buttoning his coat. "I told you there was
+nothing in the locket. If there is, I have forgotten what it is."
+
+"You are a hopeless old bachelor, I see," said Gavin, unaware that the
+doctor was probing him. He was surprised next moment to find McQueen
+in the ecstasies of one who has won a rubber.
+
+"Now, then," cried the jubilant doctor, "as you have confessed so
+much, tell me all about her. Name and address, please."
+
+"Confess! What have I confessed?"
+
+"It won't do, Mr. Dishart, for even your face betrays you. No, no, I
+am an old bird, but I have not forgotten the ways of the fledgelings.
+'Hopeless bachelor,' sir, is a sweetmeat in every young man's mouth
+until of a sudden he finds it sour, and that means the banns. When is
+it to be?"
+
+"We must find the lady first," said the minister, uncomfortably.
+
+"You tell me, in spite of that face, that you have not fixed on her?"
+
+"The difficulty, I suppose, would be to persuade her to fix on me."
+
+"Not a bit of it. But you admit there is some one?"
+
+"Who would have me?"
+
+"You are wriggling out of it. Is it the banker's daughter?"
+
+"No," Gavin cried.
+
+"I hear you have walked up the back wynd with her three times this
+week. The town is in a ferment about it."
+
+"She is a great deal in the back wynd."
+
+"Fiddle-de-dee! I am oftener in the back wynd than you, and I never
+meet her there."
+
+"That is curious."
+
+"No, it isn't, but never mind. Perhaps you have fallen to Miss
+Pennycuick's piano? Did you hear it going as we passed the house?"
+
+"She seems always to be playing on her piano."
+
+"Not she; but you are supposed to be musical, and so when she sees you
+from her window she begins to thump. If I am in the school wynd and
+hear the piano going, I know you will turn the corner immediately.
+However, I am glad to hear it is not Miss Pennycuick. Then it is the
+factor at the Spittal's lassie? Well done, sir. You should arrange to
+have the wedding at the same time as the old earl's, which comes off
+in summer, I believe."
+
+"One foolish marriage is enough in a day, doctor."
+
+"Eh? You call him a fool for marrying a young wife? Well, no doubt he
+is, but he would have been a bigger fool to marry an old one. However,
+it is not Lord Rintoul we are discussing, but Gavin Dishart. I suppose
+you know that the factor's lassie is an heiress?"
+
+"And, therefore, would scorn me."
+
+"Try her," said the doctor, drily. "Her father and mother, as I know,
+married on a ten-pound note. But if I am wrong again, I must adopt the
+popular view in Thrums. It is a Glasgow lady after all? Man, you
+needn't look indignant at hearing that the people are discussing your
+intended. You can no more stop it than a doctor's orders could keep
+Lang Tammas out of church. They have discovered that she sends you
+flowers twice every week."
+
+"They never reach me," answered Gavin, then remembered the holly and
+winced.
+
+"Some," persisted the relentless doctor, "even speak of your having
+been seen together; but of course, if she is a Glasgow lady, that is a
+mistake."
+
+"Where did they see us?" asked Gavin, with a sudden trouble in his
+throat.
+
+"You are shaking," said the doctor, keenly, "like a medical student at
+his first operation. But as for the story that you and the lady have
+been seen together, I can guess how it arose. Do you remember that
+gypsy girl?"
+
+The doctor had begun by addressing the fire, but he suddenly wheeled
+round and fired his question in the minister's face. Gavin, however,
+did not even blink.
+
+"Why should I have forgotten her?" he replied, coolly.
+
+"Oh, in the stress of other occupations. But it was your getting the
+money from her at the Kaims for Nanny that I was to speak of. Absurd
+though it seems, I think some dotard must have seen you and her at the
+Kaims, and mistaken her for the lady."
+
+McQueen flung himself back in his chair to enjoy this joke.
+
+"Fancy mistaking that woman for a lady!" he said to Gavin, who had not
+laughed with him.
+
+"I think Nanny has some justification for considering her a lady," the
+minister said, firmly.
+
+"Well, I grant that. But what made me guffaw was a vision of the
+harum-scarum, devil-may-care little Egyptian mistress of an Auld Licht
+manse!"
+
+"She is neither harum-scarum nor devil-may-care," Gavin answered,
+without heat, for he was no longer a distracted minister. "You don't
+understand her as I do."
+
+"No, I seem to understand her differently."
+
+"What do you know of her?"
+
+"That is just it," said the doctor, irritated by Gavin's coolness. "I
+know she saved Nanny from the poorhouse, but I don't know where she
+got the money. I know she can talk fine English when she chooses, but
+I don't know where she learned it. I know she heard that the soldiers
+were coming to Thrums before they knew of their destination
+themselves, but I don't know who told her. You who understand her can
+doubtless explain these matters?"
+
+"She offered to explain them to me," Gavin answered, still unmoved,
+"but I forbade her."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"It is no business of yours, doctor. Forgive me for saying so."
+
+"In Thrums," replied McQueen, "a minister's business is everybody's
+business. I have often wondered who helped her to escape from the
+soldiers that night. Did she offer to explain that to you?"
+
+"She did not."
+
+"Perhaps," said the doctor, sharply, "because it was unnecessary?"
+
+"That was the reason."
+
+"You helped her to escape?"
+
+"I did."
+
+"And you are not ashamed of it?"
+
+"I am not."
+
+"Why were you so anxious to screen her?"
+
+"She saved some of my people from gaol."
+
+"Which was more than they deserved."
+
+"I have always understood that you concealed two of them in your own
+stable."
+
+"Maybe I did," the doctor had to allow. "But I took my stick to them
+next morning. Besides, they were Thrums folk, while you had never set
+eyes on that imp of mischief before."
+
+"I cannot sit here, doctor, and hear her called names," Gavin said,
+rising, but McQueen gripped him by the shoulder.
+
+"For pity's sake, sir, don't let us wrangle like a pair of women. I
+brought you here to speak my mind to you, and speak it I will. I warn
+you, Mr. Dishart, that you are being watched. You have been seen
+meeting this lassie in Caddam as well as at the Kaims."
+
+"Let the whole town watch, doctor. I have met her openly."
+
+"And why? Oh, don't make Nanny your excuse."
+
+"I won't. I met her because I love her."
+
+"Are you mad?" cried McQueen. "You speak as if you would marry her."
+
+"Yes," replied Gavin, determinedly, "and I mean to do it."
+
+The doctor flung up his hands.
+
+"I give you up," he said, raging. "I give you up. Think of your
+congregation, man."
+
+"I have been thinking of them, and as soon as I have a right to do so
+I shall tell them what I have told you."
+
+"And until you tell them I will keep your madness to myself, for I
+warn you that, as soon as they do know, there will be a vacancy in the
+Auld Licht kirk of Thrums."
+
+"She is a woman," said Gavin, hesitating, though preparing to go, "of
+whom any minister might be proud."
+
+"She is a woman," the doctor roared, "that no congregation would
+stand. Oh, if you will go, there is your hat."
+
+Perhaps Gavin's face was whiter as he left the house than when he
+entered it, but there was no other change. Those who were watching him
+decided that he was looking much as usual, except that his mouth was
+shut very firm, from which they concluded that he had been taking the
+doctor to task for smoking. They also noted that he returned to
+McQueen's house within half an hour after leaving it, but remained no
+time.
+
+Some explained this second visit by saying that the minister had
+forgotten his cravat, and had gone back for it. What really sent him
+back, however, was his conscience. He had said to McQueen that he
+helped Babbie to escape from the soldiers because of her kindness to
+his people, and he returned to own that it was a lie.
+
+Gavin knocked at the door of the surgery, but entered without waiting
+for a response. McQueen was no longer stamping through the room, red
+and furious. He had even laid aside his pipe. He was sitting back in
+his chair, looking half-mournfully, half-contemptuously, at something
+in his palm. His hand closed instinctively when he heard the door
+open, but Gavin had seen that the object was an open locket.
+
+"It was only your reference to the thing," the detected doctor said,
+with a grim laugh, "that made me open it. Forty years ago, sir,
+I----Phew! it is forty-two years, and I have not got over it yet." He
+closed the locket with a snap. "I hope you have come back, Dishart, to
+speak more rationally?"
+
+Gavin told him why he had come back, and the doctor said he was a fool
+for his pains.
+
+"Is it useless, Dishart, to make another appeal to you?"
+
+"Quite useless, doctor," Gavin answered, promptly. "My mind is made up
+at last."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-One.
+
+NIGHT--MARGARET--FLASHING OF A LANTERN.
+
+
+That evening the little minister sat silently in his parlour. Darkness
+came, and with it weavers rose heavy-eyed from their looms, sleepy
+children sought their mothers, and the gate of the field above the
+manse fell forward to let cows pass to their byre; the great Bible was
+produced in many homes, and the ten o'clock bell clanged its last word
+to the night. Margaret had allowed the lamp to burn low. Thinking that
+her boy slept, she moved softly to his side and spread her shawl over
+his knees. He had forgotten her. The doctor's warnings scarcely
+troubled him. He was Babbie's lover. The mystery of her was only a
+veil hiding her from other men, and he was looking through it upon the
+face of his beloved.
+
+It was a night of long ago, but can you not see my dear Margaret still
+as she bends over her son? Not twice in many days dared the minister
+snatch a moment's sleep from grey morning to midnight, and, when this
+did happen, he jumped up by-and-by in shame, to revile himself for an
+idler and ask his mother wrathfully why she had not tumbled him out of
+his chair? To-night Margaret was divided between a desire to let him
+sleep and a fear of his self-reproach when he awoke; and so, perhaps,
+the tear fell that roused him.
+
+"I did not like to waken you," Margaret said, apprehensively. "You
+must have been very tired, Gavin?"
+
+"I was not sleeping, mother," he said, slowly. "I was only thinking."
+
+"Ah, Gavin, you never rise from your loom. It is hardly fair that your
+hands should be so full of other people's troubles."
+
+"They only fill one hand, mother; I carry the people's joys in the
+other hand, and that keeps me erect, like a woman between her pan and
+pitcher. I think the joys have outweighed the sorrows since we came
+here."
+
+"It has been all joy to me, Gavin, for you never tell me of the
+sorrows. An old woman has no right to be so happy."
+
+"Old woman, mother!" said Gavin. But his indignation was vain.
+Margaret was an old woman. I made her old before her time.
+
+"As for these terrible troubles," he went on, "I forget them the
+moment I enter the garden and see you at your window. And, maybe, I
+keep some of the joys from you as well as the troubles."
+
+Words about Babbie leaped to his mouth, but with an effort he
+restrained them. He must not tell his mother of her until Babbie of
+her free will had told him all there was to tell.
+
+"I have been a selfish woman, Gavin."
+
+"You selfish, mother!" Gavin said, smiling. "Tell me when you did not
+think of others before yourself?"
+
+"Always, Gavin. Has it not been selfishness to hope that you would
+never want to bring another mistress to the manse? Do you remember how
+angry you used to be in Glasgow when I said that you would marry some
+day?"
+
+"I remember," Gavin said, sadly.
+
+"Yes; you used to say, 'Don't speak of such a thing, mother, for the
+horrid thought of it is enough to drive all the Hebrew out of my
+head.' Was not that lightning just now?"
+
+"I did not see it. What a memory you have, mother, for all the boyish
+things I said."
+
+"I can't deny," Margaret admitted with a sigh, "that I liked to hear
+you speak in that way, though I knew you would go back on your word.
+You see, you have changed already."
+
+"How, mother?" asked Gavin, surprised.
+
+"You said just now that those were boyish speeches. Gavin, I can't
+understand the mothers who are glad to see their sons married; though
+I had a dozen I believe it would be a wrench to lose one of them. It
+would be different with daughters. You are laughing, Gavin!"
+
+"Yes, at your reference to daughters. Would you not have preferred me
+to be a girl?"
+
+"'Deed I would not," answered Margaret, with tremendous conviction.
+"Gavin, every woman on earth, be she rich or poor, good or bad, offers
+up one prayer about her firstborn, and that is, 'May he be a boy!'"
+
+"I think you are wrong, mother. The banker's wife told me that there
+is nothing for which she thanks the Lord so much as that all her
+children are girls."
+
+"May she be forgiven for that, Gavin!" exclaimed Margaret; "though she
+maybe did right to put the best face on her humiliation. No, no, there
+are many kinds of women in the world, but there never was one yet that
+didn't want to begin with a laddie. You can speculate about a boy so
+much more than about a girl. Gavin, what is it a woman thinks about
+the day her son is born? yes, and the day before too? She is picturing
+him a grown man, and a slip of a lassie taking him from her. Ay, that
+is where the lassies have their revenge on the mothers. I remember as
+if it were this morning a Harvie fishwife patting your head and asking
+who was your sweetheart, and I could never thole the woman again. We
+were at the door of the cottage, and I mind I gripped you up in my
+arms. You had on a tartan frock with a sash and diamond socks. When I
+look back, Gavin, it seems to me that you have shot up from that frock
+to manhood in a single hour."
+
+"There are not many mothers like you," Gavin said, laying his hand
+fondly on Margaret's shoulder.
+
+"There are many better mothers, but few such sons. It is easily seen
+why God could not afford me another. Gavin, I am sure that was
+lightning."
+
+"I think it was; but don't be alarmed, mother."
+
+"I am never frightened when you are with me."
+
+"And I always will be with you."
+
+"Ah, if you were married----"
+
+"Do you think," asked Gavin, indignantly, "that it would make any
+difference to you?"
+
+Margaret did not answer. She knew what a difference it would make.
+
+"Except," continued Gavin, with a man's obtuseness, "that you would
+have a daughter as well as a son to love you and take care of you."
+
+Margaret could have told him that men give themselves away needlessly
+who marry for the sake of their mother, but all she said was--
+
+"Gavin, I see you can speak more composedly of marrying now than you
+spoke a year ago. If I did not know better, I should think a Thrums
+young lady had got hold of you."
+
+It was a moment before Gavin replied; then he said, gaily--
+
+"Really, mother, the way the best of women speak of each other is
+lamentable. You say I should be better married, and then you take for
+granted that every marriageable woman in the neighbourhood is trying
+to kidnap me. I am sure you did not take my father by force in that
+way."
+
+He did not see that Margaret trembled at the mention of his father. He
+never knew that she was many times pining to lay her head upon his
+breast and tell him of me. Yet I cannot but believe that she always
+shook when Adam Dishart was spoken of between them. I cannot think
+that the long-cherishing of the secret which was hers and mine kept
+her face steady when that horror suddenly confronted her as now. Gavin
+would have suspected much had he ever suspected anything.
+
+"I know," Margaret said, courageously, "that you would be better
+married; but when it comes to selecting the woman I grow fearful. O
+Gavin!" she said, earnestly, "it is an awful thing to marry the wrong
+man!"
+
+Here in a moment had she revealed much, though far from all, and there
+must have been many such moments between them. But Gavin was thinking
+of his own affairs.
+
+"You mean the wrong woman, don't you, mother?" he said, and she
+hastened to agree. But it was the wrong man she meant.
+
+"The difficulty, I suppose, is to hit upon the right one?" Gavin said,
+blithely.
+
+"To know which is the right one in time," answered Margaret, solemnly.
+"But I am saying nothing against the young ladies of Thrums, Gavin.
+Though I have scarcely seen them, I know there are good women among
+them. Jean says----"
+
+"I believe, mother," Gavin interposed, reproachfully, "that you have
+been questioning Jean about them?"
+
+"Just because I was afraid--I mean because I fancied--you might be
+taking a liking to one of them."
+
+"And what is Jean's verdict?"
+
+"She says every one of them would jump at you, like a bird at a
+berry."
+
+"But the berry cannot be divided. How would Miss Pennycuick please
+you, mother?"
+
+"Gavin!" cried Margaret, in consternation, "you don't mean to----But
+you are laughing at me again."
+
+"Then there is the banker's daughter?"
+
+"I can't thole her."
+
+"Why, I question if you ever set eyes on her, mother."
+
+"Perhaps not, Gavin; but I have suspected her ever since she offered
+to become one of your tract distributors."
+
+"The doctor," said Gavin, not ill-pleased, "was saying that either of
+these ladies would suit me."
+
+"What business has he," asked Margaret, vindictively, "to put such
+thoughts into your head?"
+
+"But he only did as you are doing. Mother, I see you will never be
+satisfied without selecting the woman for me yourself."
+
+"Ay, Gavin," said Margaret, earnestly; "and I question if I should be
+satisfied even then. But I am sure I should be a better guide to you
+than Dr. McQueen is."
+
+"I am convinced of that. But I wonder what sort of woman would content
+you?"
+
+"Whoever pleased you, Gavin, would content me," Margaret ventured to
+maintain. "You would only take to a clever woman."
+
+"She must be nearly as clever as you, mother."
+
+"Hoots, Gavin," said Margaret, smiling, "I'm not to be caught with
+chaff. I am a stupid, ignorant woman."
+
+"Then I must look out for a stupid, ignorant woman, for that seems to
+be the kind I like," answered Gavin, of whom I may confess here
+something that has to be told sooner or later. It is this: he never
+realised that Babbie was a great deal cleverer than himself. Forgive
+him, you who read, if you have any tolerance for the creature, man.
+
+"She will be terribly learned in languages," pursued Margaret, "so
+that she may follow you in your studies, as I have never been able to
+do."
+
+"Your face has helped me more than Hebrew, mother," replied Gavin. "I
+will give her no marks for languages."
+
+"At any rate," Margaret insisted, "she must be a grand housekeeper,
+and very thrifty."
+
+"As for that," Gavin said, faltering a little, "one can't expect it of
+a mere girl."
+
+"I should expect it," maintained his mother.
+
+"No, no; but she would have you," said Gavin, happily, "to teach her
+housekeeping."
+
+"It would be a pleasant occupation to me, that," Margaret admitted.
+"And she would soon learn: she would be so proud of her position as
+mistress of a manse."
+
+"Perhaps," Gavin said, doubtfully. He had no doubt on the subject in
+his college days.
+
+"And we can take for granted," continued his mother, "that she is a
+lassie of fine character."
+
+"Of course," said Gavin, holding his head high, as if he thought the
+doctor might be watching him.
+
+"I have thought," Margaret went on, "that there was a great deal of
+wisdom in what you said at that last marriage in the manse, the one
+where, you remember, the best man and the bridesmaid joined hands
+instead of the bride and bridegroom."
+
+"What did I say?" asked the little minister, with misgivings.
+
+"That there was great danger when people married out of their own rank
+of life."
+
+"Oh--ah--well, of course, that would depend on circumstances."
+
+"They were wise words, Gavin. There was the sermon, too, that you
+preached a month or two ago against marrying into other denominations.
+Jean told me that it greatly impressed the congregation. It is a sad
+sight, as you said, to see an Auld Licht lassie changing her faith
+because her man belongs to the U. P.'s."
+
+"Did I say that?"
+
+"You did, and it so struck Jean that she told me she would rather be
+an old maid for life, 'the which,' she said, 'is a dismal prospect,'
+than marry out of the Auld Licht kirk."
+
+"Perhaps that was a rather narrow view I took, mother. After all, the
+fitting thing is that the wife should go with her husband; especially
+if it is he that is the Auld Licht."
+
+"I don't hold with narrowness myself, Gavin," Margaret said, with an
+effort, "and admit that there are many respectable persons in the
+other denominations. But though a weaver might take a wife from
+another kirk without much scandal, an Auld Licht minister's madam must
+be Auld Licht born and bred. The congregation would expect no less. I
+doubt if they would be sure of her if she came from some other Auld
+Licht kirk. 'Deed, though she came from our own kirk, I'm thinking the
+session would want to catechise her. Ay, and if all you tell me of
+Lang Tammas be true (for, as you know, I never spoke to him), I
+warrant he would catechise the session."
+
+"I would brook no interference from my session," said Gavin, knitting
+his brows, "and I do not consider it necessary that a minister's wife
+should have been brought up in his denomination. Of course she would
+join it. We must make allowance, mother, for the thousands of young
+women who live in places where there is no Auld Licht kirk."
+
+"You can pity them, Gavin," said Margaret, "without marrying them. A
+minister has his congregation to think of."
+
+"So the doctor says," interposed her son.
+
+"Then it was just like his presumption!" cried Margaret. "A minister
+should marry to please himself."
+
+"Decidedly he should," Gavin agreed, eagerly, "and the bounden duty of
+the congregation is to respect and honour his choice. If they forget
+that duty, his is to remind them of it."
+
+"Ah, well, Gavin," said Margaret, confidently, "your congregation are
+so fond of you that your choice would doubtless be theirs. Jean tells
+me that even Lang Tammas, though he is so obstinate, has a love for
+you passing the love of woman. These were her words. Jean is more
+sentimental than you might think."
+
+"I wish he would show his love," said Gavin, "by contradicting me less
+frequently."
+
+"You have Rob Dow to weigh against him."
+
+"No; I cannot make out what has come over Rob lately. He is drinking
+heavily again, and avoiding me. The lightning is becoming very
+vivid."
+
+"Yes, and I hear no thunder. There is another thing, Gavin. I am one
+of those that like to sit at home, but if you had a wife she would
+visit the congregation. A truly religious wife would be a great help
+to you."
+
+"Religious," Gavin repeated slowly. "Yes, but some people are
+religious without speaking of it. If a woman is good she is religious.
+A good woman who has been, let us say, foolishly brought up, only
+needs to be shown the right way to tread it. Mother, I question if any
+man, minister or layman, ever yet fell in love because the woman was
+thrifty, or clever, or went to church twice on Sabbath."
+
+"I believe that is true," Margaret said, "and I would not have it
+otherwise. But it is an awful thing, Gavin, as you said from the
+pulpit two weeks ago, to worship only at a beautiful face."
+
+"You think too much about what I say in the pulpit, mother," Gavin
+said, with a sigh, "though of course a man who fell in love merely
+with a face would be a contemptible creature. Yet I see that women do
+not understand how beauty affects a man."
+
+"Yes, yes, my boy--oh, indeed, they do," said Margaret, who on some
+matters knew far more than her son.
+
+Twelve o'clock struck, and she rose to go to bed, alarmed lest she
+should not waken early in the morning. "But I am afraid I shan't
+sleep," she said, "if that lightning continues."
+
+"It is harmless," Gavin answered, going to the window. He started back
+next moment, and crying, "Don't look out, mother," hastily pulled down
+the blind.
+
+"Why, Gavin," Margaret said in fear, "you look as if it had struck
+you."
+
+"Oh, no," Gavin answered, with a forced laugh, and he lit her lamp for
+her.
+
+But it had struck him, though it was not lightning. It was the
+flashing of a lantern against the window to attract his attention, and
+the holder of the lantern was Babbie.
+
+"Good-night, mother."
+
+"Good-night, Gavin. Don't sit up any later."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Two.
+
+LOVERS.
+
+
+Only something terrible, Gavin thought, could have brought Babbie to
+him at such an hour; yet when he left his mother's room it was to
+stand motionless on the stair, waiting for a silence in the manse that
+would not come. A house is never still in darkness to those who listen
+intently; there is a whispering in distant chambers, an unearthly hand
+presses the snib of the window, the latch rises. Ghosts were created
+when the first man woke in the night.
+
+Now Margaret slept. Two hours earlier, Jean, sitting on the
+salt-bucket, had read the chapter with which she always sent herself
+to bed. In honour of the little minister she had begun her Bible
+afresh when he came to Thrums, and was progressing through it, a
+chapter at night, sighing, perhaps, on washing days at a long chapter,
+such as Exodus twelfth, but never making two of it. The kitchen
+wag-at-the-wall clock was telling every room in the house that she had
+neglected to shut her door. As Gavin felt his way down the dark stair,
+awakening it into protest at every step, he had a glimpse of the
+pendulum's shadow running back and forward on the hearth; he started
+back from another shadow on the lobby wall, and then seeing it start
+too, knew it for his own. He opened the door and passed out
+unobserved; it was as if the sounds and shadows that filled the manse
+were too occupied with their game to mind an interloper.
+
+"Is that you?" he said to a bush, for the garden was in semi-darkness.
+Then the lantern's flash met him, and he saw the Egyptian in the
+summer-seat.
+
+"At last!" she said, reproachfully. "Evidently a lantern is a poor
+door-bell."
+
+"What is it?" Gavin asked, in suppressed excitement, for the least he
+expected to hear was that she was again being pursued for her share in
+the riot. The tremor in his voice surprised her into silence, and he
+thought she faltered because what she had to tell him was so woeful.
+So, in the darkness of the summer-seat, he kissed her, and she might
+have known that with that kiss the little minister was hers forever.
+
+Now Babbie had been kissed before, but never thus, and she turned from
+Gavin, and would have liked to be alone, for she had begun to know
+what love was, and the flash that revealed it to her laid bare her own
+shame, so that her impulse was to hide herself from her lover. But of
+all this Gavin was unconscious, and he repeated his question. The
+lantern was swaying in her hand, and when she turned fearfully to him
+its light fell on his face, and she saw how alarmed he was.
+
+"I am going away back to Nanny's," she said suddenly, and rose cowed,
+but he took her hand and held her.
+
+"Babbie," he said, huskily, "tell me what has happened to bring you
+here at this hour."
+
+She sought to pull her hand from him, but could not.
+
+"How you are trembling!" he whispered. "Babbie," he cried, "something
+terrible has happened to you, but do not fear. Tell me what it is, and
+then--then I will take you to my mother: yes, I will take you now."
+
+The Egyptian would have given all she had in the world to be able to
+fly from him then, that he might never know her as she was, but it
+could not be, and so she spoke out remorselessly. If her voice had
+become hard, it was a new-born scorn of herself that made it so.
+
+"You are needlessly alarmed," she said; "I am not at all the kind of
+person who deserves sympathy or expects it. There is nothing wrong. I
+am staying with Nanny over-night, and only came to Thrums to amuse
+myself. I chased your policeman down the Roods with my lantern, and
+then came here to amuse myself with you. That is all."
+
+"It was nothing but a love of mischief that brought you here?" Gavin
+asked, sternly, after an unpleasant pause.
+
+"Nothing," the Egyptian answered, recklessly.
+
+"I could not have believed this of you," the minister said; "I am
+ashamed of you."
+
+"I thought," Babbie retorted, trying to speak lightly until she could
+get away from him, "that you would be glad to see me. Your last words
+in Caddam seemed to justify that idea."
+
+"I am very sorry to see you," he answered, reproachfully.
+
+"Then I will go away at once," she said, stepping out of the
+summer-seat.
+
+"Yes," he replied, "you must go at once."
+
+"Then I won't," she said, turning back defiantly. "I know what you are
+to say: that the Thrums people would be shocked if they knew I was
+here; as if I cared what the Thrums people think of me."
+
+"I care what they think of you," Gavin said, as if that were decisive,
+"and I tell you I will not allow you to repeat this freak."
+
+"You 'will not allow me,'" echoed Babbie, almost enjoying herself,
+despite her sudden loss of self-respect.
+
+"I will not," Gavin said, resolutely. "Henceforth you must do as I
+think fit."
+
+"Since when have you taken command of me?" demanded Babbie.
+
+"Since a minute ago," Gavin replied, "when you let me kiss you."
+
+"Let you!" exclaimed Babbie, now justly incensed. "You did it
+yourself. I was very angry."
+
+"No, you were not."
+
+"I am not allowed to say that even?" asked the Egyptian. "Tell me
+something I may say, then, and I will repeat it after you."
+
+"I have something to say to you," Gavin told her, after a moment's
+reflection; "yes, and there is something I should like to hear you
+repeat after me, but not to-night."
+
+"I don't want to hear what it is," Babbie said, quickly, but she knew
+what it was, and even then, despite the new pain at her heart, her
+bosom swelled with pride because this man still loved her. Now she
+wanted to run away with his love for her before he could take it from
+her, and then realising that this parting must be forever, a great
+desire filled her to hear him put that kiss into words, and she said,
+faltering:
+
+"You can tell me what it is if you like."
+
+"Not to-night," said Gavin.
+
+"To-night, if at all," the gypsy almost entreated.
+
+"To-morrow, at Nanny's," answered Gavin, decisively: and this time he
+remembered without dismay that the morrow was the Sabbath.
+
+In the fairy tale the beast suddenly drops his skin and is a prince,
+and I believed it seemed to Babbie that some such change had come over
+this man, her plaything.
+
+"Your lantern is shining on my mother's window," were the words that
+woke her from this discovery, and then she found herself yielding the
+lantern to him. She became conscious vaguely that a corresponding
+change was taking place in herself.
+
+"You spoke of taking me to your mother," she said, bitterly.
+
+"Yes," he answered at once, "to-morrow"; but she shook her head,
+knowing that to-morrow he would be wiser.
+
+"Give me the lantern," she said, in a low voice, "I am going back to
+Nanny's now."
+
+"Yes," he said, "we must set out now, but I can carry the lantern."
+
+"You are not coming with me!" she exclaimed, shaking herself free of
+his hand.
+
+"I am coming," he replied, calmly, though he was not calm. "Take my
+arm, Babbie."
+
+She made a last effort to free herself from bondage, crying
+passionately, "I will not let you come."
+
+"When I say I am coming," Gavin answered between his teeth, "I mean
+that I am coming, and so let that be an end of this folly. Take my
+arm."
+
+"I think I hate you," she said, retreating from him.
+
+"Take my arm," he repeated, and, though her breast was rising
+rebelliously, she did as he ordered, and so he escorted her from the
+garden. At the foot of the field she stopped, and thought to frighten
+him by saying, "What would the people say if they saw you with me
+now?"
+
+"It does not much matter what they would say," he answered, still
+keeping his teeth together as if doubtful of their courage. "As for
+what they would do, that is certain; they would put me out of my
+church."
+
+"And it is dear to you?"
+
+"Dearer than life."
+
+"You told me long ago that your mother's heart would break if----"
+
+"Yes, I am sure it would."
+
+They had begun to climb the fields, but she stopped him with a jerk.
+
+"Go back, Mr. Dishart," she implored, clutching his arm with both
+hands. "You make me very unhappy for no purpose. Oh, why should you
+risk so much for me?"
+
+"I cannot have you wandering here alone at midnight," Gavin answered,
+gently.
+
+"That is nothing to me," she said, eagerly, but no longer resenting
+his air of proprietorship.
+
+"You will never do it again if I can prevent it."
+
+"But you cannot," she said, sadly. "Oh, yes, you can, Mr. Dishart. If
+you will turn back now I shall promise never to do anything again
+without first asking myself whether it would seem right to you. I know
+I acted very wrongly to-night."
+
+"Only thoughtlessly," he said.
+
+"Then have pity on me," she besought him, "and go back. If I have only
+been thoughtless, how can you punish me thus? Mr. Dishart," she
+entreated, her voice breaking, "if you were to suffer for this folly
+of mine, do you think I could live?"
+
+"We are in God's hands, dear," he answered, firmly, and he again drew
+her arm to him. So they climbed the first field, and were almost at
+the hill before either spoke again.
+
+"Stop," Babbie whispered, crouching as she spoke; "I see some one
+crossing the hill."
+
+"I have seen him for some time," Gavin answered, quietly; "but I am
+doing no wrong, and I will not hide."
+
+The Egyptian had to walk on with him, and I suppose she did not think
+the less of him for that. Yet she said, warningly--
+
+"If he sees you, all Thrums will be in an uproar before morning."
+
+"I cannot help that," Gavin replied. "It is the will of God."
+
+"To ruin you for my sins?"
+
+"If He thinks fit."
+
+The figure drew nearer, and with every step Babbie's distress
+doubled.
+
+"We are walking straight to him," she whispered. "I implore you to
+wait here until he passes, if not for your own sake, for your
+mother's."
+
+At that he wavered, and she heard his teeth sliding against each
+other, as if he could no longer clench them.
+
+"But, no," he said moving on again, "I will not be a skulker from any
+man. If it be God's wish that I should suffer for this, I must
+suffer."
+
+"Oh, why," cried Babbie, beating her hands together in grief, "should
+you suffer for me?"
+
+"You are mine," Gavin answered. Babbie gasped. "And if you act
+foolishly," he continued, "it is right that I should bear the brunt of
+it. No, I will not let you go on alone; you are not fit to be alone.
+You need some one to watch over you and care for you and love you,
+and, if need be, to suffer with you."
+
+"Turn back, dear, before he sees us."
+
+"He has seen us."
+
+Yes, I had seen them, for the figure on the hill was no other than the
+dominie of Glen Quharity. The park gate clicked as it swung to, and I
+looked up and saw Gavin and the Egyptian. My eyes should have found
+them sooner, but it was to gaze upon Margaret's home, while no one saw
+me, that I had trudged into Thrums so late, and by that time, I
+suppose, my eyes were of little service for seeing through. Yet, when
+I knew that of these two people suddenly beside me on the hill one was
+the little minister and the other a strange woman, I fell back from
+their side with dread before I could step forward and cry "Gavin!"
+
+"I am Mr. Dishart," he answered, with a composure that would not have
+served him for another sentence. He was more excited than I, for the
+"Gavin" fell harmlessly on him, while I had no sooner uttered it than
+there rushed through me the shame of being false to Margaret. It was
+the only time in my life that I forgot her in him, though he has ever
+stood next to her in my regard.
+
+I looked from Gavin to the gypsy woman, and again from her to him, and
+she began to tell a lie in his interest. But she got no farther than
+"I met Mr. Dishart accid----" when she stopped, ashamed. It was
+reverence for Gavin that checked the lie. Not every man has had such a
+compliment paid him.
+
+"It is natural," Gavin said, slowly, "that you, sir, should wonder why
+I am here with this woman at such an hour, and you may know me so
+little as to think ill of me for it."
+
+I did not answer, and he misunderstood my silence.
+
+"No," he continued, in a harder voice, as if I had asked him a
+question, "I will explain nothing to you. You are not my judge. If you
+would do me harm, sir, you have it in your power."
+
+It was with these cruel words that Gavin addressed me. He did not know
+how cruel they were. The Egyptian, I think, must have seen that his
+suspicions hurt me, for she said, softly, with a look of appeal in her
+eyes--
+
+"You are the schoolmaster in Glen Quharity? Then you will perhaps save
+Mr. Dishart the trouble of coming farther by showing me the way to old
+Nanny Webster's house at Windyghoul?"
+
+"I have to pass the house at any rate," I answered eagerly, and she
+came quickly to my side.
+
+I knew, though in the darkness I could see but vaguely, that Gavin was
+holding his head high and waiting for me to say my worst. I had not
+told him that I dared think no evil of him, and he still suspected me.
+Now I would not trust myself to speak lest I should betray Margaret,
+and yet I wanted him to know that base doubts about him could never
+find a shelter in me. I am a timid man who long ago lost the glory of
+my life by it, and I was again timid when I sought to let Gavin see
+that my faith in him was unshaken. I lifted my bonnet to the gypsy,
+and asked her to take my arm. It was done clumsily, I cannot doubt,
+but he read my meaning and held out his hand to me. I had not touched
+it since he was three years old, and I trembled too much to give it
+the grasp I owed it. He and I parted without a word, but to the
+Egyptian he said, "To-morrow, dear, I will see you at Nanny's," and he
+was to kiss her, but I pulled her a step farther from him, and she put
+her hands over her face, crying, "No, no!"
+
+If I asked her some questions between the hill and Windyghoul you must
+not blame me, for this was my affair as well as theirs. She did not
+answer me; I know now that she did not hear me. But at the mud house
+she looked abruptly into my face, and said--
+
+"You love him, too!"
+
+I trudged to the school house with these words for company, and it was
+less her discovery than her confession that tortured me. How much I
+slept that night you may guess.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Three.
+
+CONTAINS A BIRTH, WHICH IS SUFFICIENT FOR ONE CHAPTER.
+
+
+"The kirk bell will soon be ringing," Nanny said on the following
+morning, as she placed herself carefully on a stool, one hand holding
+her Bible and the other wandering complacently over her aged merino
+gown. "Ay, lassie, though you're only an Egyptian I would hae ta'en
+you wi' me to hear Mr. Duthie, but it's speiring ower muckle o' a
+woman to expect her to gang to the kirk in her ilka day claethes."
+
+The Babbie of yesterday would have laughed at this, but the new Babbie
+sighed.
+
+"I wonder you don't go to Mr. Dishart's church now, Nanny," she said,
+gently. "I am sure you prefer him."
+
+"Babbie, Babbie," exclaimed Nanny, with spirit, "may I never be so far
+left to mysel' as to change my kirk just because I like another
+minister better! It's easy seen, lassie, that you ken little o'
+religious questions."
+
+"Very little," Babbie admitted, sadly.
+
+"But dinna be so waeful about it," the old woman continued, kindly,
+"for that's no nane like you. Ay, and if you see muckle mair o' Mr.
+Dishart he'll soon cure your ignorance."
+
+"I shall not see much more of him," Babbie answered, with averted
+head.
+
+"The like o' you couldna expect it," Nanny said, simply, whereupon
+Babbie went to the window. "I had better be stepping," Nanny said,
+rising, "for I am aye late unless I'm on the hill by the time the
+bell begins. Ay, Babbie, I'm doubting my merino's no sair in the
+fashion?"
+
+She looked down at her dress half despondently, and yet with some
+pride.
+
+"It was fowerpence the yard, and no less," she went on, fondling the
+worn merino, "when we bocht it at Sam'l Curr's. Ay, but it has been
+turned sax times since syne."
+
+She sighed, and Babbie came to her and put her arms round her, saying,
+"Nanny, you are a dear."
+
+"I'm a gey auld-farrant-looking dear, I doubt," said Nanny, ruefully.
+
+"Now, Nanny," rejoined Babbie, "you are just wanting me to flatter
+you. You know the merino looks very nice."
+
+"It's a guid merino yet," admitted the old woman, "but, oh, Babbie,
+what does the material matter if the cut isna fashionable? It's fine,
+isn't it, to be in the fashion?"
+
+She spoke so wistfully that, instead of smiling, Babbie kissed her.
+
+"I am afraid to lay hand on the merino, Nanny, but give me off your
+bonnet and I'll make it ten years younger in as many minutes."
+
+"Could you?" asked Nanny, eagerly, unloosening her bonnet-strings.
+"Mercy on me!" she had to add; "to think about altering bonnets on the
+Sabbath-day! Lassie, how could you propose sic a thing?"
+
+"Forgive me, Nanny," Babbie replied, so meekly that the old woman
+looked at her curiously.
+
+[Illustration: "IT'S A GUID MERINO YET."]
+
+"I dinna understand what has come ower you," she said. "There's an
+unca difference in you since last nicht. I used to think you were mair
+like a bird than a lassie, but you've lost a' your daft capers o'
+singing and lauching, and I take ill wi't. Twa or three times I've
+catched you greeting. Babbie, what has come ower you?"
+
+"Nothing, Nanny. I think I hear the bell."
+
+Down in Thrums two kirk-officers had let their bells loose, waking
+echoes in Windyghoul as one dog in country parts sets all the others
+barking, but Nanny did not hurry off to church. Such a surprising
+notion had filled her head suddenly that she even forgot to hold her
+dress off the floor.
+
+"Babbie," she cried, in consternation, "dinna tell me you've gotten
+ower fond o' Mr. Dishart."
+
+"The like of me, Nanny!" the gypsy answered, with affected raillery,
+but there was a tear in her eye.
+
+"It would be a wild, presumptious thing," Nanny said, "and him a grand
+minister, but----"
+
+Babbie tried to look her in the face, but failed, and then all at once
+there came back to Nanny the days when she and her lover wandered the
+hill together.
+
+"Ah, my dawtie," she cried, so tenderly, "what does it matter wha he
+is when you canna help it!"
+
+Two frail arms went round the Egyptian, and Babbie rested her head on
+the old woman's breast. But do you think it could have happened had
+not Nanny loved a weaver two-score years before?
+
+And now Nanny has set off for church and Babbie is alone in the mud
+house. Some will pity her not at all, this girl who was a dozen women
+in the hour, and all made of impulses that would scarce stand still to
+be photographed. To attempt to picture her at any time until now would
+have been like chasing a spirit that changes to something else as your
+arms clasp it; yet she has always seemed a pathetic little figure to
+me. If I understand Babbie at all, it is, I think, because I loved
+Margaret, the only woman I have ever known well, and one whose nature
+was not, like the Egyptian's, complex, but most simple, as if God had
+told her only to be good. Throughout my life since she came into it
+she has been to me a glass in which many things are revealed that I
+could not have learned save through her, and something of all
+womankind, even of bewildering Babbie, I seem to know because I knew
+Margaret.
+
+No woman is so bad but we may rejoice when her heart thrills to
+love, for then God has her by the hand. There is no love but this.
+She may dream of what love is, but it is only of a sudden that she
+knows. Babbie, who was without a guide from her baby days, had
+dreamed but little of it, hearing its name given to another thing.
+She had been born wild and known no home; no one had touched her
+heart except to strike it, she had been educated, but never tamed;
+her life had been thrown strangely among those who were great in the
+world's possessions, but she was not of them. Her soul was in such
+darkness that she had never seen it; she would have danced away
+cynically from the belief that there is such a thing, and now all at
+once she had passed from disbelief to knowledge. Is not love God's
+doing? To Gavin He had given something of Himself, and the moment she
+saw it the flash lit her own soul.
+
+It was but little of his Master that was in Gavin, but far smaller
+things have changed the current of human lives; the spider's thread
+that strikes our brow on a country road may do that. Yet this I will
+say, though I have no wish to cast the little minister on my pages
+larger than he was, that he had some heroic hours in Thrums, of which
+one was when Babbie learned to love him. Until the moment when he
+kissed her she had only conceived him a quaint fellow whose life was a
+string of Sundays, but behold what she saw in him now. Evidently to
+his noble mind her mystery was only some misfortune, not of her
+making, and his was to be the part of leading her away from it into
+the happiness of the open life. He did not doubt her, for he loved,
+and to doubt is to dip love in the mire. She had been given to him by
+God, and he was so rich in her possession that the responsibility
+attached to the gift was not grievous. She was his, and no mortal man
+could part them. Those who looked askance at her were looking askance
+at him; in so far as she was wayward and wild, he was those things; so
+long as she remained strange to religion, the blame lay on him.
+
+All this Babbie read in the Gavin of the past night, and to her it was
+the book of love. What things she had known, said and done in that
+holy name! How shamefully have we all besmirched it! She had only
+known it as the most selfish of the passions, a brittle image that men
+consulted because it could only answer in the words they gave it to
+say. But here was a man to whom love was something better than his own
+desires leering on a pedestal. Such love as Babbie had seen hitherto
+made strong men weak, but this was a love that made a weak man strong.
+All her life, strength had been her idol, and the weakness that bent
+to her cajolery her scorn. But only now was it revealed to her that
+strength, instead of being the lusty child of passions, grows by
+grappling with and throwing them.
+
+So Babbie loved the little minister for the best that she had ever
+seen in man. I shall be told that she thought far more of him than he
+deserved, forgetting the mean in the worthy: but who that has had a
+glimpse of heaven will care to let his mind dwell henceforth on earth?
+Love, it is said, is blind, but love is not blind. It is an extra eye,
+which shows us what is most worthy of regard. To see the best is to
+see most clearly, and it is the lover's privilege.
+
+Down in the Auld Licht kirk that forenoon Gavin preached a sermon in
+praise of Woman, and up in the mudhouse in Windyghoul Babbie sat
+alone. But it was the Sabbath day to her: the first Sabbath in her
+life. Her discovery had frozen her mind for a time, so that she could
+only stare at it with eyes that would not shut; but that had been in
+the night. Already her love seemed a thing of years, for it was as old
+as herself, as old as the new Babbie. It was such a dear delight that
+she clasped it to her, and exulted over it because it was hers, and
+then she cried over it because she must give it up.
+
+For Babbie must only look at this love and then turn from it. My heart
+aches for the little Egyptian, but the Promised Land would have
+remained invisible to her had she not realized that it was only for
+others. That was the condition of her seeing.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Four.
+
+THE NEW WORLD, AND THE WOMAN WHO MAY NOT DWELL THEREIN.
+
+
+Up here in the glen school-house after my pupils have straggled home,
+there comes to me at times, and so sudden that it may be while I am
+infusing my tea, a hot desire to write great books. Perhaps an hour
+afterwards I rise, beaten, from my desk, flinging all I have written
+into the fire (yet rescuing some of it on second thought), and curse
+myself as an ingle-nook man, for I see that one can only paint what he
+himself has felt, and in my passion I wish to have all the vices, even
+to being an impious man, that I may describe them better. For this may
+I be pardoned. It comes to nothing in the end, save that my tea is
+brackish.
+
+Yet though my solitary life in the glen is cheating me of many
+experiences, more helpful to a writer than to a Christian, it has not
+been so tame but that I can understand why Babbie cried when she went
+into Nanny's garden and saw the new world. Let no one who loves be
+called altogether unhappy. Even love unreturned has its rainbow, and
+Babbie knew that Gavin loved her. Yet she stood in woe among the stiff
+berry bushes, as one who stretches forth her hands to Love and sees
+him looking for her, and knows she must shrink from the arms she would
+lie in, and only call to him in a voice he cannot hear. This is not a
+love that is always bitter. It grows sweet with age. But could that
+dry the tears of the little Egyptian, who had only been a woman for a
+day?
+
+Much was still dark to her. Of one obstacle that must keep her and
+Gavin ever apart she knew, and he did not; but had it been removed she
+would have given herself to him humbly, not in her own longing, but
+because he wanted her. "Behold what I am," she could have said to him
+then, and left the rest to him, believing that her unworthiness would
+not drag him down, it would lose itself so readily in his strength.
+That Thrums could rise against such a man if he defied it, she did not
+believe; but she was to learn the truth presently from a child.
+
+To most of us, I suppose, has come some shock that was to make us
+different men from that hour, and yet, how many days elapsed before
+something of the man we had been leapt up in us? Babbie thought she
+had buried her old impulsiveness, and then remembering that from the
+top of the field she might see Gavin returning from church, she
+hastened to the hill to look upon him from a distance. Before she
+reached the gate where I had met her and him, however, she stopped,
+distressed at her selfishness, and asked bitterly, "Why am I so
+different from other women; why should what is so easy to them be so
+hard to me?"
+
+"Gavin, my beloved!" the Egyptian cried in her agony, and the wind
+caught her words and flung them in the air, making sport of her.
+
+She wandered westward over the bleak hill, and by-and-by came to a
+great slab called the Standing Stone, on which children often sit and
+muse until they see gay ladies riding by on palfreys--a kind of
+horse--and knights in glittering armour, and goblins, and fiery
+dragons, and other wonders now extinct, of which bare-legged laddies
+dream, as well as boys in socks. The Standing Stone is in the dyke
+that separates the hill from a fir wood, and it is the fairy-book of
+Thrums. If you would be a knight yourself, you must sit on it and
+whisper to it your desire.
+
+Babbie came to the Standing Stone, and there was a little boy astride
+it. His hair stood up through holes in his bonnet, and he was very
+ragged and miserable.
+
+"Why are you crying, little boy?" Babbie asked him, gently; but he did
+not look up, and the tongue was strange to him.
+
+"How are you greeting so sair?" she asked.
+
+"I'm no greeting very sair," he answered, turning his head from her
+that a woman might not see his tears. "I'm no greeting so sair but
+what I grat sairer when my mither died."
+
+"When did she die?" Babbie inquired.
+
+"Lang syne," he answered, still with averted face.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Micah is my name. Rob Dow's my father."
+
+"And have you no brothers nor sisters?" asked Babbie, with a
+fellow-feeling for him.
+
+"No, juist my father," he said.
+
+"You should be the better laddie to him then. Did your mither no tell
+you to be that afore she died?"
+
+"Ay," he answered, "she telled me ay to hide the bottle frae him when
+I could get haed o't. She took me into the bed to make me promise
+that, and syne she died."
+
+"Does your father drina?"
+
+"He hauds mair than ony other man in Thrums," Micah replied, almost
+proudly.
+
+"And he strikes you?" Babbie asked, compassionately.
+
+"That's a lie," retorted the boy, fiercely. "Leastwise, he doesna
+strike me except when he's mortal, and syne I can jouk him."
+
+"What are you doing there?"
+
+"I'm wishing. It's a wishing stane."
+
+"You are wishing your father wouldna drink."
+
+"No, I'm no," answered Micah. "There was a lang time he didna drink,
+but the woman has sent him to it again. It's about her I'm wishing.
+I'm wishing she was in hell."
+
+"What woman is it?" asked Babbie, shuddering.
+
+"I dinna ken," Micah said, "but she's an ill ane."
+
+"Did you never see her at your father's house?"
+
+"Na; if he could get grip o' her he would break her ower his knee. I
+hearken to him saying that, when he's wild. He says she should be
+burned for a witch."
+
+"But if he hates her," asked Babbie, "how can she have sic power ower
+him?"
+
+"It's no him that she has haud o'," replied Micah, still looking away
+from her.
+
+"Wha is it then?"
+
+"It's Mr. Dishart."
+
+Babbie was struck as if by an arrow from the wood. It was so
+unexpected that she gave a cry, and then for the first time Micah
+looked at her.
+
+"How should that send your father to the drink?" she asked, with an
+effort.
+
+"Because my father's michty fond o' him," answered Micah, staring
+strangely at her; "and when the folk ken about the woman, they'll
+stane the minister out o' Thrums."
+
+The wood faded for a moment from the Egyptian's sight. When it came
+back, the boy had slid off the Standing Stone and was stealing away.
+
+"Why do you run frae me?" Babbie asked, pathetically.
+
+"I'm fleid at you," he gasped, coming to a standstill at a safe
+distance: "you're the woman!"
+
+Babbie cowered before her little judge, and he drew nearer her
+slowly.
+
+"What makes you think that?" she said.
+
+It was a curious time for Babbie's beauty to be paid its most princely
+compliment.
+
+[Illustration: "I'M WISHING SHE WAS IN HELL."]
+
+"Because you're so bonny," Micah whispered across the dyke. Her tears
+gave him courage. "You micht gang awa," he entreated. "If you kent
+what a differ Mr. Dishart made in my father till you came, you
+would maybe gang awa. When he's roaring fou I have to sleep in the
+wood, and it's awfu' cauld. I'm doubting he'll kill me, woman, if you
+dinna gang awa."
+
+Poor Babbie put her hand to her heart, but the innocent lad continued
+mercilessly--
+
+"If ony shame comes to the minister, his auld mither'll die. How have
+you sic an ill will at the minister?"
+
+Babbie held up her hands like a supplicant.
+
+"I'll gie you my rabbit," Micah said, "if you'll gang awa. I've juist
+the ane." She shook her head, and, misunderstanding her, he cried,
+with his knuckles in his eye, "I'll gie you them baith, though I'm
+michty sweer to part wi' Spotty."
+
+Then at last Babbie found her voice.
+
+"Keep your rabbits, laddie," she said, "and greet no more. I'm gaen
+awa."
+
+"And you'll never come back no more a' your life?" pleaded Micah.
+
+"Never no more a' my life," repeated Babbie.
+
+"And ye'll leave the minister alane for ever and ever?"
+
+"For ever and ever."
+
+Micah rubbed his face dry, and said, "Will you let me stand on the
+Standing Stane and watch you gaen awa for ever and ever?"
+
+At that a sob broke from Babbie's heart, and looking at her doubtfully
+Micah said--
+
+"Maybe you're gey ill for what you've done?"
+
+"Ay," Babbie answered, "I'm gey ill for what I've done."
+
+A minute passed, and in her anguish she did not know that still she
+was standing at the dyke. Micah's voice roused her:
+
+"You said you would gang awa, and you're no gaen."
+
+Then Babbie went away. The boy watched her across the hill. He climbed
+the Standing Stone and gazed after her until she was but a coloured
+ribbon among the broom. When she disappeared into Windyghoul he ran
+home joyfully, and told his father what a good day's work he had done.
+Rob struck him for a fool for taking a gypsy's word, and warned him
+against speaking of the woman in Thrums.
+
+[Illustration: "ROB STRUCK HIM FOR A FOOL FOR TAKING A GYPSY'S WORD."]
+
+But though Dow believed that Gavin continued to meet the Egyptian
+secretly, he was wrong. A sum of money for Nanny was sent to the
+minister, but he could guess only from whom it came. In vain did he
+search for Babbie. Some months passed and he gave up the search,
+persuaded that he should see her no more. He went about his duties
+with a drawn face that made many folk uneasy when it was stern, and
+pained them when it tried to smile. But to Margaret, though the effort
+was terrible, he was as he had ever been, and so no thought of a woman
+crossed her loving breast.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Five.
+
+BEGINNING OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+I can tell still how the whole of the glen was engaged about the hour
+of noon on the fourth of August month; a day to be among the last
+forgotten by any of us, though it began as quietly as a roaring March.
+At the Spittal, between which and Thrums this is a halfway house, were
+gathered two hundred men in kilts, and many gentry from the
+neighboring glens, to celebrate the earl's marriage, which was to take
+place on the morrow, and thither, too, had gone many of my pupils to
+gather gossip, at which girls of six are trustier hands than boys of
+twelve. Those of us, however, who were neither children nor of gentle
+blood, remained at home, the farmers more taken up with the want of
+rain, now become a calamity, than with an old man's wedding, and their
+womenfolk wringing their hands for rain also, yet finding time to
+marvel at the marriage's taking place at the Spittal instead of in
+England, of which the ignorant spoke vaguely as an estate of the
+bride's.
+
+For my own part I could talk of the disastrous drought with Waster
+Lunny as I walked over his parched fields, but I had not such cause as
+he to brood upon it by day and night; and the ins and outs of the
+earl's marriage were for discussing at a tea-table, where there were
+women to help one to conclusions, rather than for the reflections of a
+solitary dominie, who had seen neither bride nor bridegroom. So it
+must be confessed that when I might have been regarding the sky
+moodily, or at the Spittal, where a free table that day invited all,
+I was sitting in the school-house, heeling my left boot, on which I
+have always been a little hard.
+
+I made small speed, not through lack of craft, but because one can no
+more drive in tackets properly than take cities unless he gives his
+whole mind to it; and half of mine was at the Auld Licht manse. Since
+our meeting six months earlier on the hill I had not seen Gavin, but I
+had heard much of him, and of a kind to trouble me.
+
+"I saw nothing queer about Mr. Dishart," was Waster Lunny's frequent
+story, "till I hearkened to Elspeth speaking about it to the lasses
+(for I'm the last Elspeth would tell onything to, though I'm her man),
+and syne I minded I had been noticing it for months. Elspeth says," he
+would go on, for he could no more forbear quoting his wife than
+complaining of her, "that the minister'll listen to you nowadays wi'
+his een glaring at you as if he had a perfectly passionate interest in
+what you were telling him (though it may be only about a hen wi' the
+croup), and then, after all, he hasna heard a sylib. Ay, I listened to
+Elspeth saying that, when she thocht I was at the byre, and yet, would
+you believe it, when I says to her after lousing time, 'I've been
+noticing of late that the minister loses what a body tells him,' all
+she answers is 'Havers.' Tod, but women's provoking."
+
+"I allow," Birse said, "that on the first Sabbath o' June month, and
+again on the third Sabbath, he poured out the Word grandly, but I've
+ta'en note this curran Sabbaths that if he's no michty magnificent
+he's michty poor. There's something damming up his mind, and when he
+gets by it he's a roaring water, but when he doesna he's a despizable
+trickle. The folk thinks it's a woman that's getting in his way, but
+dinna tell me that about sic a scholar; I tell you he would gang ower
+a toon o' women like a loaded cart ower new-laid stanes."
+
+Wearyworld hobbled after me up the Roods one day, pelting me with
+remarks, though I was doing my best to get away from him. "Even Rob
+Dow sees there's something come ower the minister," he bawled, "for
+Rob's fou ilka Sabbath now. Ay, but this I will say for Mr. Dishart,
+that he aye gies me a civil word," I thought I had left the policeman
+behind with this, but next minute he roared, "And whatever is the
+matter wi' him it has made him kindlier to me than ever." He must have
+taken the short cut through Lunan's close, for at the top of the Roods
+his voice again made up on me. "Dagone you, for a cruel pack to put
+your fingers to your lugs ilka time I open my mouth."
+
+As for Waster Lunny's daughter Easie, who got her schooling free for
+redding up the school-house and breaking my furniture, she would never
+have been off the gossip about the minister, for she was her mother in
+miniature, with a tongue that ran like a pump after the pans are full,
+not for use but for the mere pleasure of spilling.
+
+On that awful fourth of August I not only had all this confused talk
+in my head but reason for jumping my mind between it and the Egyptian
+(as if to catch them together unawares), and I was like one who, with
+the mechanism of a watch jumbled in his hand, could set it going if he
+had the art.
+
+Of the gypsy I knew nothing save what I had seen that night, yet
+what more was there to learn? I was aware that she loved Gavin and
+that he loved her. A moment had shown it to me. Now with the Auld
+Lichts, I have the smith's acquaintance with his irons, and so I
+could not believe that they would suffer their minister to marry a
+vagrant. Had it not been for this knowledge, which made me fearful
+for Margaret, I would have done nothing to keep these two young people
+apart. Some to whom I have said this maintain that the Egyptian
+turned my head at our first meeting. Such an argument is not perhaps
+worth controverting. I admit that even now I straighten under the
+fire of a bright eye, as a pensioner may salute when he sees a
+young officer. In the shooting season, should I chance to be leaning
+over my dyke while English sportsmen pass (as is usually the case
+if I have seen them approaching), I remember nought of them save that
+they call me "she," and end their greetings with "whatever" (which
+Waster Lunny takes to be a southron mode of speech), but their
+ladies dwell pleasantly in my memory, from their engaging faces to
+the pretty crumpled thing dangling on their arms, that is a hat or a
+basket, I am seldom sure which. The Egyptian's beauty, therefore,
+was a gladsome sight to me, and none the less so that I had come
+upon it as unexpectedly as some men step into a bog. Had she been
+alone when I met her I cannot deny that I would have been content to
+look on her face, without caring what was inside it; but she was
+with her lover, and that lover was Gavin, and so her face was to me
+as little for admiring as this glen in a thunderstorm, when I know
+that some fellow-creature is lost on the hills.
+
+If, however, it was no quick liking for the gypsy that almost tempted
+me to leave these two lovers to each other, what was it? It was the
+warning of my own life. Adam Dishart had torn my arm from Margaret's,
+and I had not recovered the wrench in eighteen years. Rather than act
+his part between these two I felt tempted to tell them, "Deplorable as
+the result may be, if you who are a minister marry this vagabond, it
+will be still more deplorable if you do not."
+
+But there was Margaret to consider, and at thought of her I cursed the
+Egyptian aloud. What could I do to keep Gavin and the woman apart? I
+could tell him the secret of his mother's life. Would that be
+sufficient? It would if he loved Margaret, as I did not doubt. Pity
+for her would make him undergo any torture rather than she should
+suffer again. But to divulge our old connection would entail her
+discovery of me, and I questioned if even the saving of Gavin could
+destroy the bitterness of that.
+
+I might appeal to the Egyptian. I might tell her even what I shuddered
+to tell him. She cared for him, I was sure, well enough to have the
+courage to give him up. But where was I to find her?
+
+Were she and Gavin meeting still? Perhaps the change which had come
+over the little minister meant that they had parted. Yet what I had
+heard him say to her on the hill warned me not to trust in any such
+solution of the trouble.
+
+Boys play at casting a humming-top into the midst of others on the
+ground, and if well aimed it scatters them prettily. I seemed to be
+playing such a game with my thoughts, for each new one sent the others
+here and there, and so what could I do in the end but fling my tops
+aside, and return to the heeling of my boot?
+
+I was thus engaged when the sudden waking of the glen into life took
+me to my window. There is seldom silence up here, for if the wind be
+not sweeping the heather, the Quharity, that I may not have heard for
+days, seems to have crept nearer to the school-house in the night, and
+if both wind and water be out of earshot, there is the crack of a gun,
+or Waster Lunny's shepherd is on a stone near at hand whistling, or a
+lamb is scrambling through a fence, and kicking foolishly with its
+hind legs. These sounds I am unaware of until they stop, when I look
+up. Such a stillness was broken now by music.
+
+From my window I saw a string of people walking rapidly down the glen,
+and Waster Lunny crossing his potato-field to meet them. Remembering
+that, though I was in my stocking soles, the ground was dry, I
+hastened to join the farmer, for I like to miss nothing. I saw a
+curious sight. In front of the little procession coming down the glen
+road, and so much more impressive than his satellites that they may be
+put of mind as merely ploughman and the like following a show, was a
+Highlander that I knew to be Lauchlan Campbell, one of the pipers
+engaged to lend music to the earl's marriage. He had the name of a
+thrawn man when sober, but pretty at the pipes at both times, and he
+came marching down the glen blowing gloriously, as if he had the clan
+of Campbell at his heels. I know no man who is so capable on occasion
+of looking like twenty as a Highland piper, and never have I seen a
+face in such a blaze of passion as was Lauchlan Campbell's that day.
+His following were keeping out of his reach, jumping back every time
+he turned round to shake his fist in the direction of the Spittal.
+While this magnificent man was yet some yards from us, I saw Waster
+Lunny, who had been in the middle of the road to ask questions, fall
+back in fear, and not being a fighting man myself, I jumped the dyke.
+Lauchlan gave me a look that sent me farther into the field, and
+strutted past, shrieking defiance through his pipes, until I lost him
+and his followers in a bend of the road.
+
+"That's a terrifying spectacle," I heard Waster Lunny say when the
+music had become but a distant squeal. "You're bonny at louping dykes,
+dominie, when there is a wild bull in front o' you. Na, I canna tell
+what has happened, but at the least Lauchlan maun hae dirked the earl.
+Thae loons cried out to me as they gaed by that he has been blawing
+awa' at that tune till he canna halt. What a wind's in the crittur!
+I'm thinking there's a hell in ilka Highlandman."
+
+"Take care then, Waster Lunny, that you dinna licht it," said an angry
+voice that made us jump, though it was only Duncan, the farmer's
+shepherd, who spoke.
+
+"I had forgotten you was a Highlandman yoursel', Duncan," Waster Lunny
+said nervously; but Elspeth, who had come to us unnoticed, ordered
+the shepherd to return to the hillside, which he did haughtily.
+
+"How did you no lay haud on that blast o' wind, Lauchlan Campbell,"
+asked Elspeth of her husband, "and speir at him what had happened at
+the Spittal? A quarrel afore a marriage brings ill luck."
+
+"I'm thinking," said the farmer, "that Rintoul's making his ain ill
+luck by marrying on a young leddy."
+
+"A man's never ower auld to marry," said Elspeth.
+
+"No, nor a woman," rejoined Waster Lunny, "when she gets the chance.
+But, Elspeth, I believe I can guess what has fired that fearsome
+piper. Depend upon it, somebody has been speaking disrespectful about
+the crittur's ancestors."
+
+"His ancestors!" exclaimed Elspeth, scornfully. "I'm thinking mine
+could hae bocht them at a crown the dozen."
+
+"Hoots," said the farmer, "you're o' a weaving stock, and dinna
+understand about ancestors. Take a stick to a Highland laddie, and
+it's no him you hurt, but his ancestors. Likewise it's his ancestors
+that stanes you for it. When Duncan stalked awa the now, what think
+you he saw? He saw a farmer's wife dauring to order about his
+ancestors; and if that's the way wi' a shepherd, what will it be wi' a
+piper that has the kilts on him a' day to mind him o' his ancestors
+ilka time he looks down?"
+
+Elspeth retired to discuss the probable disturbance at the Spittal
+with her family, giving Waster Lunny the opportunity of saying to me
+impressively--
+
+"Man, man, has it never crossed you that it's a queer thing the like
+o' you and me having no ancestors? Ay, we had them in a manner o'
+speaking, no doubt, but they're as completely lost sicht o' as a
+flagon lid that's fallen ahint the dresser. Hech, sirs, but they would
+need a gey rubbing to get the rust off them now. I've been thinking
+that if I was to get my laddies to say their grandfather's name a
+curran times ilka day, like the Catechism, and they were to do the
+same wi' their bairns, and it was continued in future generations, we
+micht raise a fell field o' ancestors in time. Ay, but Elspeth wouldna
+hear o't. Nothing angers her mair than to hear me speak o' planting
+trees for the benefit o' them that's to be farmers here after me; and
+as for ancestors, she would howk them up as quick as I could plant
+them. Losh, dominie, is that a boot in your hand?"
+
+To my mortification I saw that I had run out of the school-house
+with the boot on my hand as if it were a glove, and back I went
+straightway, blaming myself for a man wanting in dignity. It was
+but a minor trouble this, however, even at the time; and to recall
+it later in the day was to look back on happiness, for though I did
+not know it yet, Lauchlan's playing raised the curtain on the great
+act of Gavin's life, and the twenty-four hours had begun, to which
+all I have told as yet is no more than the prologue.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Six.
+
+SCENE AT THE SPITTAL.
+
+
+Within an hour after I had left him, Waster Lunny walked into the
+school-house and handed me his snuff-mull, which I declined politely.
+It was with this ceremony that we usually opened our conversations.
+
+"I've seen the post," he said, "and he tells me there has been a queer
+ploy at the Spittal. It's a wonder the marriage hasna been turned into
+a burial, and all because o' that Highland stirk, Lauchlan Campbell."
+
+Waster Lunny was a man who had to retrace his steps in telling a story
+if he tried short cuts, and so my custom was to wait patiently while
+he delved through the ploughed fields that always lay between him and
+his destination.
+
+"As you ken, Rintoul's so little o' a Scotchman that he's no muckle
+better than an Englisher. That maun be the reason he hadna mair sense
+than to tramp on a Highlandman's ancestors, as he tried to tramp on
+Lauchlan's this day."
+
+"If Lord Rintoul insulted the piper," I suggested, giving the farmer a
+helping hand cautiously, "it would be through inadvertence. Rintoul
+only bought the Spittal a year ago, and until then, I daresay, he had
+seldom been on our side of the Border."
+
+This was a foolish interruption, for it set Waster Lunny off in a new
+direction.
+
+"That's what Elspeth says. Says she, 'When the earl has grand estates
+in England, what for does he come to a barren place like the Spittal
+to be married? It's gey like,' she says, 'as if he wanted the
+marriage to be got by quietly; a thing,' says she, 'that no woman can
+stand. Furthermore,' Elspeth says, 'how has the marriage been
+postponed twice?' We ken what the servants at the Spittal says to
+that, namely, that the young lady is no keen to take him, but Elspeth
+winna listen to sic arguments. She says either the earl had grown
+timid (as mony a man does) when the wedding-day drew near, or else his
+sister that keeps his house is mad at the thocht o' losing her place;
+but as for the young leddy's being sweer, says Elspeth, 'an earl's an
+earl however auld he is, and a lassie's a lassie however young she is,
+and weel she kens you're never sure o' a man's no changing his mind
+about you till you're tied to him by law, after which it doesna so
+muckle matter whether he changes his mind about you or no.' Ay,
+there's a quirk in it some gait, dominie; but it's a deep water
+Elspeth canna bottom."
+
+"It is," I agreed; "but you were to tell me what Birse told you of the
+disturbance at the Spittal."
+
+"Ay, weel," he answered, "the post puts the wite o't on her little
+leddyship, as they call her, though she winna be a leddyship till the
+morn. All I can say is that if the earl was saft enough to do sic a
+thing out of fondness for her, it's time he was married on her, so
+that he may come to his senses again. That's what I say; but Elspeth
+conters me, of course, and says she, 'If the young leddy was so
+careless o' insulting other folks' ancestors, it proves she has nane
+o' her ain; for them that has china plates themsel's is the maist
+careful no to break the china plates of others.'"
+
+"But what was the insult? Was Lauchlan dismissed?"
+
+"Na, faags! It was waur than that. Dominie, you're dull in the uptake
+compared to Elspeth. I hadna telled her half the story afore she
+jaloused the rest. However, to begin again; there's great feasting and
+rejoicings gaen on at the Spittal the now, and also a banquet, which
+the post says is twa dinners in one. Weel, there's a curran Ogilvys
+among the guests, and it was them that egged on her little leddyship
+to make the daring proposal to the earl. What was the proposal? It was
+no less than that the twa pipers should be ordered to play 'The Bonny
+House o' Airlie.' Dominie, I wonder you can tak it so calm when you
+ken that's the Ogilvy's sang, and that it's aimed at the clan o'
+Campbell."
+
+"Pooh!" I said. "The Ogilvys and the Campbells used to be mortal
+enemies, but the feud has been long forgotten."
+
+"Ay, I've heard tell," Waster Lunny said sceptically, "that Airlie and
+Argyle shakes hands now like Christians; but I'm thinking that's just
+afore the Queen. Dinna speak now, for I'm in the thick o't. Her little
+leddyship was all hinging in gold and jewels, the which winna be her
+ain till the morn; and she leans ower to the earl and whispers to him
+to get the pipers to play 'The Bonny House.' He wasna willing, for
+says he, 'There's Ogilvys at the table, and ane o' the pipers is a
+Campbell, and we'll better let sleeping dogs lie.' However, the
+Ogilvys lauched at his caution; and he was so infatuated wi' her
+little leddyship that he gae in, and he cried out to the pipers to
+strike up 'The Bonny House.'"
+
+Waster Lunny pulled his chair nearer me and rested his hand on my
+knees.
+
+"Dominie," he said in a voice that fell now and again into a whisper,
+"them looking on swears that when Lauchlan Campbell heard these
+monstrous orders his face became ugly and black, so that they kent in
+a jiffy what he would do. It's said a' body jumped back frae him in a
+sudden dread, except poor Angus, the other piper, wha was busy tuning
+up for 'The Bonny House.' Weel, Angus had got no farther in the tune
+than the first skirl when Lauchlan louped at him, and ripped up the
+startled crittur's pipes wi' his dirk. The pipes gae a roar o' agony
+like a stuck swine, and fell gasping on the floor. What happened next
+was that Lauchlan wi' his dirk handy for onybody that micht try to
+stop him, marched once round the table, playing 'The Campbells are
+Coming,' and then straucht out o' the Spittal, his chest far afore
+him, and his head so weel back that he could see what was going on
+ahint. Frae the Spittal to here he never stopped that fearsome tune,
+and I'se warrant he's blawing away at it at this moment through the
+streets o' Thrums."
+
+Waster Lunny was not in his usual spirits, or he would have repeated
+his story before he left me, for he had usually as much difficulty in
+coming to an end as in finding a beginning. The drought was to him as
+serious a matter as death in the house, and as little to be forgotten
+for a lengthened period.
+
+"There's to be a prayer-meeting for rain in the Auld Licht kirk the
+night," he told me as I escorted him as far as my side of the
+Quharity, now almost a dead stream, pitiable to see, "and I'm gaen;
+though I'm sweer to leave thae puir cattle o' mine. You should see how
+they look at me when I gie them mair o' that rotten grass to eat. It's
+eneuch to mak a man greet, for what richt hae I to keep kye when I
+canna meat them?"
+
+Waster Lunny has said to me more than once that the great surprise of
+his life was when Elspeth was willing to take him. Many a time,
+however, I have seen that in him which might have made any weaver's
+daughter proud of such a man, and I saw it again when we came to the
+river side.
+
+"I'm no ane o' thae farmers," he said, truthfully, "that's aye girding
+at the weather, and Elspeth and me kens that we hae been dealt wi'
+bountifully since we took this farm wi' gey anxious hearts. That
+woman, dominie, is eneuch to put a brave face on a coward, and it's
+no langer syne than yestreen when I was sitting in the dumps, looking
+at the aurora borealis, which I canna but regard as a messenger o'
+woe, that she put her hand on my shoulder and she says, 'Waster Lunny,
+twenty year syne we began life thegither wi' nothing but the claethes
+on our back, and an it please God we can begin it again, for I hae you
+and you hae me, and I'm no cast down if you're no.' Dominie, is there
+mony sic women in the warld as that?"
+
+"Many a one," I said.
+
+"Ay, man, it shamed me, for I hae a kind o' delight in angering
+Elspeth, just to see what she'll say. I could hae ta'en her on my knee
+at that minute, but the bairns was there, and so it wouldna hae dune.
+But I cheered her up, for, after all, the drought canna put us so far
+back as we was twenty years syne, unless it's true what my father
+said, that the aurora borealis is the devil's rainbow. I saw it sax
+times in July month, and it made me shut my een. You was out admiring
+it, dominie, but I can never forget that it was seen in the year
+twelve just afore the great storm. I was only a laddie then, but I
+mind how that awful wind stripped a' the standing corn in the glen in
+less time than we've been here at the water's edge. It was called the
+deil's besom. My father's hinmost words to me was, 'It's time eneuch
+to greet, laddie, when you see the aurora borealis.' I mind he was so
+complete ruined in an hour that he had to apply for relief frae the
+poor's rates. Think o' that, and him a proud man. He would tak'
+nothing till one winter day when we was a' starving, and syne I gaed
+wi' him to speir for't, and he telled me to grip his hand ticht, so
+that the cauldness o' mine micht gie him courage. They were doling out
+the charity in the Town's House, and I had never been in't afore. I
+canna look at it now without thinking o' that day when me and my
+father gaed up the stair thegither. Mr. Duthie was presiding at the
+time, and he wasna muckle older than Mr. Dishart is now. I mind he
+speired for proof that we was needing, and my father couldna speak. He
+just pointed at me. 'But you have a good coat on your back yoursel','
+Mr. Duthie said, for there were mony waiting, sair needing. 'It was
+lended him to come here,' I cried, and without a word my father opened
+the coat, and they saw he had nothing on aneath, and his skin blue wi
+'cauld. Dominie, Mr. Duthie handed him one shilling and saxpence, and
+my father's fingers closed greedily on't for a minute, and syne it
+fell to the ground. They put it back in his hand, and it slipped out
+again, and Mr. Duthie gave it back to him, saying, 'Are you so cauld
+as that?' But, oh, man, it wasna cauld that did it, but shame o' being
+on the rates. The blood a' ran to my father's head, and syne left it
+as quick, and he flung down the siller and walked out o' the Town
+House wi' me running after him. We warstled through that winter, God
+kens how, and it's near a pleasure to me to think o't now, for, rain
+or no rain, I can never be reduced to sic straits again."
+
+The farmer crossed the water without using the stilts which were no
+longer necessary, and I little thought, as I returned to the
+school-house, what terrible things were to happen before he could
+offer me his snuff-mull again. Serious as his talk had been it was
+neither of drought nor of the incident at the Spittal that I sat down
+to think. My anxiety about Gavin came back to me until I was like a
+man imprisoned between walls of his own building. It may be that my
+presentiments of that afternoon look gloomier now than they were,
+because I cannot return to them save over a night of agony, black
+enough to darken any time connected with it. Perhaps my spirits only
+fell as the wind rose, for wind ever takes me back to Harvie, and when
+I think of Harvie my thoughts are of the saddest. I know that I sat
+for some hours, now seeing Gavin pay the penalty of marrying the
+Egyptian, and again drifting back to my days with Margaret, until the
+wind took to playing tricks with me, so that I heard Adam Dishart
+enter our home by the sea every time the school-house door shook.
+
+I became used to the illusion after starting several times, and thus
+when the door did open, about seven o'clock, it was only the wind
+rushing to my fire like a shivering dog that made me turn my head.
+Then I saw the Egyptian staring at me, and though her sudden
+appearance on my threshold was a strange thing, I forgot it in the
+whiteness of her face. She was looking at me like one who has asked a
+question of life or death, and stopped her heart for the reply.
+
+"What is it?" I cried, and for a moment I believe I was glad she did
+not answer. She seemed to have told me already as much as I could
+bear.
+
+"He has not heard," she said aloud in an expressionless voice, and,
+turning, would have slipped away without another word.
+
+"Is any one dead?" I asked, seizing her hands and letting them fall,
+they were so clammy. She nodded, and trying to speak could not.
+
+"He is dead," she said at last in a whisper. "Mr. Dishart is dead,"
+and she sat down quietly.
+
+At that I covered my face, crying, "God help Margaret!" and then she
+rose, saying fiercely, so that I drew back from her, "There is no
+Margaret; he only cared for me."
+
+"She is his mother," I said hoarsely, and then she smiled to me, so
+that I thought her a harmless mad thing. "He was killed by a piper
+called Lauchlan Campbell," she said, looking up at me suddenly. "It
+was my fault."
+
+"Poor Margaret!" I wailed.
+
+"And poor Babbie," she entreated pathetically; "will no one say, 'Poor
+Babbie'?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Seven.
+
+FIRST JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+"How did it happen?" I asked more than once, but the Egyptian was only
+with me in the body, and she did not hear. I might have been talking
+to some one a mile away whom a telescope had drawn near my eyes.
+
+When I put on my bonnet, however, she knew that I was going to Thrums,
+and she rose and walked to the door, looking behind to see that I
+followed.
+
+"You must not come," I said harshly, but her hand started to her heart
+as if I had shot her, and I added quickly, "Come." We were already
+some distance on our way before I repeated my question.
+
+"What matter how it happened?" she answered piteously, and they were
+words of which I felt the force. But when she said a little later, "I
+thought you would say it is not true," I took courage, and forced her
+to tell me all she knew. She sobbed while she spoke, if one may sob
+without tears.
+
+"I heard of it at the Spittal," she said. "The news broke out suddenly
+there that the piper had quarrelled with some one in Thrums, and that
+in trying to separate them Mr. Dishart was stabbed. There is no doubt
+of its truth."
+
+"We should have heard of it here," I said hopefully, "before the news
+reached the Spittal. It cannot be true."
+
+"It was brought to the Spittal," she answered, "by the hill road."
+
+Then my spirits sank again, for I knew that this was possible. There
+is a path, steep but short, across the hills between Thrums and the
+top of the glen, which Mr. Glendinning took frequently when he had to
+preach at both places on the same Sabbath. It is still called the
+Minister's Road.
+
+"Yet if the earl had believed it he would have sent some one into
+Thrums for particulars," I said, grasping at such comfort as I could
+make.
+
+"He does believe it," she answered. "He told me of it himself."
+
+You see the Egyptian was careless of her secret now; but what was that
+secret to me? An hour ago it would have been much, and already it was
+not worth listening to. If she had begun to tell me why Lord Rintoul
+took a gypsy girl into his confidence I should not have heard her.
+
+"I ran quickly," she said. "Even if a messenger was sent he might be
+behind me."
+
+Was it her words or the tramp of a horse that made us turn our heads
+at that moment? I know not. But far back in a twist of the road we saw
+a horseman approaching at such a reckless pace that I thought he was
+on a runaway. We stopped instinctively, and waited for him, and twice
+he disappeared in hollows of the road, and then was suddenly tearing
+down upon us. I recognised in him young Mr. McKenzie, a relative of
+Rintoul, and I stretched out my arms to compel him to draw up. He
+misunderstood my motive, and was raising his whip threateningly, when
+he saw the Egyptian. It is not too much to say that he swayed in the
+saddle. The horse galloped on, though he had lost hold of the reins.
+He looked behind until he rounded a corner, and I never saw such
+amazement mixed with incredulity on a human face. For some minutes I
+expected to see him coming back, but when he did not I said
+wonderingly to the Egyptian--
+
+"He knew you."
+
+"Did he?" she answered indifferently, and I think we spoke no more
+until we were in Windyghoul. Soon we were barely conscious of each
+other's presence. Never since have I walked between the school-house
+and Thrums in so short a time, nor seen so little on the way.
+
+In the Egyptian's eyes, I suppose, was a picture of Gavin lying dead;
+but if her grief had killed her thinking faculties, mine, that was
+only less keen because I had been struck down once before, had set all
+the wheels of my brain in action. For it seemed to me that the hour
+had come when I must disclose myself to Margaret.
+
+I had realised always that if such a necessity did arise it could only
+be caused by Gavin's premature death, or by his proving a bad son to
+her. Some may wonder that I could have looked calmly thus far into the
+possible, but I reply that the night of Adam Dishart's homecoming had
+made of me a man whom the future could not surprise again. Though I
+saw Gavin and his mother happy in our Auld Licht manse, that did not
+prevent my considering the contingencies which might leave her without
+a son. In the school-house I had brooded over them as one may think
+over moves on a draught-board. It may have been idle, but it was done
+that I might know how to act best for Margaret if anything untoward
+occurred. The time for such action had come. Gavin's death had struck
+me hard, but it did not crush me. I was not unprepared. I was going to
+Margaret now.
+
+What did I see as I walked quickly along the glen road, with Babbie
+silent by my side, and I doubt not pods of the broom cracking all
+around us? I saw myself entering the Auld Licht manse, where Margaret
+sat weeping over the body of Gavin, and there was none to break my
+coming to her, for none but she and I knew what had been.
+
+I saw my Margaret again, so fragile now, so thin the wrists, her hair
+turned grey. No nearer could I go, but stopped at the door, grieving
+for her, and at last saying her name aloud.
+
+I saw her raise her face, and look upon me for the first time for
+eighteen years. She did not scream at sight of me, for the body of her
+son lay between us, and bridged the gulf that Adam Dishart had made.
+
+I saw myself draw near her reverently and say, "Margaret, he is dead,
+and that is why I have come back," and I saw her put her arms around
+my neck as she often did long ago.
+
+But it was not to be. Never since that night at Harvie have I spoken
+to Margaret.
+
+The Egyptian and I were to come to Windyghoul before I heard her
+speak. She was not addressing me. Here Gavin and she had met first,
+and she was talking of that meeting to herself.
+
+"It was there," I heard her say softly, as she gazed at the bush
+beneath which she had seen him shaking his fist at her on the night of
+the riots. A little farther on she stopped where a path from
+Windyghoul sets off for the well in the wood. She looked up it
+wistfully, and there I left her behind, and pressed on to the mudhouse
+to ask Nanny Webster if the minister was dead. Nanny's gate was
+swinging in the wind, but her door was shut, and for a moment I stood
+at it like a coward, afraid to enter and hear the worst.
+
+The house was empty. I turned from it relieved, as if I had got a
+respite, and while I stood in the garden the Egyptian came to me
+shuddering, her twitching face asking the question that would not
+leave her lips.
+
+"There is no one in the house," I said. "Nanny is perhaps at the
+well."
+
+But the gypsy went inside, and pointing to the fire said, "It has been
+out for hours. Do you not see? The murder has drawn every one into
+Thrums."
+
+So I feared. A dreadful night was to pass before I knew that this was
+the day of the release of Sanders Webster, and that frail Nanny had
+walked into Tilliedrum to meet him at the prison gate.
+
+Babbie sank upon a stool, so weak that I doubt whether she heard me
+tell her to wait there until my return. I hurried into Thrums, not by
+the hill, though it is the shorter way, but by the Roods, for I must
+hear all before I ventured to approach the manse. From Windyghoul to
+the top of the Roods it is a climb and then a steep descent. The road
+has no sooner reached its highest point than it begins to fall in the
+straight line of houses called the Roods, and thus I came upon a full
+view of the street at once. A cart was laboring up it. There were
+women sitting on stones at their doors, and girls playing at
+palaulays, and out of the house nearest me came a black figure. My
+eyes failed me; I was asking so much from them. They made him tall and
+short, and spare and stout, so that I knew it was Gavin, and yet,
+looking again, feared, but all the time, I think, I knew it was he.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Eight.
+
+THE HILL BEFORE DARKNESS FELL--SCENE OF THE IMPENDING CATASTROPHE.
+
+
+"You are better now?" I heard Gavin ask, presently.
+
+He thought that having been taken ill suddenly I had waved to him for
+help because he chanced to be near. With all my wits about me I might
+have left him in that belief, for rather would I have deceived him
+than had him wonder why his welfare seemed so vital to me. But I, who
+thought the capacity for being taken aback had gone from me, clung to
+his arm and thanked God audibly that he still lived. He did not tell
+me then how my agitation puzzled him, but led me kindly to the hill,
+where we could talk without listeners. By the time we reached it I was
+again wary, and I had told him what had brought me to Thrums, without
+mentioning how the story of his death reached my ears, or through
+whom.
+
+"Mr. McKenzie," he said, interrupting me, "galloped all the way from
+the Spittal on the same errand. However, no one has been hurt much,
+except the piper himself."
+
+Then he told me how the rumor arose.
+
+"You know of the incident at the Spittal, and that Campbell marched
+off in high dudgeon? I understand that he spoke to no one between the
+Spittal and Thrums, but by the time he arrived here he was more
+communicative; yes, and thirstier. He was treated to drink in several
+public-houses by persons who wanted to hear his story, and by-and-by
+he began to drop hints of knowing something against the earl's bride.
+Do you know Rob Dow?"
+
+"Yes," I answered, "and what you have done for him."
+
+"Ah, sir!" he said, sighing, "for a long time I thought I was to be
+God's instrument in making a better man of Rob, but my power over him
+went long ago. Ten short months of the ministry takes some of the
+vanity out of a man."
+
+Looking sideways at him I was startled by the unnatural brightness of
+his eyes. Unconsciously he had acquired the habit of pressing his
+teeth together in the pauses of his talk, shutting them on some woe
+that would proclaim itself, as men do who keep their misery to
+themselves.
+
+"A few hours ago," he went on, "I heard Rob's voice in altercation as
+I passed the Bull tavern, and I had a feeling that if I failed with
+him so should I fail always throughout my ministry. I walked into the
+public-house, and stopped at the door of a room in which Dow and the
+piper were sitting drinking. I heard Rob saying, fiercely, 'If what
+you say about her is true, Highlandman, she's the woman I've been
+looking for this half year and mair; what is she like?' I guessed,
+from what I had been told of the piper, that they were speaking of the
+earl's bride; but Rob saw me and came to an abrupt stop, saying to his
+companion, 'Dinna say another word about her afore the minister.' Rob
+would have come away at once in answer to my appeal, but the piper was
+drunk and would not be silenced. 'I'll tell the minister about her,
+too,' he began. 'You dinna ken what you're doing,' Rob roared, and
+then, as if to save my ears from scandal at any cost, he struck
+Campbell a heavy blow on the mouth. I tried to intercept the blow,
+with the result that I fell, and then some one ran out of the tavern
+crying, 'He's killed!' The piper had been stunned, but the story went
+abroad that he had stabbed me for interfering with him. That is really
+all. Nothing, as you know, can overtake an untruth if it has a
+minute's start."
+
+"Where is Campbell now?"
+
+"Sleeping off the effect of the blow: but Dow has fled. He was
+terrified at the shouts of murder, and ran off up the West Town end.
+The doctor's dogcart was standing at a door there and Rob jumped into
+it and drove off. They did not chase him far, because he is sure to
+hear the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will come back."
+
+Though in a few hours we were to wonder at our denseness, neither
+Gavin nor I saw why Dow had struck the Highlander down rather than let
+him tell his story in the minister's presence. One moment's suspicion
+would have lit our way to the whole truth, but of the spring to all
+Rob's behavior in the past eight months we were ignorant, and so to
+Gavin the Bull had only been the scene of a drunken brawl, while I
+forgot to think in the joy of finding him alive.
+
+"I have a prayer-meeting for rain presently," Gavin said, breaking a
+picture that had just appeared unpleasantly before me of Babbie still
+in agony at Nanny's, "but before I leave you tell me why this rumor
+caused you such distress."
+
+The question troubled me, and I tried to avoid it. Crossing the hill
+we had by this time drawn near a hollow called the Toad's-hole, then
+gay and noisy with a caravan of gypsies. They were those same wild
+Lindsays, for whom Gavin had searched Caddam one eventful night, and
+as I saw them crowding round their king, a man well known to me, I
+guessed what they were at.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," I said abruptly, "would you like to see a gypsy
+marriage? One is taking place there just now. That big fellow is the
+king, and he is about to marry two of his people over the tongs. The
+ceremony will not detain us five minutes, though the rejoicings will
+go on all night."
+
+I have been present at more than one gypsy wedding in my time, and at
+the wild, weird orgies that followed them, but what is interesting to
+such as I may not be for a minister's eyes, and, frowning at my
+proposal, Gavin turned his back upon the Toad's-hole. Then, as we
+recrossed the hill, to get away from the din of the camp, I pointed
+out to him that the report of his death had brought McKenzie to
+Thrums, as well as me.
+
+"As soon as McKenzie heard I was not dead," he answered, "he galloped
+off to the Spittal, without even seeing me. I suppose he posted back
+to be in time for the night's rejoicings there. So you see, it was not
+solicitude for me that brought him. He came because a servant at the
+Spittal was supposed to have done the deed."
+
+"Well, Mr. Dishart," I had to say, "why should I deny that I have a
+warm regard for you? You have done brave work in our town."
+
+"It has been little," he replied. "With God's help it will be more in
+future."
+
+He meant that he had given time to his sad love affair that he owed to
+his people. Of seeing Babbie again I saw that he had given up hope.
+Instead of repining, he was devoting his whole soul to God's work. I
+was proud of him, and yet I grieved, for I could not think that God
+wanted him to bury his youth so soon.
+
+"I had thought," he confessed to me, "that you were one of those who
+did not like my preaching."
+
+"You were mistaken," I said, gravely. I dared not tell him that,
+except his mother, none would have sat under him so eagerly as I.
+
+"Nevertheless," he said, "you were a member of the Auld Licht church
+in Mr. Carfrae's time, and you left it when I came."
+
+"I heard your first sermon," I said.
+
+"Ah," he replied. "I had not been long in Thrums before I discovered
+that if I took tea with any of my congregation and declined a second
+cup, they thought it a reflection on their brewing."
+
+"You must not look upon my absence in that light," was all I could
+say. "There are reasons why I cannot come."
+
+He did not press me further, thinking I meant that the distance was
+too great, though frailer folk than I walked twenty miles to hear him.
+We might have parted thus had we not wandered by chance to the very
+spot where I had met him and Babbie. There is a seat there now for
+those who lose their breath on the climb up, and so I have two reasons
+nowadays for not passing the place by.
+
+We read each other's thoughts, and Gavin said calmly, "I have not seen
+her since that night. She disappeared as into a grave."
+
+How could I answer when I knew that Babbie was dying for want of him,
+not half a mile away?
+
+"You seemed to understand everything that night," he went on; "or if
+you did not, your thoughts were very generous to me."
+
+In my sorrow for him I did not notice that we were moving on again,
+this time in the direction of Windyghoul.
+
+"She was only a gypsy girl," he said, abruptly, and I nodded. "But I
+hoped," he continued, "that she would be my wife."
+
+"I understood that," I said.
+
+"There was nothing monstrous to you," he asked, looking me in the
+face, "in a minister's marrying a gypsy?"
+
+I own that if I had loved a girl, however far below or above me in
+degree, I would have married her had she been willing to take me. But
+to Gavin I only answered, "These are matters a man must decide for
+himself."
+
+"I had decided for myself," he said, emphatically.
+
+"Yet," I said, wanting him to talk to me of Margaret, "in such a case
+one might have others to consider besides himself."
+
+"A man's marriage," he answered, "is his own affair, I would have
+brooked no interference from my congregation."
+
+I thought, "There is some obstinacy left in him still;" but aloud I
+said, "It was of your mother I was thinking."
+
+"She would have taken Babbie to her heart," he said, with the fond
+conviction of a lover.
+
+I doubted it, but I only asked, "Your mother knows nothing of her?"
+
+"Nothing," he rejoined. "It would be cruelty to tell my mother of her
+now that she is gone."
+
+Gavin's calmness had left him, and he was striding quickly nearer to
+Windyghoul. I was in dread lest he should see the Egyptian at Nanny's
+door, yet to have turned him in another direction might have roused
+his suspicions. When we were within a hundred yards of the mudhouse, I
+knew that there was no Babbie in sight. We halved the distance and
+then I saw her at the open window. Gavin's eyes were on the ground,
+but she saw him. I held my breath, fearing that she would run out to
+him.
+
+"You have never seen her since that night?" Gavin asked me, without
+hope in his voice.
+
+Had he been less hopeless he would have wondered why I did not reply
+immediately. I was looking covertly at the mudhouse, of which we were
+now within a few yards. Babbie's face had gone from the window, and
+the door remained shut. That she could hear every word we uttered now,
+I could not doubt. But she was hiding from the man for whom her soul
+longed. She was sacrificing herself for him.
+
+"Never," I answered, notwithstanding my pity of the brave girl, and
+then while I was shaking lest he should go in to visit Nanny, I heard
+the echo of the Auld Licht bell.
+
+"That calls me to the meeting for rain," Gavin said, bidding me
+good-night. I had acted for Margaret, and yet I had hardly the
+effrontery to take his hand. I suppose he saw sympathy in my face, for
+suddenly the cry broke from him--
+
+"If I could only know that nothing evil had befallen her!"
+
+Babbie heard him and could not restrain a heart-breaking sob.
+
+"What was that?" he said, starting.
+
+A moment I waited, to let her show herself if she chose. But the
+mudhouse was silent again.
+
+"It was some boy in the wood," I answered.
+
+"Good-bye," he said, trying to smile.
+
+Had I let him go, here would have been the end of his love story, but
+that piteous smile unmanned me, and I could not keep the words back.
+
+"She is in Nanny's house," I cried.
+
+In another moment these two were together for weal or woe, and I had
+set off dizzily for the school-house, feeling now that I had been
+false to Margaret, and again exulting in what I had done. By and by
+the bell stopped, and Gavin and Babbie regarded it as little as I
+heeded the burns now crossing the glen road noisily at places that had
+been dry two hours before.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Twenty-Nine.
+
+STORY OF THE EGYPTIAN.
+
+
+God gives us more than, were we not overbold, we should dare to ask
+for, and yet how often (perhaps after saying "Thank God" so curtly
+that it is only a form of swearing) we are suppliants again within the
+hour. Gavin was to be satisfied if he were told that no evil had
+befallen her he loved, and all the way between the school-house and
+Windyghoul Babbie craved for no more than Gavin's life. Now they had
+got their desires; but do you think they were content?
+
+The Egyptian had gone on her knees when she heard Gavin speak of her.
+It was her way of preventing herself from running to him. Then, when
+she thought him gone, he opened the door. She rose and shrank back,
+but first she had stepped toward him with a glad cry. His disappointed
+arms met on nothing.
+
+"You, too, heard that I was dead?" he said, thinking her strangeness
+but grief too sharply turned to joy.
+
+There were tears in the word with which she answered him, and he would
+have kissed her, but she defended her face with her hand.
+
+"Babbie," he asked, beginning to fear that he had not sounded her
+deepest woe, "why have you left me all this time? You are not glad to
+see me now?"
+
+"I was glad," she answered in a low voice, "to see you from the
+window, but I prayed to God not to let you see me."
+
+She even pulled away her hand when he would have taken it. "No, no, I
+am to tell you everything now, and then----"
+
+"Say that you love me first," he broke in, when a sob checked her
+speaking.
+
+"No," she said, "I must tell you first what I have done, and then you
+will not ask me to say that. I am not a gypsy."
+
+"What of that?" cried Gavin. "It was not because you were a gypsy that
+I loved you."
+
+"That is the last time you will say you love me," said Babbie. "Mr.
+Dishart, I am to be married to-morrow."
+
+She stopped, afraid to say more lest he should fall, but except that
+his arms twitched he did not move.
+
+"I am to be married to Lord Rintoul," she went on. "Now you know who I
+am."
+
+She turned from him, for his piercing eyes frightened her. Never
+again, she knew, would she see the love-light in them. He plucked
+himself from the spot where he had stood looking at her and walked to
+the window. When he wheeled round there was no anger on his face, only
+a pathetic wonder that he had been deceived so easily. It was at
+himself that he was smiling grimly rather than at her, and the change
+pained Babbie as no words could have hurt her. He sat down on a chair
+and waited for her to go on.
+
+"Don't look at me," she said, "and I will tell you everything." He
+dropped his eyes listlessly, and had he not asked her a question from
+time to time, she would have doubted whether he heard her.
+
+"After all," she said, "a gypsy dress is my birth-right, and so the
+Thrums people were scarcely wrong in calling me an Egyptian. It is a
+pity any one insisted on making me something different. I believe I
+could have been a good gypsy."
+
+"Who were your parents?" Gavin asked, without looking up.
+
+"You ask that," she said, "because you have a good mother. It is not
+a question that would occur to me. My mother--If she was bad, may not
+that be some excuse for me? Ah, but I have no wish to excuse myself.
+Have you seen a gypsy cart with a sort of hammock swung beneath it in
+which gypsy children are carried about the country? If there are no
+children, the pots and pans are stored in it. Unless the roads are
+rough it makes a comfortable cradle, and it was the only one I ever
+knew. Well, one day I suppose the road was rough, for I was capsized.
+I remember picking myself up after a little and running after the
+cart, but they did not hear my cries. I sat down by the roadside and
+stared after the cart until I lost sight of it. That was in England,
+and I was not three years old."
+
+"But surely," Gavin said, "they came back to look for you?"
+
+"So far as I know," Babbie answered hardly, "they did not come back. I
+have never seen them since. I think they were drunk. My only
+recollection of my mother is that she once took me to see the dead
+body of some gypsy who had been murdered. She told me to dip my hand
+in the blood, so that I could say I had done so when I became a woman.
+It was meant as a treat to me, and is the one kindness I am sure I got
+from her. Curiously enough, I felt the shame of her deserting me for
+many years afterwards. As a child I cried hysterically at thought of
+it; it pained me when I was at school in Edinburgh every time I saw
+the other girls writing home; I cannot think of it without a shudder
+even now. It is what makes me worse than other women."
+
+Her voice had altered, and she was speaking passionately.
+
+"Sometimes," she continued, more gently, "I try to think that my
+mother did come back for me, and then went away because she heard I
+was in better hands than hers. It was Lord Rintoul who found me, and I
+owe everything to him. You will say that he has no need to be proud
+of me. He took me home on his horse, and paid his gardener's wife to
+rear me. She was Scotch, and that is why I can speak two languages. It
+was he, too, who sent me to school in Edinburgh."
+
+"He has been very kind to you," said Gavin, who would have preferred
+to dislike the earl.
+
+"So kind," answered Babbie, "that now he is to marry me. But do you
+know why he has done all this?"
+
+Now again she was agitated, and spoke indignantly.
+
+"It is all because I have a pretty face," she said, her bosom rising
+and falling. "Men think of nothing else. He had no pity for the
+deserted child. I knew that while I was yet on his horse. When he came
+to the gardener's afterwards, it was not to give me some one to love,
+it was only to look upon what was called my beauty; I was merely a
+picture to him, and even the gardener's children knew it and sought to
+terrify me by saying, 'You are losing your looks; the earl will not
+care for you any more.' Sometimes he brought his friends to see me,
+'because I was such a lovely child,' and if they did not agree with
+him on that point he left without kissing me. Throughout my whole
+girlhood I was taught nothing but to please him, and the only way to
+do that was to be pretty. It was the only virtue worth striving for;
+the others were never thought of when he asked how I was getting on.
+Once I had fever and nearly died, yet this knowledge that my face was
+everything was implanted in me so that my fear lest he should think me
+ugly when I recovered terrified me into hysterics. I dream still that
+I am in that fever and all my fears return. He did think me ugly when
+he saw me next. I remember the incident so well still. I had run to
+him, and he was lifting me up to kiss me when he saw that my face had
+changed. 'What a cruel disappointment,' he said, and turned his back
+on me. I had given him a child's love until then, but from that day I
+was hard and callous."
+
+"And when was it you became beautiful again?" Gavin asked, by no means
+in the mind to pay compliments.
+
+"A year passed," she continued, "before I saw him again. In that time
+he had not asked for me once, and the gardener had kept me out of
+charity. It was by an accident that we met, and at first he did not
+know me. Then he said, 'Why, Babbie, I believe you are to be a beauty,
+after all!' I hated him for that, and stalked away from him, but he
+called after me, 'Bravo! she walks like a queen'; and it was because I
+walked like a queen that he sent me to an Edinburgh school. He used to
+come to see me every year, and as I grew up the girls called me Lady
+Rintoul. He was not fond of me; he is not fond of me now. He would as
+soon think of looking at the back of a picture as at what I am apart
+from my face, but he dotes on it, and is to marry it. Is that love?
+Long before I left school, which was shortly before you came to
+Thrums, he had told his sister that he was determined to marry me, and
+she hated me for it, making me as uncomfortable as she could, so that
+I almost looked forward to the marriage because it would be such a
+humiliation to her."
+
+In admitting this she looked shamefacedly at Gavin, and then went on:
+
+"It is humiliating him too. I understand him. He would like not to
+want to marry me, for he is ashamed of my origin, but he cannot help
+it. It is this feeling that has brought him here, so that the marriage
+may take place where my history is not known."
+
+"The secret has been well kept," Gavin said, "for they have failed to
+discover it even in Thrums."
+
+"Some of the Spittal servants suspect it, nevertheless," Babbie
+answered, "though how much they know I cannot say. He has not a
+servant now, either here or in England, who knew me as a child. The
+gardener who befriended me was sent away long ago. Lord Rintoul looks
+upon me as a disgrace to him that he cannot live without."
+
+"I dare say he cares for you more than you think," Gavin said
+gravely.
+
+"He is infatuated about my face, or the pose of my head, or something
+of that sort," Babbie said bitterly, "or he would not have endured me
+so long. I have twice had the wedding postponed, chiefly, I believe,
+to enrage my natural enemy, his sister, who is as much aggravated by
+my reluctance to marry him as by his desire to marry me. However, I
+also felt that imprisonment for life was approaching as the day drew
+near, and I told him that if he did not defer the wedding I should run
+away. He knows I am capable of it, for twice I ran away from school.
+If his sister only knew that!"
+
+For a moment it was the old Babbie Gavin saw; but her glee was
+short-lived, and she resumed sedately:
+
+"They were kind to me at school, but the life was so dull and prim
+that I ran off in a gypsy dress of my own making. That is what it is
+to have gypsy blood in one. I was away for a week the first time,
+wandering the country alone, telling fortunes, dancing and singing in
+woods, and sleeping in barns. I am the only woman in the world well
+brought up who is not afraid of mice or rats. That is my gypsy blood
+again. After that wild week I went back to the school of my own will,
+and no one knows of the escapade but my schoolmistress and Lord
+Rintoul. The second time, however, I was detected singing in the
+street, and then my future husband was asked to take me away. Yet Miss
+Feversham cried when I left, and told me that I was the nicest girl
+she knew, as well as the nastiest. She said she should love me as soon
+as I was not one of her boarders."
+
+"And then you came to the Spittal?"
+
+"Yes; and Lord Rintoul wanted me to say I was sorry for what I had
+done, but I told him I need not say that, for I was sure to do it
+again. As you know, I have done it several times since then; and
+though I am a different woman since I knew you, I dare say I shall go
+on doing it at times all my life. You shake your head because you do
+not understand. It is not that I make up my mind to break out in that
+way; I may not have had the least desire to do it for weeks, and then
+suddenly, when I am out riding, or at dinner, or at a dance, the
+craving to be a gypsy again is so strong that I never think of
+resisting it; I would risk my life to gratify it. Yes, whatever my
+life in the future is to be, I know that must be a part of it. I used
+to pretend at the Spittal that I had gone to bed, and then escape by
+the window. I was mad with glee at those times, but I always returned
+before morning, except once, the last time I saw you, when I was away
+for nearly twenty-four hours. Lord Rintoul was so glad to see me come
+back then that he almost forgave me for going away. There is nothing
+more to tell except that on the night of the riot it was not my gypsy
+nature that brought me to Thrums, but a desire to save the poor
+weavers. I had heard Lord Rintoul and the sheriff discussing the
+contemplated raid. I have hidden nothing from you. In time, perhaps, I
+shall have suffered sufficiently for all my wickedness."
+
+Gavin rose weariedly, and walked through the mudhouse looking at her.
+
+"This is the end of it all," he said harshly, coming to a standstill.
+"I loved you, Babbie."
+
+"No," she answered, shaking her head. "You never knew me until now,
+and so it was not me you loved. I know what you thought I was, and I
+will try to be it now."
+
+"If you had only told me this before," the minister said sadly, "it
+might not have been too late."
+
+"I only thought you like all the other men I knew," she replied,
+"until the night I came to the manse. It was only my face you admired
+at first."
+
+"No, it was never that," Gavin said with such conviction that her
+mouth opened in alarm to ask him if he did not think her pretty. She
+did not speak, however, and he continued, "You must have known that I
+loved you from the first night."
+
+"No; you only amused me," she said, like one determined to stint
+nothing of the truth. "Even at the well I laughed at your vows."
+
+This wounded Gavin afresh, wretched as her story had made him, and he
+said tragically, "You have never cared for me at all."
+
+"Oh, always, always," she answered, "since I knew what love was; and
+it was you who taught me."
+
+Even in his misery he held his head high with pride. At least she did
+love him.
+
+"And then," Babbie said, hiding her face, "I could not tell you what I
+was because I knew you would loathe me. I could only go away."
+
+She looked at him forlornly through her tears, and then moved toward
+the door. He had sunk upon a stool, his face resting on the table, and
+it was her intention to slip away unnoticed. But he heard the latch
+rise, and jumping up, said sharply, "Babbie, I cannot give you up."
+
+She stood in tears, swinging the door unconsciously with her hand.
+
+"Don't say that you love me still," she cried; and then, letting her
+hand fall from the door, added imploringly, "Oh, Gavin, do you?"
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty.
+
+THE MEETING FOR RAIN.
+
+
+Meanwhile the Auld Lichts were in church, waiting for their minister,
+and it was a full meeting, because nearly every well in Thrums had
+been scooped dry by anxious palms. Yet not all were there to ask God's
+rain for themselves. Old Charles Yuill was in his pew, after dreaming
+thrice that he would break up with the drought; and Bell Christison
+had come, though her man lay dead at home, and she thought it could
+matter no more to her how things went in the world.
+
+You, who do not love that little congregation, would have said that
+they were waiting placidly. But probably so simple a woman as Meggy
+Rattray could have deceived you into believing that because her eyes
+were downcast she did not notice who put the three-penny-bit in the
+plate. A few men were unaware that the bell was working overtime, most
+of them farmers with their eyes on the windows, but all the women at
+least were wondering. They knew better, however, than to bring their
+thoughts to their faces, and none sought to catch another's eye. The
+men-folk looked heavily at their hats in the seats in front. Even when
+Hendry Munn, instead of marching to the pulpit with the big Bible in
+his hands, came as far as the plate and signed to Peter Tosh, elder,
+that he was wanted in the vestry, you could not have guessed how every
+woman there, except Bell Christison, wished she was Peter Tosh. Peter
+was so taken aback that he merely gaped at Hendry, until suddenly he
+knew that his five daughters were furious with him, when he dived for
+his hat and staggered to the vestry with his mouth open. His boots
+cheeped all the way, but no one looked up.
+
+"I hadna noticed the minister was lang in coming," Waster Lunny told
+me afterward, "but Elspeth noticed it, and with a quickness that
+baffles me she saw I was thinking o' other things. So she let out her
+foot at me. I gae a low cough to let her ken I wasna sleeping, but in
+a minute out goes her foot again. Ay, syne I thocht I micht hae
+dropped my hanky into Snecky Hobart's pew, but no, it was in my tails.
+Yet her hand was on the board, and she was working her fingers in a
+way that I kent meant she would like to shake me. Next I looked to see
+if I was sitting on her frock, the which tries a woman sair, but I
+wasna. 'Does she want to change Bibles wi' me?' I wondered; 'or is she
+sliding yont a peppermint to me?' It was neither, so I edged as far
+frae her as I could gang. Weel, would you credit it, I saw her body
+coming nearer me inch by inch, though she was looking straucht afore
+her, till she was within kick o' me, and then out again goes her foot.
+At that, dominie, I lost patience, and I whispered, fierce-like, 'Keep
+your foot to yoursel', you limmer!' Ay, her intent, you see, was to
+waken me to what was gaen on, but I couldna be expected to ken that."
+
+In the vestry Hendry Munn was now holding counsel with three elders,
+of whom the chief was Lang Tammas.
+
+"The laddie I sent to the manse," Hendry said, "canna be back this
+five minutes, and the question is how we're to fill up that time. I'll
+ring no langer, for the bell has been in a passion ever since a
+quarter-past eight. It's as sweer to clang past the quarter as a horse
+to gallop by its stable."
+
+"You could gang to your box and gie out a psalm, Tammas," suggested
+John Spens.
+
+"And would a psalm sung wi' sic an object," retorted the precentor,
+"mount higher, think you, than a bairn's kite? I'll insult the
+Almighty to screen no minister."
+
+"You're screening him better by standing whaur you are," said the
+imperturbable Hendry; "for as lang as you dinna show your face they'll
+think it may be you that's missing instead o' Mr. Dishart."
+
+Indeed, Gavin's appearance in church without the precentor would have
+been as surprising as Tammas's without the minister. As certainly as
+the shutting of a money-box is followed by the turning of the key, did
+the precentor walk stiffly from the vestry to his box a toll of the
+bell in front of the minister. Tammas's halfpenny rang in the plate as
+Gavin passed T'nowhead's pew, and Gavin's sixpence with the
+snapping-to of the precentor's door. The two men might have been
+connected by a string that tightened at ten yards.
+
+"The congregation ken me ower weel," Tammas said, "to believe I would
+keep the Lord waiting."
+
+"And they are as sure o' Mr. Dishart," rejoined Spens, with spirit,
+though he feared the precentor on Sabbaths and at prayer-meetings.
+"You're a hard man."
+
+"I speak the blunt truth," Whamond answered.
+
+"Ay," said Spens, "and to tak' credit for that may be like blawing
+that you're ower honest to wear claethes."
+
+Hendry, who had gone to the door, returned now with the information
+that Mr. Dishart had left the manse two hours ago to pay visits,
+meaning to come to the prayer-meeting before he returned home.
+
+"There's a quirk in this, Hendry," said Tosh. "Was it Mistress Dishart
+the laddie saw?"
+
+[Illustration: "THE CONSULTATION OF THE ELDERS."]
+
+"No," Hendry replied. "It was Jean. She canna get to the meeting
+because the mistress is nervous in the manse by herself; and Jean
+didna like to tell her that he's missing, for fear o' alarming her.
+What are we to do now?"
+
+"He's an unfaithful shepherd," cried the precentor, while Hendry again
+went out. "I see it written on the walls."
+
+"I dinna," said Spens doggedly.
+
+"Because," retorted Tammas, "having eyes you see not."
+
+"Tammas, I aye thocht you was fond o' Mr. Dishart."
+
+"If my right eye were to offend me," answered the precentor, "I would
+pluck it out. I suppose you think, and baith o' you farmers too, that
+there's no necessity for praying for rain the nicht? You'll be
+content, will ye, if Mr. Dishart just drops in to the kirk some day,
+accidental-like, and offers up a bit prayer?"
+
+"As for the rain," Spens said, triumphantly, "I wouldna wonder though
+it's here afore the minister. You canna deny, Peter Tosh, that there's
+been a smell o' rain in the air this twa hours back."
+
+"John," Peter said agitatedly, "dinna speak so confidently. I've kent
+it," he whispered, "since the day turned; but it wants to tak' us by
+surprise, lad, and so I'm no letting on."
+
+"See that you dinna make an idol o' the rain," thundered Whamond.
+"Your thochts is no wi' Him, but wi' the clouds; and whaur your
+thochts are, there will your prayers stick also."
+
+"If you saw my lambs," Tosh began; and then, ashamed of himself, said,
+looking upward, "He holds the rain in the hollow of His hand."
+
+"And He's closing His neive ticht on't again," said the precentor
+solemnly. "Hearken to the wind rising!"
+
+"God help me!" cried Tosh, wringing his hands. "Is it fair, think
+you," he said, passionately addressing the sky, "to show your wrath
+wi' Mr. Dishart by ruining my neeps?"
+
+"You were richt, Tammas Whamond," Spens said, growing hard as he
+listened to the wind, "the sanctuary o' the Lord has been profaned
+this nicht by him wha should be the chief pillar o' the building."
+
+They were lowering brows that greeted Hendry when he returned to say
+that Mr. Dishart had been seen last on the hill with the Glen Quharity
+dominie.
+
+"Some thinks," said the kirk officer, "that he's awa hunting for Rob
+Dow."
+
+"Nothing'll excuse him," replied Spens, "short o' his having fallen
+over the quarry."
+
+Hendry's was usually a blank face, but it must have looked troubled
+now, for Tosh was about to say, "Hendry, you're keeping something
+back," when the precentor said it before him.
+
+"Wi' that story o' Mr. Dishart's murder, no many hours auld yet," the
+kirk officer replied evasively, "we should be wary o' trusting
+gossip."
+
+"What hae you heard?"
+
+"It's through the town," Hendry answered, "that a woman was wi' the
+dominie."
+
+"A woman!" cried Tosh. "The woman there's been sic talk about in
+connection wi' the minister? Whaur are they now?"
+
+"It's no kent, but--the dominie was seen goin' hame by himsel'."
+
+"Leaving the minister and her thegither!" cried the three men at
+once.
+
+"Hendry Munn," Tammas said sternly, "there's mair about this; wha is
+the woman?"
+
+"They are liars," Hendry answered, and shut his mouth tight.
+
+"Gie her a name, I say," the precentor ordered, "or, as chief elder of
+this kirk, supported by mair than half o' the Session, I command you
+to lift your hat and go."
+
+Hendry gave an appealing look to Tosh and Spens, but the precentor's
+solemnity had cowed them.
+
+"They say, then," he answered sullenly, "that it's the Egyptian. Yes,
+and I believe they ken."
+
+The two farmers drew back from this statement incredulously; but
+Tammas Whamond jumped at the kirk officer's throat, and some who were
+in the church that night say they heard Hendry scream. Then the
+precentor's fingers relaxed their grip, and he tottered into the
+middle of the room.
+
+"Hendry," he pleaded, holding out his arms pathetically, "tak' back
+these words. Oh, man, have pity, and tak' them back!"
+
+But Hendry would not, and then Lang Tammas's mouth worked convulsively,
+and he sobbed, crying, "Nobody kent it, but mair than mortal son, O
+God, I did love the lad!"
+
+So seldom in a lifetime had any one seen into this man's heart that
+Spens said, amazed:
+
+"Tammas, Tammas Whamond, it's no like you to break down."
+
+The rusty door of Whamond's heart swung to.
+
+"Who broke down?" he asked fiercely. "Let no member of this Session
+dare to break down till his work be done."
+
+"What work?" Tosh said uneasily. "We canna interfere."
+
+"I would rather resign," Spens said, but shook when Whamond hurled
+these words at him:
+
+"'And Jesus said unto him, No man, having put his hand to the plough
+and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.'"
+
+"It mayna be true," Hendry said eagerly.
+
+"We'll soon see."
+
+"He would gie her up," said Tosh.
+
+"Peter Tosh," answered Whamond sternly, "I call upon you to dismiss
+the congregation."
+
+"Should we no rather haud the meeting oursel's?"
+
+"We have other work afore us," replied the precentor.
+
+"But what can I say?" Tosh asked nervously. "Should I offer up a
+prayer?"
+
+"I warn you all," broke in Hendry, "that though the congregation is
+sitting there quietly, they'll be tigers for the meaning o' this as
+soon as they're in the street."
+
+"Let no ontruth be telled them," said the precentor. "Peter Tosh, do
+your duty. John Spens, remain wi' me."
+
+The church emptied silently, but a buzz of excitement arose outside.
+Many persons tried to enter the vestry, but were ordered away, and
+when Tosh joined his fellow-elders the people were collecting in
+animated groups in the square, or scattering through the wynds for
+news.
+
+"And now," said the precentor, "I call upon the three o' you to come
+wi' me. Hendry Munn, you gang first."
+
+"I maun bide ahint," Hendry said, with a sudden fear, "to lock up the
+kirk."
+
+"I'll lock up the kirk," Whamond answered harshly.
+
+"You maun gie me the keys, though," entreated the kirk officer.
+
+"I'll take care o' the keys," said Whamond.
+
+"I maun hae them," Hendry said, "to open the kirk on Sabbath."
+
+The precentor locked the doors, and buttoned up the keys in his
+trousers pockets.
+
+"Wha kens," he said, in a voice of steel, "that the kirk'll be open
+next Sabbath?"
+
+"Hae some mercy on him, Tammas," Spens implored. "He's no
+twa-and-twenty."
+
+"Wha kens," continued the precentor, "but that the next time this kirk
+is opened will be to preach it toom?"
+
+"What road do we tak'?"
+
+"The road to the hill, whaur he was seen last."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-One.
+
+VARIOUS BODIES CONVERGING ON THE HILL.
+
+
+It would be coming on for a quarter-past nine, and a misty night, when
+I reached the school-house, and I was so weary of mind and body that I
+sat down without taking off my bonnet. I had left the door open, and I
+remember listlessly watching the wind making a target of my candle,
+but never taking a sufficiently big breath to do more than frighten
+it. From this lethargy I was roused by the sound of wheels.
+
+In the daytime our glen road leads to many parts, but in the night
+only to the doctor's. Then the gallop of a horse makes farmers start
+up in bed and cry, "Who's ill?" I went to my door and listened to the
+trap coming swiftly down the lonely glen, but I could not see it, for
+there was a trailing scarf of mist between the school-house and the
+road. Presently I heard the swish of the wheels in water, and so
+learned that they were crossing the ford to come to me. I had been
+unstrung by the events of the evening, and fear at once pressed thick
+upon me that this might be a sequel to them, as indeed it was.
+
+While still out of sight the trap stopped, and I heard some one jump
+from it. Then came this conversation, as distinct as though it had
+been spoken into my ear:
+
+"Can you see the school-house now, McKenzie?"
+
+"I am groping for it, Rintoul. The mist seems to have made off with
+the path."
+
+"Where are you, McKenzie? I have lost sight of you."
+
+It was but a ribbon of mist, and as these words were spoken McKenzie
+broke through it. I saw him, though to him I was only a stone at my
+door.
+
+"I have found the house, Rintoul," he shouted, "and there is a light
+in it, so that the fellow has doubtless returned."
+
+"Then wait a moment for me."
+
+"Stay where you are, Rintoul, I entreat you, and leave him to me. He
+may recognize you."
+
+"No, no, McKenzie, I am sure he never saw me before. I insist on
+accompanying you."
+
+"Your excitement, Rintoul, will betray you. Let me go alone. I can
+question him without rousing his suspicions. Remember, she is only a
+gypsy to him."
+
+"He will learn nothing from me. I am quite calm now."
+
+"Rintoul, I warn you your manner will betray you, and to-morrow it
+will be roared through the countryside that your bride ran away from
+the Spittal in a gypsy dress, and had to be brought back by force."
+
+The altercation may have lasted another minute, but the suddenness
+with which I learned Babbie's secret had left my ears incapable of
+learning more. I daresay the two men started when they found me at my
+door, but they did not remember, as few do remember who have the noisy
+day to forget it in, how far the voice carries in the night.
+
+They came as suddenly on me as I on them, for though they had given
+unintentional notice of their approach, I had lost sight of the
+speakers in their amazing words. Only a moment did young McKenzie's
+anxiety to be spokesman give me to regard Lord Rintoul. I saw that he
+was a thin man and tall, straight in the figure, but his head began to
+sink into his shoulders and not very steady on them. His teeth had
+grip of his under-lip, as if this was a method of controlling his
+agitation, and he was opening and shutting his hands restlessly. He
+had a dog with him which I was to meet again.
+
+"Well met, Mr. Ogilvy," said McKenzie, who knew me slightly, having
+once acted as judge at a cock-fight in the school-house. "We were
+afraid we should have to rouse you."
+
+"You will step inside?" I asked awkwardly, and while I spoke I was
+wondering how long it would be before the earl's excitement broke
+out.
+
+"It is not necessary," McKenzie answered hurriedly. "My friend and I
+(this is Mr. McClure) have been caught in the mist without a lamp, and
+we thought you could perhaps favor us with one."
+
+"Unfortunately I have nothing of the kind," I said, and the state of
+mind I was in is shown by my answering seriously.
+
+"Then we must wish you a good-night and manage as best we can," he
+said; and then before he could touch, with affected indifference, on
+the real object of their visit, the alarmed earl said angrily,
+"McKenzie, no more of this."
+
+"No more of this delay, do you mean, McClure?" asked McKenzie, and
+then, turning to me said, "By the way, Mr. Ogilvy, I think this is our
+second meeting to-night. I met you on the road a few hours ago with
+your wife. Or was it your daughter?"
+
+"It was neither, Mr. McKenzie," I answered, with the calmness of one
+not yet recovered from a shock. "It was a gypsy girl."
+
+"Where is she now?" cried Rintoul feverishly; but McKenzie, speaking
+loudly at the same time, tried to drown his interference as one
+obliterates writing by writing over it.
+
+"A strange companion for a schoolmaster," he said. "What became of
+her?"
+
+"I left her near Caddam Wood," I replied, "but she is probably not
+there now."
+
+"Ah, they are strange creatures, these gypsies!" he said, casting a
+warning look at the earl. "Now I wonder where she had been bound
+for."
+
+"There is a gypsy encampment on the hill," I answered, though I cannot
+say why.
+
+"She is there!" exclaimed Rintoul, and was done with me.
+
+"I daresay," McKenzie said indifferently. "However, it is nothing to
+us. Good-night, sir."
+
+The earl had started for the trap, but McKenzie's salute reminded him
+of a forgotten courtesy, and, despite his agitation, he came back to
+apologize. I admired him for this. Then my thoughtlessness must needs
+mar all.
+
+"Good-night, Mr. McKenzie," I said. "Good-night, Lord Rintoul."
+
+I had addressed him by his real name. Never a turnip fell from a
+bumping, laden cart, and the driver more unconscious of it, than I
+that I had dropped that word. I re-entered the house, but had not
+reached my chair when McKenzie's hand fell roughly on me, and I was
+swung round.
+
+"Mr. Ogilvy," he said, the more savagely I doubt not because his
+passions had been chained so long, "you know more than you would have
+us think. Beware, sir, of recognising that gypsy should you ever see
+her again in different attire. I advise you to have forgotten this
+night when you waken to-morrow morning."
+
+With a menacing gesture he left me, and I sank into a chair, glad to
+lose sight of the glowering eyes with which he had pinned me to the
+wall. I did not hear the trap cross the ford and renew its journey.
+When I looked out next, the night had fallen very dark, and the glen
+was so deathly in its drowsiness that I thought not even the cry of
+murder could tear its eyes open.
+
+The earl and McKenzie would be some distance still from the hill when
+the office-bearers had scoured it in vain for their minister. The
+gypsies, now dancing round their fires to music that, on ordinary
+occasions, Lang Tammas would have stopped by using his fists to the
+glory of God, had seen no minister, they said, and disbelieved in the
+existence of the mysterious Egyptian.
+
+"Liars they are to trade," Spens declared to his companions, "but now
+and again they speak truth, like a standing clock, and I'm beginning
+to think the minister's lassie was invented in the square."
+
+"Not so," said the precentor, "for we saw her oursel's a short year
+syne, and Hendry Munn there allows there's townsfolk that hae passed
+her in the glen mair recently."
+
+"I only allowed," Hendry said cautiously, "that some sic talk had shot
+up sudden-like in the town. Them that pretends they saw her says that
+she joukit quick out o' sicht."
+
+"Ay, and there's another quirk in that," responded the suspicious
+precentor.
+
+"I'se uphaud the minister's sitting in the manse in his slippers by
+this time," Hendry said.
+
+"I'm willing," replied Whamond, "to gang back and speir, or to search
+Caddam next; but let the matter drop I winna, though I ken you're a'
+awid to be hame now."
+
+"And naturally," retorted Tosh, "for the nicht's coming on as black as
+pick, and by the time we're at Caddam we'll no even see the trees."
+
+Toward Caddam, nevertheless, they advanced, hearing nothing but a
+distant wind and the whish of their legs in the broom.
+
+"Whaur's John Spens?" Hendry said suddenly.
+
+They turned back and found Spens rooted to the ground, as a boy
+becomes motionless when he thinks he is within arm's reach of a nest
+and the bird sitting on the eggs.
+
+"What do you see, man?" Hendry whispered.
+
+"As sure as death," answered Spens, awe-struck, "I felt a drap o'
+rain."
+
+"It's no rain we're here to look for," said the precentor.
+
+"Peter Tosh," cried Spens, "it was a drap! Oh, Peter! how are you
+looking at me so queer, Peter, when you should be thanking the Lord
+for the promise that's in that drap?"
+
+"Come away," Whamond said, impatiently; but Spens answered, "No till
+I've offered up a prayer for the promise that's in that drap. Peter
+Tosh, you've forgotten to take off your bonnet."
+
+"Think twice, John Spens," gasped Tosh, "afore you pray for rain this
+nicht."
+
+The others thought him crazy, but he went on, with a catch in his
+voice:
+
+"I felt a drap o' rain mysel', just afore it came on dark so hurried,
+and my first impulse was to wish that I could carry that drap about
+wi' me and look at it. But, John Spens, when I looked up I saw sic a
+change running ower the sky that I thocht hell had taen the place o'
+heaven, and that there was waterspouts gathering therein for the
+drowning o' the world."
+
+"There's no water in hell," the precentor said grimly.
+
+"Genesis ix.," said Spens, "verses 8 to 17. Ay, but, Peter, you've
+startled me, and I'm thinking we should be stepping hame. Is that a
+licht?"
+
+"It'll be in Nanny Webster's," Hendry said, after they had all
+regarded the light.
+
+"I never heard that Nanny needed a candle to licht her to her bed,"
+the precentor muttered.
+
+"She was awa to meet Sanders the day as he came out o' the Tilliedrum
+gaol," Spens remembered, "and I daresay the licht means they're hame
+again."
+
+"It's well kent--" began Hendry, and would have recalled his words.
+
+"Hendry Munn," cried the precentor, "if you hae minded onything that
+may help us, out wi't."
+
+"I was just minding," the kirk officer answered reluctantly, "that
+Nanny allows it's Mr. Dishart that has been keeping her frae the
+poorhouse. You canna censure him for that, Tammas."
+
+"Can I no?" retorted Whamond. "What business has he to befriend a
+woman that belongs to another denomination? I'll see to the bottom o'
+that this nicht. Lads, follow me to Nanny's, and dinna be surprised if
+we find baith the minister and the Egyptian there."
+
+They had not advanced many yards when Spens jumped to the side,
+crying, "Be wary, that's no the wind; it's a machine!"
+
+Immediately the doctor's dogcart was close to them, with Rob Dow for
+its only occupant. He was driving slowly, or Whamond could not have
+escaped the horse's hoofs.
+
+"Is that you, Rob Dow?" said the precentor sourly. "I tell you, you'll
+be gaoled for stealing the doctor's machine."
+
+"The Hielandman wasna muckle hurt, Rob," Hendry said, more
+good-naturedly.
+
+"I ken that," replied Rob, scowling at the four of them. "What are you
+doing here on sic a nicht?"
+
+"Do you see anything strange in the nicht, Rob?" Tosh asked
+apprehensively.
+
+"It's setting to rain," Dow replied. "I dinna see it, but I feel it."
+
+"Ay," said Tosh, eagerly, "but will it be a saft, cowdie sweet
+ding-on?"
+
+"Let the heavens open if they will," interposed Spens recklessly. "I
+would swap the drought for rain, though it comes down in a sheet as in
+the year twelve."
+
+"And like a sheet it'll come," replied Dow, "and the deil'll blaw it
+about wi' his biggest bellowses."
+
+Tosh shivered, but Whamond shook him roughly, saying--
+
+"Keep your oaths to yoursel', Rob Dow, and tell me, hae you seen Mr.
+Dishart?"
+
+"I hinna," Rob answered curtly, preparing to drive on.
+
+"Nor the lassie they call the Egyptian?"
+
+Rob leaped from the dogcart, crying, "What does that mean?"
+
+"Hands off," said the precentor, retreating from him. "It means that
+Mr. Dishart neglected the prayer-meeting this nicht to philander after
+that heathen woman."
+
+"We're no sure o't, Tammas," remonstrated the kirk officer. Dow stood
+quite still. "I believe Rob kens it's true," Hendry added sadly, "or
+he would hae flown at your throat, Tammas Whamond, for saying these
+words."
+
+Even this did not rouse Dow.
+
+"Rob doesna worship the minister as he used to do," said Spens.
+
+"And what for no?" cried the precentor. "Rob Dow, is it because you've
+found out about this woman?"
+
+"You're a pack o' liars," roared Rob, desperately, "and if you say
+again that ony wandering hussy has haud o' the minister, I'll let you
+see whether I can loup at throats."
+
+"You'll swear by the Book," asked Whamond, relentlessly, "that you've
+seen neither o' them this nicht, nor them thegither at any time?"
+
+"I so swear by the Book," answered poor loyal Rob. "But what makes you
+look for Mr. Dishart here?" he demanded, with an uneasy look at the
+light in the mudhouse.
+
+"Go hame," replied the precentor, "and deliver up the machine you
+stole, and leave this Session to do its duty. John, we maun fathom the
+meaning o' that licht."
+
+Dow started, and was probably at that moment within an ace of felling
+Whamond.
+
+"I'll come wi' you," he said, hunting in his mind for a better way of
+helping Gavin.
+
+They were at Nanny's garden, but in the darkness Whamond could not
+find the gate. Rob climbed the paling, and was at once lost sight of.
+Then they saw his head obscure the window. They did not, however, hear
+the groan that startled Babbie.
+
+"There's nobody there," he said, coming back, "but Nanny and Sanders.
+You'll mind Sanders was to be freed the day."
+
+"I'll go in and see Sanders," said Hendry, but the precentor pulled
+him back, saying, "You'll do nothing o' the kind, Hendry Munn; you'll
+come awa wi' me now to the manse."
+
+"It's mair than me and Peter'll do, then," said Spens, who had been
+consulting with the other farmer. "We're gaun as straucht hame as the
+darkness'll let us."
+
+With few more words the Session parted, Spens and Tosh setting off for
+their farms, and Hendry accompanying the precentor. No one will ever
+know where Dow went. I can fancy him, however, returning to the wood,
+and there drawing rein. I can fancy his mind made up to watch the
+mudhouse until Gavin and the gypsy separated, and then pounce upon
+her. I daresay his whole plot could be condensed into a sentence, "If
+she's got rid o' this nicht, we may cheat the Session yet." But this
+is mere surmise. All I know is that he waited near Nanny's house, and
+by and by heard another trap coming up Windyghoul. That was just
+before the ten o'clock bell began to ring.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Two.
+
+LEADING SWIFTLY TO THE APPALLING MARRIAGE.
+
+
+The little minister bowed his head in assent when Babbie's cry, "Oh,
+Gavin, do you?" leapt in front of her unselfish wish that he should
+care for her no more.
+
+"But that matters very little now," he said.
+
+She was his to do with as he willed; and, perhaps, the joy of knowing
+herself loved still, begot a wild hope that he would refuse to give
+her up. If so, these words laid it low, but even the sentence they
+passed upon her could not kill the self-respect that would be hers
+henceforth. "That matters very little now," the man said, but to the
+woman it seemed to matter more than anything else in the world.
+
+Throughout the remainder of this interview until the end came, Gavin
+never faltered. His duty and hers lay so plainly before him that there
+could be no straying from it. Did Babbie think him strangely calm? At
+the Glen Quharity gathering I once saw Rob Angus lift a boulder with
+such apparent ease that its weight was discredited, until the cry
+arose that the effort had dislocated his arm. Perhaps Gavin's
+quietness deceived the Egyptian similarly. Had he stamped, she might
+have understood better what he suffered, standing there on the hot
+embers of his passion.
+
+"We must try to make amends now," he said gravely, "for the wrong we
+have done."
+
+"The wrong I have done," she said, correcting him. "You will make it
+harder for me if you blame yourself. How vile I was in those days!"
+
+"Those days," she called them, they seemed so far away.
+
+"Do not cry, Babbie," Gavin replied, gently. "He knew what you were,
+and why, and He pities you. 'For His anger endureth but a moment: in
+His favor is life: weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in
+the morning.'"
+
+"Not to me."
+
+"Yes, to you," he answered. "Babbie, you will return to the Spittal
+now, and tell Lord Rintoul everything."
+
+"If you wish it."
+
+"Not because I wish it, but because it is right. He must be told that
+you do not love him."
+
+"I never pretended to him that I did," Babbie said, looking up. "Oh,"
+she added, with emphasis, "he knows that. He thinks me incapable of
+caring for any one."
+
+"And that is why he must be told of me," Gavin replied. "You are no
+longer the woman you were, Babbie, and you know it, and I know it, but
+he does not know it. He shall know it before he decides whether he is
+to marry you."
+
+Babbie looked at Gavin, and wondered he did not see that this decision
+lay with him.
+
+"Nevertheless," she said, "the wedding will take place to-morrow; if
+it did not, Lord Rintoul would be the scorn of his friends."
+
+"If it does," the minister answered, "he will be the scorn of himself.
+Babbie, there is a chance."
+
+"There is no chance," she told him. "I shall be back at the Spittal
+without any one's knowing of my absence, and when I begin to tell him
+of you, he will tremble, lest it means my refusal to marry him; when
+he knows it does not, he will wonder only why I told him anything."
+
+"He will ask you to take time----"
+
+"No, he will ask me to put on my wedding-dress. You must not think
+anything else possible."
+
+"So be it, then," Gavin said firmly.
+
+"Yes, it will be better so," Babbie answered, and then, seeing him
+misunderstand her meaning, exclaimed reproachfully, "I was not
+thinking of myself. In the time to come, whatever be my lot, I shall
+have the one consolation, that this is best for you. Think of your
+mother."
+
+"She will love you," Gavin said, "when I tell her of you."
+
+"Yes," said Babbie, wringing her hands; "she will almost love me, but
+for what? For not marrying you. That is the only reason any one in
+Thrums will have for wishing me well."
+
+"No others," Gavin answered, "will ever know why I remained
+unmarried."
+
+"Will you never marry?" Babbie asked, exultingly. "Ah!" she cried,
+ashamed, "but you must."
+
+"Never."
+
+Well, many a man and many a woman has made that vow in similar
+circumstances, and not all have kept it. But shall we who are old
+smile cynically at the brief and burning passion of the young? "The
+day," you say, "will come when--" Good sir, hold your peace. Their
+agony was great and now is dead, and, maybe, they have forgotten where
+it lies buried; but dare you answer lightly when I ask you which of
+these things is saddest?
+
+Babbie believed his "Never," and, doubtless, thought no worse of him
+for it; but she saw no way of comforting him save by disparagement of
+herself.
+
+"You must think of your congregation," she said. "A minister with a
+gypsy wife----"
+
+"Would have knocked them about with a flail," Gavin interposed,
+showing his teeth at the thought of the precentor, "until they did her
+reverence."
+
+She shook her head, and told him of her meeting with Micah Dow. It
+silenced him; not, however, on account of its pathos, as she thought,
+but because it interpreted the riddle of Rob's behavior.
+
+"Nevertheless," he said ultimately, "my duty is not to do what is
+right in my people's eyes, but what seems right in my own."
+
+Babbie had not heard him.
+
+"I saw a face at the window just now," she whispered, drawing closer
+to him.
+
+"There was no face there; the very thought of Rob Dow raises him
+before you," Gavin answered reassuringly, though Rob was nearer at
+that moment than either of them thought.
+
+"I must go away at once," she said, still with her eyes on the window.
+"No, no, you shall not come or stay with me; it is you who are in
+danger."
+
+"Do not fear for me."
+
+"I must, if you will not. Before you came in, did I not hear you speak
+of a meeting you had to attend to-night?"
+
+"My pray--" His teeth met on the word; so abruptly did it conjure up
+the forgotten prayer-meeting that before the shock could reach his
+mind he stood motionless, listening for the bell. For one instant all
+that had taken place since he last heard it might have happened
+between two of its tinkles; Babbie passed from before him like a
+figure in a panorama, and he saw, instead, a congregation in their
+pews.
+
+"What do you see?" Babbie cried in alarm, for he seemed to be gazing
+at the window.
+
+"Only you," he replied, himself again; "I am coming with you."
+
+"You must let me go alone," she entreated; "if not for your own
+safety"--but it was only him she considered--"then for the sake of
+Lord Rintoul. Were you and I to be seen together now, his name and
+mine might suffer."
+
+It was an argument the minister could not answer save by putting his
+hands over his face; his distress made Babbie strong; she moved to the
+door, trying to smile.
+
+"Go, Babbie!" Gavin said, controlling his voice, though it had been a
+smile more pitiful than her tears. "God has you in His keeping; it is
+not His will to give me this to bear for you."
+
+They were now in the garden.
+
+"Do not think of me as unhappy," she said; "it will be happiness to me
+to try to be all you would have me be."
+
+He ought to have corrected her. "All that God would have me be," is
+what she should have said. But he only replied, "You will be a good
+woman, and none such can be altogether unhappy; God sees to that."
+
+He might have kissed her, and perhaps she thought so.
+
+"I am--I am going now, dear," she said, and came back a step because
+he did not answer; then she went on, and was out of his sight at three
+yards' distance. Neither of them heard the approaching dogcart.
+
+"You see, I am bearing it quite cheerfully," she said. "I shall have
+everything a woman loves; do not grieve for me so much."
+
+Gavin dared not speak nor move. Never had he found life so hard; but
+he was fighting with the ignoble in himself, and winning. She opened
+the gate, and it might have been a signal to the dogcart to stop. They
+both heard a dog barking, and then the voice of Lord Rintoul:
+
+"That is a light in the window. Jump down, McKenzie, and inquire."
+
+Gavin took one step nearer Babbie and stopped. He did not see how all
+her courage went from her, so that her knees yielded, and she held
+out her arms to him, but he heard a great sob and then his name.
+
+"Gavin, I am afraid."
+
+Gavin understood now, and I say he would have been no man to leave her
+after that; only a moment was allowed him, and it was their last
+chance on earth. He took it. His arm went round his beloved, and he
+drew her away from Nanny's.
+
+McKenzie found both house and garden empty. "And yet," he said, "I
+swear some one passed the window as we sighted it."
+
+"Waste no more time," cried the impatient earl. "We must be very near
+the hill now. You will have to lead the horse, McKenzie, in this
+darkness; the dog may find the way through the broom for us."
+
+"The dog has run on," McKenzie replied, now in an evil temper. "Who
+knows, it may be with her now? So we must feel our way cautiously;
+there is no call for capsizing the trap in our haste." But there was
+call for haste if they were to reach the gypsy encampment before Gavin
+and Babbie were made man and wife over the tongs.
+
+The Spittal dogcart rocked as it dragged its way through the broom.
+Rob Dow followed. The ten o'clock bell began to ring.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Three.
+
+WHILE THE TEN O'CLOCK BELL WAS RINGING.
+
+  _In the square and wynds--weavers in groups_:
+
+
+"No, no, Davit, Mr. Dishart hadna felt the blow the piper gave him
+till he ascended the pulpit to conduct the prayer-meeting for rain,
+and then he fainted awa. Tammas Whamond and Peter Tosh carried him to
+the Session-house. Ay, an awful scene."
+
+"How did the minister no come to the meeting? I wonder how you could
+expect it, Snecky, and his mother taen so suddenly ill; he's at her
+bedside, but the doctor has little hope."
+
+"This is what has occurred, Tailor: Mr. Dishart never got the length
+of the pulpit. He fell in a swound on the vestry floor. What caused
+it? Oh, nothing but the heat. Thrums is so dry that one spark would
+set it in a blaze."
+
+"I canna get at the richts o' what keeped him frae the meeting, Femie,
+but it had something to do wi' an Egyptian on the hill. Very like he
+had been trying to stop the gypsy marriage there. I gaed to the manse
+to speir at Jean what was wrang, but I'm thinking I telled her mair
+than she could tell me."
+
+"Man, man, Andrew, the wite o't lies wi' Peter Tosh. He thocht we was
+to hae sic a terrible rain that he implored the minister no to pray
+for it, and so angry was Mr. Dishart that he ordered the whole Session
+out o' the kirk. I saw them in Couthie's close, and michty dour they
+looked."
+
+"Yes, as sure as death, Tammas Whamond locked the kirk-door in Mr.
+Dishart's face."
+
+"I'm a' shaking! And small wonder, Marget, when I've heard this minute
+that Mr. Dishart's been struck by lichtning while looking for Rob Dow.
+He's no killed, but, woe's me! they say he'll never preach again."
+
+"Nothing o' the kind. It was Rob that the lichtning struck dead in the
+doctor's machine. The horse wasna touched; it came tearing down the
+Roods wi' the corpse sitting in the machine like a living man."
+
+"What are you listening to, woman? Is it to a dog barking? I've heard
+it this while, but it's far awa."
+
+  _In the manse kitchen_:
+
+"Jean, did you not hear me ring? I want you to--Why are you staring
+out at the window, Jean?"
+
+"I--I was just hearkening to the ten o'clock bell, ma'am."
+
+"I never saw you doing nothing before! Put the heater in the fire,
+Jean. I want to iron the minister's neckcloths. The prayer-meeting is
+long in coming out, is it not?"
+
+"The--the drouth, ma'am, has been so cruel hard."
+
+"And, to my shame, I am so comfortable that I almost forgot how others
+are suffering. But my son never forgets, Jean. You are not crying, are
+you?"
+
+"No, ma'am."
+
+"Bring the iron to the parlor, then. And if the minis--Why did you
+start, Jean? I only heard a dog barking."
+
+"I thocht, ma'am--at first I thocht it was Mr. Dishart opening the
+door. Ay, it's just a dog; some gypsy dog on the hill, I'm thinking,
+for sound would carry far the nicht."
+
+"Even you, Jean, are nervous at nights, I see, if there is no man in
+the house. We shall hear no more distant dogs barking, I warrant, when
+the minister comes home."
+
+"When he comes home, ma'am."
+
+  _On the middle of a hill--a man and a woman_:
+
+"Courage, beloved; we are nearly there."
+
+"But, Gavin, I cannot see the encampment."
+
+"The night is too dark."
+
+"But the gypsy fires?"
+
+"They are in the Toad's-hole."
+
+"Listen to that dog barking."
+
+"There are several dogs at the encampment, Babbie."
+
+"There is one behind us. See, there it is!"
+
+"I have driven it away, dear. You are trembling."
+
+"What we are doing frightens me, Gavin. It is at your heels again!"
+
+"It seems to know you."
+
+"Oh, Gavin, it is Lord Rintoul's collie Snap. It will bite you."
+
+"No, I have driven it back again. Probably the earl is following us."
+
+"Gavin, I cannot go on with this."
+
+"Quicker, Babbie."
+
+"Leave me, dear, and save yourself."
+
+"Lean on me, Babbie."
+
+"Oh, Gavin, is there no way but this?"
+
+"No sure way."
+
+"Even though we are married to-night----"
+
+"We shall be married in five minutes, and then, whatever befall, he
+cannot have you."
+
+"But after?"
+
+"I will take you straight to the manse, to my mother."
+
+"Were it not for that dog, I should think we were alone on the hill."
+
+"But we are not. See, there are the gypsy fires."
+
+  _On the west side of the hill--two figures_:
+
+"Tammas, Tammas Whamond, I've lost you. Should we gang to the manse
+down the fields?"
+
+"Wheesht, Hendry!"
+
+"What are you listening for?"
+
+"I heard a dog barking."
+
+"Only a gypsy dog, Tammas, barking at the coming storm."
+
+"The gypsy dogs are all tied up, and this one's atween us and the
+Toad's-hole. What was that?"
+
+"It was nothing but the rubbing of the branches in the cemetery on ane
+another. It's said, trees mak' that fearsome sound when they're
+terrified."
+
+"It was a dog barking at somebody that's stoning it. I ken that sound,
+Hendry Munn."
+
+"May I die the death, Tammas Whamond, if a great drap o' rain didna
+strike me the now, and I swear it was warm. I'm for running hame."
+
+"I'm for seeing who drove awa that dog. Come back wi' me, Hendry."
+
+"I winna. There's no a soul on the hill but you and me and thae
+daffing and drinking gypsies. How do you no answer me, Tammas? Hie,
+Tammas Whamond, whaur are you? He's gone! Ay, then I'll mak' tracks
+hame."
+
+  _In the broom--a dogcart_:
+
+"Do you see nothing yet, McKenzie?"
+
+"Scarce the broom at my knees, Rintoul. There is not a light on the
+hill."
+
+"McKenzie, can that schoolmaster have deceived us?"
+
+"It is probable."
+
+"Urge on the horse, however. There is a road through the broom, I
+know. Have we stuck again?"
+
+"Rintoul, she is not here. I promised to help you to bring her back to
+the Spittal before this escapade became known, but we have failed to
+find her. If she is to be saved, it must be by herself. I daresay she
+has returned already. Let me turn the horse's head. There is a storm
+brewing."
+
+"I will search this gypsy encampment first, if it is on the hill.
+Hark! that was a dog's bark. Yes, it is Snap; but he would not bark at
+nothing. Why do you look behind you so often, McKenzie?"
+
+"For some time, Rintoul, it has seemed to me that we are being
+followed. Listen!"
+
+"I hear nothing. At last, McKenzie, at last, we are out of the
+broom."
+
+"And as I live, Rintoul, I see the gypsy lights!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It might have been a lantern that was flashed across the hill. Then
+all that part of the world went suddenly on fire. Everything was
+horribly distinct in that white light. The firs of Caddam were so near
+that it seemed to have arrested them in a silent march upon the hill.
+The grass would not hide a pebble. The ground was scored with shadows
+of men and things. Twice the light flickered and recovered itself. A
+red serpent shot across it, and then again black night fell.
+
+The hill had been illumined thus for nearly half a minute. During that
+time not even a dog stirred. The shadows of human beings lay on the
+ground as motionless as logs. What had been revealed seemed less a
+gypsy marriage than a picture. Or was it that during the ceremony
+every person on the hill had been turned into stone? The gypsy king,
+with his arm upraised, had not had time to let it fall. The men and
+women behind him had their mouths open, as if struck when on the point
+of calling out. Lord Rintoul had risen in the dogcart and was leaning
+forward. One of McKenzie's feet was on the shaft. The man crouching
+in the dogcart's wake had flung up his hands to protect his face. The
+precentor, his neck outstretched, had a hand on each knee. All eyes
+were fixed, as in the death glare, on Gavin and Babbie, who stood
+before the king, their hands clasped over the tongs. Fear was
+petrified on the woman's face, determination on the man's.
+
+They were all released by the crack of the thunder, but for another
+moment none could have swaggered.
+
+"That was Lord Rintoul in the dogcart," Babbie whispered, drawing in
+her breath.
+
+"Yes, dear," Gavin answered resolutely, "and now is the time for me to
+have my first and last talk with him. Remain here, Babbie. Do not move
+till I come back."
+
+"But, Gavin, he has seen. I fear him still."
+
+"He cannot touch you now, Babbie. You are my wife."
+
+In the vivid light Gavin had thought the dogcart much nearer than it
+was. He called Lord Rintoul's name, but got no answer. There were
+shouts behind, gypsies running from the coming rain, dogs whining, but
+silence in front. The minister moved on some paces. Away to the left
+he heard voices--
+
+"Who was the man, McKenzie?"
+
+"My lord, I have lost sight of you. This is not the way to the camp."
+
+"Tell me, McKenzie, that you did not see what I saw."
+
+"Rintoul, I beseech you to turn back. We are too late."
+
+"We are not too late."
+
+Gavin broke through the darkness between them and him, but they were
+gone. He called to them, and stopped to listen to their feet.
+
+"Is that you, Gavin?" Babbie asked just then.
+
+For reply, the man who had crept up to her clapped his hand upon her
+mouth. Only the beginning of a scream escaped from her. A strong arm
+drove her quickly southward.
+
+Gavin heard her cry, and ran back to the encampment. Babbie was gone.
+None of the gypsies had seen her since the darkness came back. He
+rushed hither and thither with a torch that only showed his distracted
+face to others. He flung up his arms in appeal for another moment of
+light; then he heard Babbie scream again, and this time it was from a
+distance. He dashed after her; he heard a trap speeding down the green
+sward through the broom.
+
+Lord Rintoul had kidnapped Babbie. Gavin had no other thought as he
+ran after the dogcart from which the cry had come. The earl's dog
+followed him, snapping at his heels. The rain began.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Four.
+
+THE GREAT RAIN.
+
+
+Gavin passed on through Windyghoul, thinking in his frenzy that he
+still heard the trap. In a rain that came down like iron rods every
+other sound was beaten dead. He slipped, and before he could regain
+his feet the dog bit him. To protect himself from dikes and trees and
+other horrors of the darkness he held his arm before him, but soon it
+was driven to his side. Wet whips cut his brow so that he had to
+protect it with his hands, until it had to bear the lash again, for
+they would not. Now he had forced up his knees, and would have
+succumbed but for a dread of being pinned to the earth. This fight
+between the man and the rain went on all night, and long before it
+ended the man was past the power of thinking.
+
+In the ringing of the ten o'clock bell Gavin had lived the seventh
+part of a man's natural life. Only action was required of him. That
+accomplished, his mind had begun to work again, when suddenly the loss
+of Babbie stopped it, as we may put out a fire with a great coal. The
+last thing he had reflected about was a dogcart in motion, and,
+consequently, this idea clung to him. His church, his mother, were
+lost knowledge of, but still he seemed to hear the trap in front.
+
+The rain increased in violence, appalling even those who heard it from
+under cover. However rain may storm, though it be an army of archers
+battering roofs and windows, it is only terrifying when the noise
+swells every instant. In those hours of darkness it again and again
+grew in force and doubled its fury, and was louder, louder, and
+louder, until its next attack was to be more than men and women could
+listen to. They held each other's hands and stood waiting. Then
+abruptly it abated, and people could speak. I believe a rain that
+became heavier every second for ten minutes would drive many listeners
+mad. Gavin was in it on a night that tried us repeatedly for quite
+half that time.
+
+By and by even the vision of Babbie in the dogcart was blotted out. If
+nothing had taken its place, he would not have gone on probably; and
+had he turned back objectless, his strength would have succumbed to
+the rain. Now he saw Babbie and Rintoul being married by a minister
+who was himself, and there was a fair company looking on, and always
+when he was on the point of shouting to himself, whom he could see
+clearly, that this woman was already married, the rain obscured his
+words and the light went out. Presently the ceremony began again,
+always to stop at the same point. He saw it in the lightning-flash
+that had startled the hill. It gave him courage to fight his way
+onward, because he thought he must be heard if he could draw nearer to
+the company.
+
+A regiment of cavalry began to trouble him. He heard it advancing from
+the Spittal, but was not dismayed, for it was, as yet, far distant.
+The horsemen came thundering on, filling the whole glen of Quharity.
+Now he knew that they had been sent out to ride him down. He paused in
+dread, until they had swept past him. They came back to look for him,
+riding more furiously than ever, and always missed him, yet his fears
+of the next time were not lessened. They were only the rain.
+
+All through the night the dog followed him. He would forget it for a
+time, and then it would be so close that he could see it dimly. He
+never heard it bark, but it snapped at him, and a grin had become the
+expression of its face. He stoned it, he even flung himself at it, he
+addressed it in caressing tones, and always with the result that it
+disappeared, to come back presently.
+
+He found himself walking in a lake, and now even the instinct of
+self-preservation must have been flickering, for he waded on,
+rejoicing merely in getting rid of the dog. Something in the water
+rose and struck him. Instead of stupefying him, the blow brought him
+to his senses, and he struggled for his life. The ground slipped
+beneath his feet many times, but at last he was out of the water. That
+he was out in a flood he did not realize; yet he now acted like one in
+full possession of his faculties. When his feet sank in water, he drew
+back; and many times he sought shelter behind banks and rocks, first
+testing their firmness with his hands. Once a torrent of stones,
+earth, and heather carried him down a hillside until he struck against
+a tree. He twined his arms round it, and had just done so when it fell
+with him. After that, when he touched trees growing in water, he fled
+from them, thus probably saving himself from death.
+
+What he heard now might have been the roll and crack of the thunder.
+It sounded in his ear like nothing else. But it was really something
+that swept down the hill in roaring spouts of water, and it passed on
+both sides of him so that at one moment, had he paused, it would have
+crashed into him, and at another he was only saved by stopping. He
+felt that the struggle in the dark was to go on till the crack of
+doom.
+
+Then he cast himself upon the ground. It moved beneath him like some
+great animal, and he rose and stole away from it. Several times did
+this happen. The stones against which his feet struck seemed to
+acquire life from his touch. So strong had he become, or so weak all
+other things, that whatever clump he laid hands on by which to pull
+himself out of the water was at once rooted up.
+
+The daylight would not come. He longed passionately for it. He tried
+to remember what it was like, and could not; he had been blind so
+long. It was away in front somewhere, and he was struggling to
+overtake it. He expected to see it from a dark place, when he would
+rush forward to bathe his arms in it, and then the elements that were
+searching the world for him would see him and he would perish. But
+death did not seem too great a penalty to pay for light.
+
+And at last day did come back, gray and drear. He saw suddenly once
+more. I think he must have been wandering the glen with his eyes shut,
+as one does shut them involuntarily against the hidden dangers of
+black night. How different was daylight from what he had expected! He
+looked, and then shut his dazed eyes again, for the darkness was less
+horrible than the day. Had he indeed seen, or only dreamed that he
+saw? Once more he looked to see what the world was like; and the sight
+that met his eyes was so mournful that he who had fought through the
+long night now sank hopeless and helpless among the heather. The dog
+was not far away, and it, too, lost heart. Gavin held out his hand,
+and Snap crept timidly toward him. He unloosened his coat, and the dog
+nestled against him, cowed and shivering, hiding its head from the
+day. Thus they lay, and the rain beat upon them.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Five.
+
+THE GLEN AT BREAK OF DAY.
+
+
+My first intimation that the burns were in flood came from Waster
+Lunny, close on the strike of ten o'clock. This was some minutes
+before they had any rain in Thrums. I was in the school-house, now
+piecing together the puzzle Lord Rintoul had left with me, and anon
+starting upright as McKenzie's hand seemed to tighten on my arm.
+Waster Lunny had been whistling to me (with his fingers in his mouth)
+for some time before I heard him and hurried out. I was surprised and
+pleased, knowing no better, to be met on the threshold by a whisk of
+rain.
+
+The night was not then so dark but that when I reached the Quharity I
+could see the farmer take shape on the other side of it. He wanted me
+to exult with him, I thought, in the end of the drought, and I shouted
+that I would fling him the stilts.
+
+"It's yoursel' that wants them," he answered excitedly, "if you're
+fleid to be left alone in the school-house the nicht. Do you hear me,
+dominie? There has been frichtsome rain among the hills, and the Bog
+burn is coming down like a sea. It has carried awa the miller's brig,
+and the steading o' Muckle Pirley is standing three feet in water."
+
+"You're dreaming, man," I roared back, but beside his news he held my
+doubts of no account.
+
+"The Retery's in flood," he went on, "and running wild through Hazel
+Wood; T'nowdunnie's tattie field's out o' sicht, and at the Kirkton
+they're fleid they've lost twa kye."
+
+"There has been no rain here," I stammered, incredulously.
+
+"It's coming now," he replied. "And listen: the story's out that the
+Backbone has fallen into the loch. You had better cross, dominie, and
+thole out the nicht wi' us."
+
+The Backbone was a piece of mountain-side overhanging a loch among the
+hills, and legend said that it would one day fall forward and squirt
+all the water into the glen. Something of the kind had happened, but I
+did not believe it then; with little wit I pointed to the shallow
+Quharity.
+
+"It may come down at any minute," the farmer answered, "and syne, mind
+you, you'll be five miles frae Waster Lunny, for there'll be no
+crossing but by the Brig o' March. If you winna come, I maun awa back.
+I mauna bide langer on the wrang side o' the Moss ditch, though it has
+been as dry this month back as a rabbit's roady. But if you--" His
+voice changed. "God's sake, man," he cried, "you're ower late. Look at
+that! Dinna look--run, run!"
+
+If I had not run before he bade me, I might never have run again on
+earth. I had seen a great shadowy yellow river come riding down the
+Quharity. I sprang from it for my life; and when next I looked behind,
+it was upon a turbulent loch, the further bank lost in darkness. I was
+about to shout to Waster Lunny, when a monster rose in the torrent
+between me and the spot where he had stood. It frightened me to
+silence until it fell, when I knew it was but a tree that had been
+flung on end by the flood. For a time there was no answer to my cries,
+and I thought the farmer had been swept away. Then I heard his
+whistle, and back I ran recklessly through the thickening darkness to
+the school-house. When I saw the tree rise, I had been on ground
+hardly wet as yet with the rain; but by the time Waster Lunny sent
+that reassuring whistle to me I was ankle-deep in water, and the rain
+was coming down like hail. I saw no lightning.
+
+For the rest of the night I was only out once, when I succeeded in
+reaching the hen-house and brought all my fowls safely to the kitchen,
+except a hen which would not rise off her young. Between us we had the
+kitchen floor, a pool of water; and the rain had put out my fires
+already, as effectually as if it had been an overturned broth-pot.
+That I never took off my clothes that night I need not say, though of
+what was happening in the glen I could only guess. A flutter against
+my window now and again, when the rain had abated, told me of another
+bird that had flown there to die; and with Waster Lunny, I kept up
+communication by waving a light, to which he replied in a similar
+manner. Before morning, however, he ceased to answer my signals, and I
+feared some catastrophe had occurred at the farm. As it turned out,
+the family was fighting with the flood for the year's shearing of
+wool, half of which eventually went down the waters, with the
+wool-shed on top of it.
+
+The school-house stands too high to fear any flood, but there were
+moments when I thought the rain would master it. Not only the windows
+and the roof were rattling then, but all the walls, and I was like one
+in a great drum. When the rain was doing its utmost, I heard no other
+sound; but when the lull came, there was the wash of a heavy river, or
+a crack as of artillery that told of landslips, or the plaintive cry
+of the peesweep as it rose in the air, trying to entice the waters
+away from its nest.
+
+It was a dreary scene that met my gaze at break of day. Already the
+Quharity had risen six feet, and in many parts of the glen it was two
+hundred yards wide. Waster Lunny's cornfield looked like a bog grown
+over with rushes, and what had been his turnips had become a lake with
+small islands in it. No dike stood whole except one that the farmer,
+unaided, had built in a straight line from the road to the top of
+Mount Bare, and my own, the further end of which dipped in water. Of
+the plot of firs planted fifty years earlier to help on Waster Lunny's
+crops, only a triangle had withstood the night.
+
+Even with the aid of my field-glass I could not estimate the damage on
+more distant farms, for the rain, though now thin and soft, as it
+continued for six days, was still heavy and of a brown color. After
+breakfast--which was interrupted by my bantam cock's twice spilling my
+milk--I saw Waster Lunny and his son, Matthew, running towards the
+shepherd's house with ropes in their hands. The house, I thought, must
+be in the midst beyond; and then I sickened, knowing all at once that
+it should be on this side of the mist. When I had nerve to look again,
+I saw that though the roof had fallen in, the shepherd was astride one
+of the walls, from which he was dragged presently through the water by
+the help of the ropes. I remember noticing that he returned to his
+house with the rope still about him, and concluded that he had gone
+back to save some of his furniture. I was wrong, however. There was
+too much to be done at the farm to allow this, but Waster Lunny had
+consented to Duncan's forcing his way back to the shieling to stop the
+clock. To both men it seemed horrible to let a clock go on ticking in
+a deserted house.
+
+Having seen this rescue accomplished, I was letting my glass roam in
+the opposite direction, when one of its shakes brought into view
+something on my own side of the river. I looked at it long, and saw it
+move slightly. Was it a human being? No, it was a dog. No, it was a
+dog and something else. I hurried out to see more clearly, and after a
+first glance the glass shook so in my hands that I had to rest it on
+the dike. For a full minute, I daresay, did I look through the glass
+without blinking, and then I needed to look no more. That black patch
+was, indeed, Gavin.
+
+He lay quite near the school-house, but I had to make a circuit of
+half a mile to reach him. It was pitiful to see the dog doing its best
+to come to me, and falling every few steps. The poor brute was
+discolored almost beyond recognition; and when at last it reached me,
+it lay down at my feet and licked them. I stepped over it and ran on
+recklessly to Gavin. At first I thought he was dead. If tears rolled
+down my cheeks, they were not for him.
+
+I was no strong man even in those days, but I carried him to the
+school-house, the dog crawling after us. Gavin I put upon my bed, and
+I lay down beside him, holding him close to me, that some of the heat
+of my body might be taken in by his. When he was able to look at me,
+however, it was not with understanding, and in vain did my anxiety
+press him with questions. Only now and again would some word in my
+speech strike upon his brain and produce at least an echo. To "Did you
+meet Lord Rintoul's dogcart?" he sat up, saying quickly:
+
+"Listen, the dogcart!"
+
+"Egyptian" was not that forenoon among the words he knew, and I did
+not think of mentioning "hill." At "rain" he shivered; but "Spittal"
+was what told me most.
+
+"He has taken her back," he replied at once, from which I learned that
+Gavin now knew as much of Babbie as I did.
+
+I made him as comfortable as possible, and despairing of learning
+anything from him in his present state, I let him sleep. Then I went
+out into the rain, very anxious, and dreading what he might have to
+tell me when he woke. I waded and jumped my way as near to the farm as
+I dared go, and Waster Lunny, seeing me, came to the water's edge. At
+this part the breadth of the flood was not forty yards, yet for a
+time our voices could no more cross its roar than one may send a
+snowball through a stone wall. I know not whether the river then
+quieted for a space, or if it was only that the ears grow used to dins
+as the eyes distinguish the objects in a room that is at first black
+to them; but after a little we were able to shout our remarks across,
+much as boys fling pebbles, many to fall into the water, but one
+occasionally to reach the other side. Waster Lunny would have talked
+of the flood, but I had not come here for that.
+
+"How were you home so early from the prayer-meeting last night?" I
+bawled.
+
+"No meeting ... I came straucht hame ... but terrible stories ... Mr.
+Dishart," was all I caught after Waster Lunny had flung his words
+across a dozen times.
+
+I could not decide whether it would be wise to tell him that Gavin was
+in the school-house, and while I hesitated he continued to shout:
+
+"Some woman ... the Session ... Lang Tammas ... God forbid ... maun
+back to the farm ... byre running like a mill-dam."
+
+He signed to me that he must be off, but my signals delayed him, and
+after much trouble he got my question, "Any news about Lord Rintoul?"
+My curiosity about the earl must have surprised him, but he answered:
+
+"Marriage is to be the day ... cannon."
+
+I signed that I did not grasp his meaning.
+
+"A cannon is to be fired as soon as they're man and wife," he
+bellowed. "We'll hear it."
+
+With that we parted. On my way home, I remember, I stepped on a brood
+of drowned partridge. I was only out half an hour, but I had to wring
+my clothes as if they were fresh from the tub.
+
+The day wore on, and I did not disturb the sleeper. A dozen times, I
+suppose, I had to relight my fire of wet peats and roots; but I had
+plenty of time to stare out at the window, plenty of time to think.
+Probably Gavin's life depended on his sleeping, but that was not what
+kept my hands off him. Knowing so little of what had happened in
+Thrums since I left it, I was forced to guess, and my conclusion was
+that the earl had gone off with his own, and that Gavin in a frenzy
+had followed them. My wisest course, I thought, was to let him sleep
+until I heard the cannon, when his struggle for a wife must end. Fifty
+times at least did I stand regarding him as he slept; and if I did not
+pity his plight sufficiently, you know the reason. What were
+Margaret's sufferings at this moment? Was she wringing her hands for
+her son lost in the flood, her son in disgrace with the congregation?
+By one o'clock no cannon had sounded, and my suspense had become
+intolerable. I shook Gavin awake, and even as I shook him demanded a
+knowledge of all that had happened since we parted at Nanny's gate.
+
+"How long ago is that?" he asked, with bewilderment.
+
+"It was last night," I answered. "This morning I found you senseless
+on the hillside, and brought you here, to the Glen Quharity
+school-house. That dog was with you."
+
+He looked at the dog, but I kept my eyes on him, and I saw intelligence
+creep back, like a blush, into his face.
+
+"Now I remember," he said, shuddering. "You have proved yourself my
+friend, sir, twice in the four and twenty hours."
+
+"Only once, I fear," I replied gloomily. "I was no friend when I sent
+you to the earl's bride last night."
+
+"You know who she is?" he cried, clutching me, and finding it agony to
+move his limbs.
+
+"I know now," I said, and had to tell him how I knew before he would
+answer another question. Then I became listener, and you who read know
+to what alarming story.
+
+"And all that time," I cried reproachfully, when he had done, "you
+gave your mother not a thought."
+
+"Not a thought," he answered; and I saw that he pronounced a harsher
+sentence on himself than could have come from me. "All that time!" he
+repeated, after a moment. "It was only a few minutes, while the ten
+o'clock bell was ringing."
+
+"Only a few minutes," I said, "but they changed the channel of the
+Quharity, and perhaps they have done not less to you."
+
+"That may be," he answered gravely, "but it is of the present I must
+think just now. Mr. Ogilvy, what assurance have I, while lying here
+helpless, that the marriage at the Spittal is not going on?"
+
+"None, I hope," I said to myself, and listened longingly for the
+cannon. But to him I only pointed out that no woman need go through a
+form of marriage against her will.
+
+"Rintoul carried her off with no possible purport," he said, "but to
+set my marriage at defiance, and she has had a conviction always that
+to marry me would be to ruin me. It was only in the shiver Lord
+Rintoul's voice in the darkness sent through her that she yielded to
+my wishes. If she thought that marriage last night could be annulled
+by another to-day, she would consent to the second, I believe, to save
+me from the effects of the first. You are incredulous, sir; but you do
+not know of what sacrifices love is capable."
+
+Something of that I knew, but I did not tell him. I had seen from his
+manner rather than his words that he doubted the validity of the gypsy
+marriage, which the king had only consented to celebrate because
+Babbie was herself an Egyptian. The ceremony had been interrupted in
+the middle.
+
+"It was no marriage," I said, with a confidence I was far from
+feeling.
+
+"In the sight of God," he replied excitedly, "we took each other for
+man and wife."
+
+I had to hold him down in bed.
+
+"You are too weak to stand, man," I said, "and yet you think you could
+start off this minute for the Spittal."
+
+"I must go," he cried. "She is my wife. That impious marriage may have
+taken place already."
+
+"Oh, that it had!" was my prayer. "It has not," I said to him. "A
+cannon is to be fired immediately after the ceremony, and all the glen
+will hear it."
+
+I spoke on the impulse, thinking to allay his desire to be off; but he
+said, "Then I may yet be in time." Somewhat cruelly I let him rise,
+that he might realize his weakness. Every bone in him cried out at his
+first step, and he sank into a chair.
+
+"You will go to the Spittal for me?" he implored.
+
+"I will not," I told him. "You are asking me to fling away my life."
+
+To prove my words I opened the door, and he saw what the flood was
+doing. Nevertheless, he rose and tottered several times across the
+room, trying to revive his strength. Though every bit of him was
+aching, I saw that he would make the attempt.
+
+"Listen to me," I said. "Lord Rintoul can maintain with some reason
+that it was you rather than he who abducted Babbie. Nevertheless,
+there will not, I am convinced, be any marriage at the Spittal to-day.
+When he carried her off from the Toad's-hole, he acted under impulses
+not dissimilar to those that took you to it. Then, I doubt not, he
+thought possession was all the law, but that scene on the hill has
+staggered him by this morning. Even though she thinks to save you by
+marrying him, he will defer his wedding until he learns the import of
+yours."
+
+I did not believe in my own reasoning, but I would have said anything
+to detain him until that cannon was fired. He seemed to read my
+purpose, for he pushed my arguments from him with his hands, and
+continued to walk painfully to and fro.
+
+"To defer the wedding," he said, "would be to tell all his friends of
+her gypsy origin, and of me. He will risk much to avoid that."
+
+"In any case," I answered, "you must now give some thought to those
+you have forgotten, your mother and your church."
+
+"That must come afterwards," he said firmly. "My first duty is to my
+wife."
+
+The door swung to sharply just then, and he started. He thought it was
+the cannon.
+
+"I wish to God it had been!" I cried, interpreting his thoughts.
+
+"Why do you wish me ill?" he asked.
+
+"Mr. Dishart," I said solemnly, rising and facing him, and disregarding
+his question, "if that woman is to be your wife, it will be at a cost
+you cannot estimate till you return to Thrums. Do you think that if
+your congregation knew of this gypsy marriage they would have you
+for their minister for another day? Do you enjoy the prospect of
+taking one who might be an earl's wife into poverty--ay, and
+disgraceful poverty? Do you know your mother so little as to think she
+could survive your shame? Let me warn you, sir, of what I see. I see
+another minister in the Auld Licht kirk, I see you and your wife
+stoned through our wynds, stoned from Thrums, as malefactors have been
+chased out of it ere now; and as certainly as I see these things I
+see a hearse standing at the manse door, and stern men denying a son's
+right to help to carry his mother's coffin to it. Go your way, sir;
+but first count the cost."
+
+His face quivered before these blows, but all he said was, "I must
+dree my dreed."
+
+"God is merciful," I went on, "and these things need not be. He is
+more merciful to you, sir, than to some, for the storm that He sent to
+save you is ruining them. And yet the farmers are to-day thanking Him
+for every pound of wool, every blade of corn He has left them, while
+you turn from Him because He would save you, not in your way, but in
+His. It was His hand that stayed your marriage. He meant Babbie for
+the earl; and if it is on her part a loveless match, she only suffers
+for her own sins. Of that scene on the hill no one in Thrums, or in
+the glen, need ever know. Rintoul will see to it that the gypsies
+vanish from these parts forever, and you may be sure the Spittal will
+soon be shut up. He and McKenzie have as much reason as yourself to be
+silent. You, sir, must go back to your congregation, who have heard as
+yet only vague rumors that your presence will dispel. Even your mother
+will remain ignorant of what has happened. Your absence from the
+prayer-meeting you can leave to me to explain."
+
+He was so silent that I thought him mine, but his first words
+undeceived me.
+
+"I thought I had nowhere so keen a friend," he said; "but, Mr. Ogilvy,
+it is devil's work you are pleading. Am I to return to my people to
+act a living lie before them to the end of my days? Do you really
+think that God devastated a glen to give me a chance of becoming a
+villain? No, sir, I am in His hands, and I will do what I think
+right."
+
+"You will be dishonored," I said, "in the sight of God and man."
+
+"Not in God's sight," he replied. "It was a sinless marriage, Mr.
+Ogilvy, and I do not regret it. God ordained that she and I should
+love each other, and He put it into my power to save her from that
+man. I took her as my wife before Him, and in His eyes I am her
+husband. Knowing that, sir, how could I return to Thrums without
+her?"
+
+I had no answer ready for him. I knew that in my grief for Margaret I
+had been advocating an unworthy course, but I would not say so. I went
+gloomily to the door, and there, presently, his hand fell on my
+shoulder.
+
+"Your advice came too late, at any rate," he said. "You forget that
+the precentor was on the hill and saw everything."
+
+It was he who had forgotten to tell me this, and to me it was the most
+direful news of all.
+
+"My God!" I cried. "He will have gone to your mother and told her."
+And straightway I began to lace my boots.
+
+"Where are you going?" he asked, staring at me.
+
+"To Thrums," I answered harshly.
+
+"You said that to venture out into the glen was to court death," he
+reminded me.
+
+"What of that?" I said, and hastily put on my coat.
+
+"Mr. Ogilvy," he cried, "I will not allow you to do this for me."
+
+"For you?" I said bitterly. "It is not for you."
+
+I would have gone at once, but he got in front of me, asking, "Did you
+ever know my mother?"
+
+"Long ago," I answered shortly, and he said no more, thinking, I
+suppose, that he knew all. He limped to the door with me, and I had
+only advanced a few steps when I understood better than before what
+were the dangers I was to venture into. Since I spoke to Waster Lunny
+the river had risen several feet, and even the hillocks in his
+turnip-field were now submerged. The mist was creeping down the hills.
+But what warned me most sharply that the flood was not satisfied yet
+was the top of the school-house dike; it was lined with field-mice. I
+turned back, and Gavin, mistaking my meaning, said I did wisely.
+
+"I have not changed my mind," I told him, and then had some difficulty
+in continuing. "I expect," I said, "to reach Thrums safely, even
+though I should be caught in the mist, but I shall have to go round
+by the Kelpie brig in order to get across the river, and it is
+possible that--that something may befall me."
+
+I have all my life been something of a coward, and my voice shook when
+I said this, so that Gavin again entreated me to remain at the
+school-house, saying that if I did not he would accompany me.
+
+"And so increase my danger tenfold?" I pointed out. "No, no, Mr.
+Dishart, I go alone; and if I can do nothing with the congregation, I
+can at least send your mother word that you still live. But if
+anything should happen to me, I want you----"
+
+But I could not say what I had come back to say. I had meant to ask
+him, in the event of my death, to take a hundred pounds which were the
+savings of my life; but now I saw that this might lead to Margaret's
+hearing of me, and so I stayed my words. It was bitter to me this, and
+yet, after all, a little thing when put beside the rest.
+
+"Good-by, Mr. Dishart," I said abruptly. I then looked at my desk,
+which contained some trifles that were once Margaret's. "Should
+anything happen to me," I said, "I want that old desk to be destroyed
+unopened."
+
+"Mr. Ogilvy," he answered gently, "you are venturing this because you
+loved my mother. If anything does befall you, be assured that I will
+tell her what you attempted for her sake."
+
+I believe he thought it was to make some such request that I had
+turned back.
+
+"You must tell her nothing about me," I exclaimed, in consternation.
+"Swear that my name will never cross your lips before her. No, that is
+not enough. You must forget me utterly, whether I live or die, lest
+some time you should think of me and she should read your thoughts.
+Swear, man!"
+
+"Must this be?" he said, gazing at me.
+
+"Yes," I answered more calmly, "it must be. For nearly a score of
+years I have been blotted out of your mother's life, and since she
+came to Thrums my one care has been to keep my existence from her. I
+have changed my burying-ground even from Thrums to the glen, lest I
+should die before her, and she, seeing the hearse go by the Tenements,
+might ask, 'Whose funeral is this?'"
+
+In my anxiety to warn him, I had said too much. His face grew haggard,
+and there was fear to speak on it; and I saw, I knew, that some
+damnable suspicion of Margaret----
+
+"She was my wife!" I cried sharply. "We were married by the minister
+of Harvie. You are my son."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Six.
+
+STORY OF THE DOMINIE.
+
+
+When I spoke next, I was back in the school-house, sitting there with
+my bonnet on my head, Gavin looking at me. We had forgotten the cannon
+at last.
+
+In that chair I had anticipated this scene more than once of late. I
+had seen that a time might come when Gavin would have to be told all,
+and I had even said the words aloud, as if he were indeed opposite me.
+So now I was only repeating the tale, and I could tell it without
+emotion, because it was nigh nineteen years old; and I did not look at
+Gavin, for I knew that his manner of taking it could bring no change
+to me.
+
+"Did you never ask your mother," I said, addressing the fire rather
+than him, "why you were called Gavin?"
+
+"Yes," he answered, "it was because she thought Gavin a prettier name
+than Adam."
+
+"No," I said slowly, "it was because Gavin is my name. You were called
+after your father. Do you not remember my taking you one day to the
+shore at Harvie to see the fishermen carried to their boats upon their
+wives' backs, that they might start dry on their journey?"
+
+"No," he had to reply. "I remember the women carrying the men through
+the water to the boats, but I thought it was my father who--I
+mean----"
+
+"I know whom you mean," I said. "That was our last day together, but
+you were not three years old. Yet you remembered me when you came to
+Thrums. You shake your head, but it is true. Between the diets of
+worship that first Sabbath I was introduced to you, and you must have
+had some shadowy recollection of my face, for you asked, 'Surely I saw
+you in church in the forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?' I said 'Yes,' but I had
+not been in the church in the forenoon. You have forgotten even that,
+and yet I treasured it."
+
+I could hear that he was growing impatient, though so far he had been
+more indulgent than I had any right to expect.
+
+"It can all be put into a sentence," I said calmly. "Margaret married
+Adam Dishart, and afterwards, believing herself a widow, she married
+me. You were born, and then Adam Dishart came back."
+
+That is my whole story, and here was I telling it to my son, and not a
+tear between us. It ended abruptly, and I fell to mending the fire.
+
+"When I knew your mother first," I went on, after Gavin had said some
+boyish things that were of no avail to me, "I did not think to end my
+days as a dominie. I was a student at Aberdeen, with the ministry in
+my eye, and sometimes on Saturdays I walked forty miles to Harvie to
+go to church with her. She had another lover, Adam Dishart, a sailor
+turned fisherman; and while I lingered at corners, wondering if I
+could dare to meet her and her mother on their way to church, he would
+walk past with them. He was accompanied always by a lanky black dog,
+which he had brought from a foreign country. He never signed for any
+ship without first getting permission to take it with him, and in
+Harvie they said it did not know the language of the native dogs. I
+have never known a man and dog so attached to each other."
+
+"I remember that black dog," Gavin said. "I have spoken of it to my
+mother, and she shuddered, as if it had once bitten her."
+
+"While Adam strutted by with them," I continued, "I would hang back,
+raging at his assurance or my own timidity; but I lost my next chance
+in the same way. In Margaret's presence something came over me, a kind
+of dryness in the throat, that made me dumb. I have known divinity
+students stricken in the same way, just as they were giving out their
+first text. It is no aid in getting a kirk or wooing a woman.
+
+"If any one in Harvie recalls me now, it is as a hobbledehoy who
+strode along the cliffs, shouting Homer at the sea-mews. With all my
+learning, I, who gave Margaret the name of Lalage, understood women
+less than any fisherman who bandied words with them across a boat. I
+remember a Yule night when both Adam and I were at her mother's
+cottage, and, as we were leaving, he had the audacity to kiss
+Margaret. She ran out of the room, and Adam swaggered off, and when I
+recovered from my horror, I apologized for what he had done. I shall
+never forget how her mother looked at me, and said, 'Ay, Gavin, I see
+they dinna teach everything at Aberdeen.' You will not believe it, but
+I walked away doubting her meaning. I thought more of scholarship then
+than I do now. Adam Dishart taught me its proper place.
+
+"Well, that is the dull man I was; and yet, though Adam was always
+saying and doing the things I was making up my mind to say and do, I
+think Margaret cared more for me. Nevertheless, there was something
+about him that all women seemed to find lovable, a dash that made them
+send him away and then well-nigh run after him. At any rate, I could
+have got her after her mother's death if I had been half a man. But I
+went back to Aberdeen to write a poem about her, and while I was at it
+Adam married her."
+
+I opened my desk and took from it a yellow manuscript.
+
+"Here," I said, "is the poem. You see, I never finished it."
+
+I was fingering the thing grimly when Gavin's eye fell on something
+else in the desk. It was an ungainly clasp-knife, as rusty as if it
+had spent a winter beneath a hedge.
+
+"I seem to remember that knife," he said.
+
+"Yes," I answered, "you should remember it. Well, after three months
+Adam tired of his wife."
+
+I stopped again. This was a story in which only the pauses were
+eloquent.
+
+"Perhaps I have no right to say he tired of her. One day, however, he
+sauntered away from Harvie whistling, his dog at his heels as ever,
+and was not seen again for nearly six years. When I heard of his
+disappearance I packed my books in that kist and went to Harvie, where
+I opened a school. You see, every one but Margaret believed that Adam
+had fallen over the cliffs and been drowned."
+
+"But the dog?" said Gavin.
+
+"We were all sure that, if he had fallen over, it had jumped after
+him. The fisher-folk said that he could have left his shadow behind as
+easily as it. Yet Margaret thought for long that he had tired of
+Harvie merely and gone back to sea, and not until two years had passed
+would she marry me. We lived in Adam's house. It was so near the
+little school that when I opened the window in summer-time she could
+hear the drone of our voices. During the weeks before you were born I
+kept that window open all day long, and often I went to it and waved
+my hand to her.
+
+"Sometimes, when she was washing or baking, I brought you to the
+school. The only quarrel she and I ever had was about my teaching you
+the Lord's Prayer in Greek as soon as you could say father and mother.
+It was to be a surprise for her on your second birthday. On that day,
+while she was ironing, you took hold of her gown to steady yourself,
+and began, '~Pater emon ho en tois ouranois~' and to me, behind the
+door, it was music. But at ~agiastheto~, of which you made two
+syllables, you cried, and Margaret snatched you up, thinking this was
+some new ailment. After I had explained to her that it was the Lord's
+Prayer in Greek, she would let me take you to the school-house no
+more.
+
+"Not much longer could I have taken you in any case, for already we
+are at the day when Adam Dishart came back. It was the 7th of
+September, and all the week most of the women in Harvie had been
+setting off at dawn to the harvest fields and straggling home at
+nights, merry and with yellow corn in their hair. I had sat on in the
+school-house that day after my pupils were gone. I still meant to be a
+minister, and I was studying Hebrew, and so absorbed in my book that
+as the daylight went, I followed it step by step as far as my window,
+and there I read, without knowing, until I chanced to look up, that I
+had left my desk. I have not opened that book since.
+
+"From the window I saw you on the waste ground that separated the
+school from our home. You were coming to me on your hands and feet,
+and stopping now and again to look back at your mother, who was at the
+door, laughing and shaking her fist at you. I beckoned to you, and
+took the book back to my desk to lock it up. While my head was inside
+the desk I heard the school-house door pushed open, and thinking it
+was you I smiled, without looking up. Then something touched my hand,
+and I still thought it was you; but I looked down, and I saw Adam
+Dishart's black dog.
+
+"I did not move. It looked up at me and wagged its tail. Then it drew
+back--I suppose because I had no words for it. I watched it run
+half-round the room and stop and look at me again. Then it slunk out.
+
+"All that time one of my hands had been holding the desk open. Now the
+lid fell. I put on my bonnet and went to the door. You were only a few
+yards away, with flowers in your fist. Margaret was laughing still. I
+walked round the school and there was no dog visible. Margaret nodded
+to me, meaning that I should bring you home. You thrust the flowers
+into my hand, but they fell. I stood there, dazed.
+
+"I think I walked with you some way across the waste ground. Then I
+dropped your hand and strode back to the school. I went down on my
+knees, looking for marks of a dog's paws, and I found them.
+
+"When I came out again your mother was no longer at our door, and you
+were crying because I had left you. I passed you and walked straight
+to the house. Margaret was skinning rushes for wicks. There must have
+been fear in my face, for as soon as she saw it she ran to the door to
+see if you were still alive. She brought you in with her, and so had
+strength to cry, 'What is it? Speak!'
+
+"'Come away,' I said, 'come away,' and I was drawing her to the door,
+but she pressed me into a chair. I was up again at once.
+
+"'Margaret,' I said, 'ask no questions. Put on your bonnet, give me
+the boy, and let us away.'
+
+"I could not take my eyes off the door, and she was walking to it to
+look out when I barred the way with my arm.
+
+"'What have you seen?' she cried; and then, as I only pointed to her
+bonnet, she turned to you, and you said, 'Was it the black dog,
+father?'
+
+"Gavin, then she knew; and I stood helpless and watched my wife grow
+old. In that moment she lost the sprightliness I loved the more
+because I had none of it myself, and the bloom went from her face
+never to return.
+
+"'He has come back,' she said.
+
+"I told her what I had seen, and while I spoke she put on her bonnet,
+and I exulted, thinking--and then she took off her bonnet, and I knew
+she would not go away with me.
+
+"'Margaret,' I cried, 'I am that bairn's father.'
+
+"'Adam's my man,' she said, and at that I gave her a look for which
+God might have struck me dead. But instead of blaming me she put her
+arms round my neck.
+
+"After that we said very little. We sat at opposite sides of the fire,
+waiting for him, and you played on the floor. The harvesters trooped
+by, and there was a fiddle; and when it stopped, long stillness, and
+then a step. It was not Adam. You fell asleep, and we could hear
+nothing but the sea. There was a harvest moon.
+
+"Once a dog ran past the door, and we both rose. Margaret pressed her
+hands on her breast. Sometimes she looked furtively at me, and I knew
+her thoughts. To me it was only misery that had come, but to her it
+was shame, so that when you woke and climbed into her lap she shivered
+at your touch. I could not look at her after that, for there was a
+horror of me growing in her face.
+
+"Ten o'clock struck, and then again there was no sound but the sea
+pouring itself out on the beach. It was long after this, when to me
+there was still no other sound, that Margaret screamed, and you hid
+behind her. Then I heard it.
+
+"'Gavin,' Margaret said to me, 'be a good man all your life.'
+
+"It was louder now, and then it stopped. Above the wash of the sea we
+heard another sound--a sharp tap, tap. You said, 'I know what sound
+that is; it's a man knocking the ashes out of his pipe against his
+boot.'
+
+"Then the dog pushed the door off the latch, and Adam lurched in. He
+was not drunk, but he brought the smell of drink into the room with
+him. He was grinning like one bringing rare news, and before she could
+shrink back or I could strike him he had Margaret in his arms.
+
+"'Lord, lass,' he said, with many jovial oaths, 'to think I'm back
+again! There, she's swounded. What folks be women, to be sure.'
+
+"'We thought you were dead, Adam," she said, coming to.
+
+"'Bless your blue eyes,' he answered gleefully; 'often I says to
+myself, "Meggy will be thinking I'm with the fishes," and then I
+chuckles.'
+
+"'Where have you been all this time?' I demanded sternly.
+
+"'Gavin,' he said effusively, 'your hand. And don't look so feared,
+man; I bear no malice for what you've done. I heard all about it at
+the Cross Anchors.'
+
+"'Where have you been these five years and a half?' I repeated.
+
+"'Where have I no been, lad?' he replied.
+
+"'At Harvie,' I said.
+
+"'Right you are,' said he good-naturedly. 'Meggie, I had no intention
+of leaving you that day, though I was yawning myself to death in
+Harvie; but I sees a whaler, and I thinks, "That's a tidy boat, and
+I'm a tidy man, and if they'll take me and the dog, off we go."'
+
+"'You never wrote to me,' Margaret said.
+
+"'I meant to send you some scrapes,' he answered, 'but it wasna till I
+changed ships that I had the chance, and then I minds, "Meggy kens I'm
+no hand with the pen." But I swear I often thought of you, lass; and
+look you here, that's better than letters, and so is this and every
+penny of it is yours.'
+
+"He flung two bags of gold upon the table, and the chink brought you
+out from behind your mother.
+
+"'Hallo!' Adam cried.
+
+"'He is mine,' I said. 'Gavin, come here.' But Margaret held you
+back.
+
+"'Here's a go,' Adam muttered, and scratched his head. Then he slapped
+his thigh. 'Gavin,' he said, in his friendliest way, 'we'll toss for
+him.'
+
+"He pulled the knife that is now in my desk from his pocket, spat on
+it, and flung it up. 'Dry, the kid's ours, Meggy,' he explained; 'wet,
+he goes to Gavin.' I clinched my fist to----But what was the use? He
+caught the knife, and showed it to me.
+
+"'Dry,' he said triumphantly; 'so he is ours, Meggy. Kiddy, catch the
+knife. It is yours; and, mind, you have changed dads. And now that we
+have settled that, Gavin, there's my hand again.'
+
+"I went away and left them, and I never saw Margaret again until the
+day you brought her to Thrums. But I saw you once, a few days after
+Adam came back. I was in the school-house, packing my books, and you
+were playing on the waste ground. I asked you how your mother was, and
+you said, 'She's fleid to come to the door till you gang awa, and my
+father's buying a boat.'
+
+"'I'm your father,' I said; but you answered confidently:
+
+"'You're no a living man. You're just a man I dreamed about; and I
+promised my mother no to dream about you again.'
+
+"'I am your father,' I repeated.
+
+"'My father's awa buying a fishing-boat,' you insisted; 'and when I
+speir at my mother whaur my first father is, she says I'm havering.'
+
+"'Gavin Ogilvy is your name,' I said. 'No,' you answered, 'I have a
+new name. My mother telled me my name is aye to be Gavin Dishart now.
+She telled me, too, to fling awa this knife my father gave me, and
+I've flung it awa a lot o' times, but I aye pick it up again.'
+
+"'Give it to me,' I said, with the wicked thoughts of a fool in my
+head.
+
+"That is how your knife came into my possession. I left Harvie that
+night in the carrier's cart, but I had not the heart to return to
+college. Accident brought me here, and I thought it a fitting place in
+which to bury myself from Margaret."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Seven.
+
+SECOND JOURNEY OF THE DOMINIE TO THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+Here was a nauseous draught for me. Having finished my tale, I turned
+to Gavin for sympathy; and, behold, he had been listening for the
+cannon instead of to my final words. So, like an old woman at her
+hearth, we warm our hands at our sorrows and drop in faggots, and each
+thinks his own fire a sun, in presence of which all other fires should
+go out. I was soured to see Gavin prove this, and then I could have
+laughed without mirth, for had not my bitterness proved it too?
+
+"And now," I said, rising, "whether Margaret is to hold up her head
+henceforth lies no longer with me, but with you."
+
+It was not to that he replied.
+
+"You have suffered long, Mr. Ogilvy," he said. "Father," he added,
+wringing my hand. I called him son; but it was only an exchange of
+musty words that we had found too late. A father is a poor estate to
+come into at two and twenty.
+
+"I should have been told of this," he said.
+
+"Your mother did right, sir," I answered slowly, but he shook his
+head.
+
+"I think you have misjudged her," he said. "Doubtless while my fa--,
+while Adam Dishart lived, she could only think of you with pain; but
+after his death----"
+
+"After his death," I said quietly, "I was still so horrible to her
+that she left Harvie without letting a soul know whither she was
+bound. She dreaded my following her."
+
+"Stranger to me," he said, after a pause, "than even your story is her
+being able to keep it from me. I believed no thought ever crossed her
+mind that she did not let me share."
+
+"And none, I am sure, ever did," I answered, "save that, and such
+thoughts as a woman has with God only. It was my lot to bring disgrace
+on her. She thought it nothing less, and she has hidden it all these
+years for your sake, until now it is not burdensome. I suppose she
+feels that God has taken the weight off her. Now you are to put a
+heavier burden in its place."
+
+He faced me boldly, and I admire him for it now.
+
+"I cannot admit," he said, "that I did wrong in forgetting my mother
+for that fateful quarter of an hour. Babbie and I loved each other,
+and I was given the opportunity of making her mine or losing her
+forever. Have you forgotten that all this tragedy you have told me of
+only grew out of your own indecision? I took the chance that you let
+slip by."
+
+"I had not forgotten," I replied. "What else made me tell you last
+night that Babbie was in Nanny's house?"
+
+"But now you are afraid--now when the deed is done, when for me there
+can be no turning back. Whatever be the issue, I should be a cur to
+return to Thrums without my wife. Every minute I feel my strength
+returning, and before you reach Thrums I will have set out to the
+Spittal."
+
+There was nothing to say after that. He came with me in the rain as
+far as the dike, warning me against telling his people what was not
+true.
+
+"My first part," I answered, "will be to send word to your mother that
+you are in safety. After that I must see Whamond. Much depends on
+him."
+
+"You will not go to my mother?"
+
+"Not so long as she has a roof over her head," I said, "but that may
+not be for long."
+
+So, I think, we parted--each soon to forget the other in a woman.
+
+But I had not gone far when I heard something that stopped me as
+sharply as if it had been McKenzie's hand once more on my shoulder.
+For a second the noise appalled me, and then, before the echo began, I
+knew it must be the Spittal cannon. My only thought was one of
+thankfulness. Now Gavin must see the wisdom of my reasoning. I would
+wait for him until he was able to come with me to Thrums. I turned
+back, and in my haste I ran through water I had gone round before.
+
+I was too late. He was gone, and into the rain I shouted his name in
+vain. That he had started for the Spittal there could be no doubt;
+that he would ever reach it was less certain. The earl's collie was
+still crouching by the fire, and, thinking it might be a guide to him,
+I drove the brute to the door, and chased it in the direction he
+probably had taken. Not until it had run from me did I resume my own
+journey. I do not need to be told that you who read would follow Gavin
+now rather than me; but you must bear with the dominie for a little
+while yet, as I see no other way of making things clear.
+
+In some ways I was not ill-equipped for my attempt. I do not know any
+one of our hillsides as it is known to the shepherd, to whom every
+rabbit-hole and glimmer of mica is a landmark; but he, like his flock,
+has only to cross a dike to find himself in a strange land, while I
+have been everywhere in the glen.
+
+In the foreground the rain slanted, transparent till it reached the
+ground, where a mist seemed to blow it along as wind ruffles grass. In
+the distance all was a driving mist. I have been out for perhaps an
+hour in rains as wetting, and I have watched floods from my window,
+but never since have I known the fifth part of a season's rainfall in
+eighteen hours; and if there should be the like here again, we shall
+be found better prepared for it. Men have been lost in the glen in
+mists so thick that they could plunge their fingers out of sight in it
+as into a meal girnel; but this mist never came within twenty yards of
+me. I was surrounded by it, however, as if I was in a round tent; and
+out of this tent I could not walk, for it advanced with me. On the
+other side of this screen were horrible noises, at whose cause I could
+only guess, save now and again when a tongue of water was shot at my
+feet, or great stones came crashing through the canvas of mist. Then I
+ran wherever safety prompted, and thus tangled my bearings until I was
+like that one in the child's game who is blindfolded and turned round
+three times that he may not know east from west.
+
+Once I stumbled over a dead sheep and a living lamb; and in a clump of
+trees which puzzled me--for they were where I thought no trees should
+be--a wood-pigeon flew to me, but struck my breast with such force
+that I picked it up dead. I saw no other living thing, though half a
+dozen times I must have passed within cry of farmhouses. At one time I
+was in a cornfield, where I had to lift my hands to keep them out of
+water, and a dread filled me that I had wandered in a circle, and was
+still on Waster Lunny's land. I plucked some corn and held it to my
+eyes to see if it was green; but it was yellow, and so I knew that at
+last I was out of the glen.
+
+People up here will complain if I do not tell how I found the farmer
+of Green Brae's fifty pounds. It is one of the best-remembered
+incidents of the flood, and happened shortly after I got out of the
+cornfield. A house rose suddenly before me, and I was hastening to it
+when as suddenly three of its walls fell. Before my mind could give a
+meaning to what my eyes told it, the water that had brought down the
+house had lifted me off my feet and flung me among waves. That would
+have been the last of the dominie had I not struck against a chest,
+then halfway on its voyage to the sea. I think the lid gave way under
+me; but that is surmise, for from the time the house fell till I was
+on the river in a kist that was like to be my coffin, is almost a
+blank. After what may have been but a short journey, though I had time
+in it to say my prayers twice, we stopped, jammed among fallen trees;
+and seeing a bank within reach, I tried to creep up it. In this there
+would have been little difficulty had not the contents of the kist
+caught in my feet and held on to them, like living things afraid of
+being left behind. I let down my hands to disentangle my feet, but
+failed; and then, grown desperate, I succeeded in reaching firm
+ground, dragging I knew not what after me. It proved to be a
+pillow-slip. Green Brae still shudders when I tell him that my first
+impulse was to leave the pillow-slip unopened. However, I ripped it
+up, for to undo the wet strings that had ravelled round my feet would
+have wearied even a man with a needle to pick open the knots; and
+among broken gimlets, the head of a grape, and other things no beggar
+would have stolen, I found a tin canister containing fifty pounds.
+Waster Lunny says that this should have made a religious man of Green
+Brae, and it did to this extent, that he called the fall of the
+cotter's house providential. Otherwise the cotter, at whose expense it
+may be said the money was found, remains the more religious man of the
+two.
+
+At last I came to the Kelpie's brig, and I could have wept in joy (and
+might have been better employed), when, like everything I saw on that
+journey, it broke suddenly through the mist, and seemed to run at me
+like a living monster. Next moment I ran back, for as I stepped upon
+the bridge I saw that I had been about to walk into the air. What was
+left of the Kelpie's brig ended in mid-stream. Instead of thanking God
+for the light without which I should have gone abruptly to my death, I
+sat down miserable and hopeless.
+
+Presently I was up and trudging to the Loups of Malcolm. At the Loups
+the river runs narrow and deep between cliffs, and the spot is so
+called because one Malcolm jumped across it when pursued by wolves.
+Next day he returned boastfully to look at his jump, and gazing at it
+turned dizzy and fell into the river. Since that time chains have been
+hung across the Loups to reduce the distance between the farms of
+Carwhimple and Keep-What-You-Can from a mile to a hundred yards. You
+must cross the chains on your breast. They were suspended there by Rob
+Angus, who was also the first to breast them.
+
+But I never was a Rob Angus. When my pupils practise what they call
+the high jump, two small boys hold a string aloft, and the bigger ones
+run at it gallantly until they reach it, when they stop meekly and
+creep beneath. They will repeat this twenty times, and yet never, when
+they start for the string, seem to know where their courage will fail.
+Nay, they will even order the small boys to hold the string higher. I
+have smiled at this, but it was the same courage while the difficulty
+is far off that took me to the Loups. At sight of them I turned away.
+
+I prayed to God for a little of the mettle of other men, and He heard
+me, for with my eyes shut I seemed to see Margaret beckoning from
+across the abyss as if she had need of me. Then I rose calmly and
+tested the chains, and crossed them on my breast. Many have done it
+with the same danger, at which they laugh, but without that vision I
+should have held back.
+
+I was now across the river, and so had left the chance of drowning
+behind, but I was farther from Thrums than when I left the school-house,
+and this countryside was almost unknown to me. The mist had begun to
+clear, so that I no longer wandered into fields; but though I kept to the
+roads, I could not tell that they led toward Thrums, and in my
+exhaustion I had often to stand still. Then to make a new start in the
+mud was like pulling stakes out of the ground. So long as the rain
+faced me I thought I could not be straying far; but after an hour I lost
+this guide, for a wind rose that blew it in all directions.
+
+In another hour, when I should have been drawing near Thrums, I found
+myself in a wood, and here I think my distress was greatest; nor is
+this to be marvelled at, for instead of being near Thrums, I was
+listening to the monotonous roar of the sea. I was too spent to
+reason, but I knew that I must have travelled direct east, and must be
+close to the German Ocean. I remember putting my back against a tree
+and shutting my eyes, and listening to the lash of the waves against
+the beach, and hearing the faint toll of a bell, and wondering
+listlessly on what lighthouse it was ringing. Doubtless I would have
+lain down to sleep forever had I not heard another sound near at hand.
+It was the knock of a hammer on wood, and might have been a fisherman
+mending his boat. The instinct of self-preservation carried me to it,
+and presently I was at a little house. A man was standing in the rain,
+hammering new hinges to the door; and though I did not recognize him,
+I saw with bewilderment that the woman at his side was Nanny.
+
+"It's the dominie," she cried, and her brother added:
+
+"Losh, sir, you hinna the look o' a living man."
+
+"Nanny," I said, in perplexity, "what are you doing here?"
+
+"Whaur else should I be?" she asked.
+
+I pressed my hands over my eyes, crying, "Where am I?"
+
+Nanny shrank from me, but Sanders said, "Has the rain driven you gyte,
+man? You're in Thrums."
+
+"But the sea," I said, distrusting him. "I hear it. Listen!"
+
+"That's the wind in Windyghoul," Sanders answered, looking at me
+queerly. "Come awa into the house."
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Eight.
+
+THRUMS DURING THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS--DEFENCE OF THE MANSE.
+
+
+Hardly had I crossed the threshold of the mudhouse when such a
+sickness came over me that I could not have looked up, though Nanny's
+voice had suddenly changed to Margaret's. Vaguely I knew that Nanny
+had put the kettle on the fire--a woman's first thought when there is
+illness in the house--and as I sat with my hands over my face I heard
+the water dripping from my clothes to the floor.
+
+"Why is that bell ringing?" I asked at last, ignoring all questions
+and speaking through my fingers. An artist, I suppose, could paint all
+expression out of a human face. The sickness was having that effect on
+my voice.
+
+"It's the Auld Licht bell," Sanders said; "and it's almost as fearsome
+to listen to as last nicht's rain. I wish I kent what they're ringing
+it for."
+
+"Wish no sic things," said Nanny nervously. "There's things it's best
+to put off kenning as lang as we can."
+
+"It's that ill-cleakit witch, Effie McBean, that makes Nanny speak so
+doleful," Sanders told me. "There was to be a prayer-meeting last
+nicht, but Mr. Dishart never came to 't, though they rang till they
+wraxed their arms; and now Effie says it'll ring on by itsel' till
+he's brocht hame a corp. The hellicat says the rain's a dispensation
+to drown him in for neglect o' duty. Sal, I would think little o' the
+Lord if He needed to create a new sea to drown one man in. Nanny, yon
+cuttie, that's no swearing; I defy you to find a single lonely oath in
+what I've said."
+
+"Never mind Effie McBean," I interposed. "What are the congregation
+saying about the minister's absence?"
+
+"We ken little except what Effie telled us," Nanny answered. "I was at
+Tilliedrum yestreen, meeting Sanders as he got out o' the gaol, and
+that awfu onding began when we was on the Bellies Braes. We focht our
+way through it, but not a soul did we meet; and wha would gang out the
+day that can bide at hame? Ay, but Effie says it's kent in Thrums that
+Mr. Dishart has run off wi'--wi' an Egyptian."
+
+"You're waur than her, Nanny," Sanders said roughly, "for you hae twa
+reasons for kenning better. In the first place, has Mr. Dishart no
+keeped you in siller a' the time I was awa? and for another, have I no
+been at the manse?"
+
+My head rose now.
+
+"He gaed to the manse," Nanny explained, "to thank Mr. Dishart for
+being so good to me. Ay, but Jean wouldna let him in. I'm thinking
+that looks gey gray."
+
+"Whatever was her reason," Sanders admitted, "Jean wouldna open the
+door; but I keeked in at the parlor window, and saw Mrs. Dishart in't
+looking very cosy-like and lauching; and do you think I would hae seen
+that if ill had come ower the minister?"
+
+"Not if Margaret knew of it," I said to myself, and wondered at
+Whamond's forbearance.
+
+"She had a skein o' worsted stretched out on her hands," Sanders
+continued, "and a young leddy was winding it. I didna see her richt,
+but she wasna a Thrums leddy."
+
+"Effie McBean says she's his intended, come to call him to account,"
+Nanny said; but I hardly listened, for I saw that I must hurry to
+Tammas Whamond's. Nanny followed me to the gate with her gown pulled
+over her head, and said excitedly:
+
+"Oh, dominie, I warrant it's true. It'll be Babbie. Sanders doesna
+suspect, because I've telled him nothing about her. Oh, what's to be
+done? They were baith so good to me."
+
+I could only tell her to keep what she knew to herself.
+
+"Has Rob Dow come back?" I called out after I had started.
+
+"Whaur frae?" she replied; and then I remembered that all these things
+had happened while Nanny was at Tilliedrum. In this life some of the
+seven ages are spread over two decades, and others pass as quickly as
+a stage play. Though a fifth of a season's rain had fallen in a night
+and a day, it had scarcely kept pace with Gavin.
+
+I hurried to the town by the Roods. That brae was as deserted as the
+country roads, except where children had escaped from their mothers to
+wade in it. Here and there dams were keeping the water away from one
+door to send it with greater volume to another, and at points the
+ground had fallen in. But this I noticed without interest. I did not
+even realize that I was holding my head painfully to the side where it
+had been blown by the wind and glued by the rain. I have never held my
+head straight since that journey.
+
+Only a few looms were going, their pedals in water. I was addressed
+from several doors and windows, once by Charles Yuill.
+
+"Dinna pretend," he said, "that you've walked in frae the school-house
+alane. The rain chased me into this house yestreen, and here it has
+keeped me, though I bide no further awa than Tillyloss."
+
+"Charles," I said in a low voice, "why is the Auld Licht bell
+ringing?"
+
+"Hae you no heard about Mr. Dishart?" he asked. "Oh, man! that's Lang
+Tammas in the kirk by himsel', tearing at the bell to bring the folk
+thegither to depose the minister."
+
+Instead of going to Whamond's house in the school wynd I hastened down
+the Banker's close to the kirk, and had almost to turn back, so choked
+was the close with floating refuse. I could see the bell swaying, but
+the kirk was locked, and I battered on the door to no purpose. Then,
+remembering that Hendry Munn lived in Coutt's trance, I set off for
+his house. He saw me crossing the square, but would not open his door
+until I was close to it.
+
+"When I open," he cried, "squeeze through quick"; but though I did his
+bidding, a rush of water darted in before me. Hendry reclosed the door
+by flinging himself against it.
+
+"When I saw you crossing the square," he said, "it was surprise enough
+to cure the hiccup."
+
+"Hendry," I replied instantly, "why is the Auld Licht bell ringing?"
+
+He put his finger to his lip. "I see," he said imperturbably, "you've
+met our folk in the glen and heard frae them about the minister."
+
+"What folk?"
+
+"Mair than half the congregation," he replied, "I started for Glen
+Quharity twa hours syne to help the farmers. You didna see them?"
+
+"No; they must have been on the other side of the river." Again that
+question forced my lips, "Why is the bell ringing?"
+
+"Canny, dominie," he said, "till we're up the stair. Mysy Moncur's
+lug's at her keyhole listening to you."
+
+"You lie, Hendry Munn," cried an invisible woman. The voice became
+more plaintive: "I ken a heap, Hendry, so you may as well tell me
+a'."
+
+"Lick away at the bone you hae," the shoemaker replied heartlessly,
+and conducted me to his room up one of the few inside stairs then in
+Thrums. Hendry's oddest furniture was five boxes, fixed to the wall
+at such a height that children could climb into them from a high
+stool. In these his bairns slept, and so space was economized. I could
+never laugh at the arrangement, as I knew that Betty had planned it on
+her deathbed for her man's sake. Five little heads bobbed up in their
+beds as I entered, but more vexing to me was Wearyworld on a stool.
+
+"In by, dominie," he said sociably. "Sal, you needna fear burning wi'
+a' that water on you. You're in mair danger o' coming a-boil."
+
+"I want to speak to you alone, Hendry," I said bluntly.
+
+"You winna put me out, Hendry?" the alarmed policeman entreated.
+"Mind, you said in sic weather you would be friendly to a brute beast.
+Ay, ay, dominie, what's your news? It's welcome, be it good or bad.
+You would meet the townsfolk in the glen, and they would tell you
+about Mr. Dishart. What, you hinna heard? Oh, sirs, he's a lost man.
+There would hae been a meeting the day to depose him if so many hadna
+gaen to the glen. But the morn'll do as weel. The very women is
+cursing him, and the laddies has begun to gather stanes. He's married
+on an Egyp----"
+
+"Hendry!" I cried, like one giving an order.
+
+"Wearyworld, step!" said Hendry sternly, and then added soft-heartedly:
+"Here's a bit news that'll open Mysy Moncur's door to you. You can
+tell her frae me that the bell's ringing just because I forgot to tie it
+up last nicht, and the wind's shaking it, and I winna gang out in the
+rain to stop it."
+
+"Ay," the policeman said, looking at me sulkily, "she may open her
+door for that, but it'll no let me in. Tell me mair. Tell me wha the
+leddy at the manse is."
+
+"Out you go," answered Hendry. "Once she opens the door, you can shove
+your foot in, and syne she's in your power." He pushed Wearyworld out,
+and came back to me, saying, "It was best to tell him the truth, to
+keep him frae making up lies."
+
+"But is it the truth? I was told Lang Tammas----"
+
+"Ay, I ken that story; but Tammas has other work on hand."
+
+"Then tie up the bell at once, Hendry," I urged.
+
+"I canna," he answered gravely. "Tammas took the keys o' the kirk fram
+me yestreen, and winna gie them up. He says the bell's being rung by
+the hand o' God."
+
+"Has he been at the manse? Does Mrs. Dishart know----?"
+
+"He's been at the manse twa or three times, but Jean barred him out.
+She'll let nobody in till the minister comes back, and so the mistress
+kens nothing. But what's the use o' keeping it frae her ony langer?"
+
+"Every use," I said.
+
+"None," answered Hendry sadly. "Dominie, the minister was married to
+the Egyptian on the hill last nicht, and Tammas was witness. Not only
+were they married, but they've run aff thegither."
+
+"You are wrong, Hendry," I assured him, telling as much as I dared. "I
+left Mr. Dishart in my house."
+
+"What! But if that is so, how did he no come back wi' you?"
+
+"Because he was nearly drowned in the flood."
+
+"She'll be wi' him?"
+
+"He was alone."
+
+Hendry's face lit up dimly with joy, and then he shook his head.
+"Tammas was witness," he said. "Can you deny the marriage?"
+
+"All I ask of you," I answered guardedly, "is to suspend judgment
+until the minister returns."
+
+"There can be nothing done, at ony rate," he said, "till the folk
+themsel's come back frae the glen; and I needna tell you how glad we
+would a' be to be as fond o' him as ever. But Tammas was witness."
+
+"Have pity on his mother, man."
+
+"We've done the best for her we could," he replied. "We prigged wi'
+Tammas no to gang to the manse till we was sure the minister was
+living. 'For if he has been drowned,' we said, 'his mother need never
+ken what we were thinking o' doing.' Ay, and we're sorry for the young
+leddy, too."
+
+"What young lady is this you all talk of?" I asked.
+
+"She's his intended. Ay, you needna start. She has come a' the road
+frae Glasgow to challenge him about the gypsy. The pitiful thing is
+that Mrs. Dishart lauched awa her fears, and now they're baith waiting
+for his return, as happy as ignorance can make them."
+
+"There is no such lady," I said.
+
+"But there is," he answered doggedly, "for she came in a machine late
+last nicht, and I was ane o' a dozen that baith heard and saw it
+through my window. It stopped at the manse near half an hour. What's
+mair, the lady hersel' was at Sam'l Farquharson's in the Tenements the
+day for twa hours."
+
+I listened in bewilderment and fear.
+
+"Sam'l's bairn's down wi' scarlet fever and like to die, and him being
+a widow-man he has gone useless. You mauna blame the wives in the
+Tenements for hauding back. They're fleid to smit their ain litlins;
+and as it happens, Sam'l's friends is a' aff to the glen. Weel, he ran
+greeting to the manse for Mr. Dishart, and the lady heard him crying
+to Jean through the door, and what does she do but gang straucht to
+the Tenements wi' Sam'l. Her goodness has naturally put the folk on
+her side against the minister."
+
+"This does not prove her his intended," I broke in.
+
+"She was heard saying to Sam'l," answered the kirk officer, "that the
+minister being awa, it was her duty to take his place. Yes, and though
+she little kent it, he was already married."
+
+"Hendry," I said, rising, "I must see this lady at once. Is she still
+at Farquharson's house?"
+
+"She may be back again by this time. Tammas set off for Sam'l's as
+soon as he heard she was there, but he just missed her. I left him
+there an hour syne. He was waiting for her, determined to tell her
+all."
+
+I set off for the Tenements at once, declining Hendry's company. The
+wind had fallen, so that the bell no longer rang, but the rain was
+falling doggedly. The streets were still deserted. I pushed open the
+precentor's door in the school wynd, but there was no one in the
+house. Tibbie Birse saw me, and shouted from her door:
+
+"Hae you heard o' Mr. Dishart? He'll never daur show face in Thrums
+again."
+
+Without giving her a word I hastened to the Tenements.
+
+"The leddy's no here," Sam'l Farquharson told me, "and Tammas is back
+at the manse again, trying to force his way in."
+
+From Sam'l, too, I turned, with no more than a groan; but he cried
+after me, "Perdition on the man that has played that leddy false."
+
+Had Margaret been at her window she must have seen me, so recklessly
+did I hurry up the minister's road, with nothing in me but a passion
+to take Whamond by the throat. He was not in the garden. The kitchen
+door was open. Jean was standing at it with her apron to her eyes.
+
+"Tammas Whamond?" I demanded, and my face completed the question.
+
+"You're ower late," she wailed. "He's wi' her. Oh, dominie, whaur's
+the minister?"
+
+"You base woman!" I cried, "why did you unbar the door?"
+
+[Illustration: "IT WAS BABBIE, THOUGH NO LONGER IN A GYPSY'S DRESS."]
+
+"It was the mistress," she answered. "She heard him shaking it, and I
+had to tell her wha it was. Dominie, it's a' my wite! He tried to get
+in last nicht, and roared threats through the door, and after he had
+gone awa she speired wha I had been speaking to. I had to tell her,
+but I said he had come to let her ken that the minister was taking
+shelter frae the rain in a farmhouse. Ay, I said he was to bide there
+till the flood gaed down, and that's how she has been easy a' day. I
+acted for the best, but I'm sair punished now; for when she heard
+Tammas at the door twa or three minutes syne, she ordered me to let
+him in, so that she could thank him for bringing the news last nicht,
+despite the rain. They're in the parlor. Oh, dominie, gang in and stop
+his mouth."
+
+This was hard. I dared not go to the parlor. Margaret might have died
+at sight of me. I turned my face from Jean.
+
+"Jean," said some one, opening the inner kitchen door, "why did
+you----?"
+
+She stopped, and that was what turned me round. As she spoke I thought
+it was the young lady; when I looked I saw it was Babbie, though no
+longer in a gypsy's dress. Then I knew that the young lady and Babbie
+were one.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Thirty-Nine.
+
+HOW BABBIE SPENT THE NIGHT OF AUGUST FOURTH.
+
+
+How had the Egyptian been spirited here from the Spittal? I did not
+ask the question. To interest myself in Babbie at that dire hour of
+Margaret's life would have been as impossible to me as to sit down to
+a book. To others, however, it is only an old woman on whom the parlor
+door of the manse has closed, only a garrulous dominie that is in pain
+outside it. Your eyes are on the young wife.
+
+When Babbie was plucked off the hill, she thought as little as Gavin
+that her captor was Rob Dow. Close as he was to her, he was but a
+shadow until she screamed the second time, when he pressed her to the
+ground and tied his neckerchief over her mouth. Then, in the moment
+that power of utterance was taken from her, she saw the face that had
+startled her at Nanny's window. Half-carried, she was borne forward
+rapidly, until some one seemed to rise out of the broom and strike
+them both. They had only run against the doctor's trap; and huddling
+her into it, Dow jumped up beside her. He tied her hands together with
+a cord. For a time the horse feared the darkness in front more than
+the lash behind; but when the rains became terrific, it rushed ahead
+wildly--probably with its eyes shut.
+
+In three minutes Babbie went through all the degrees of fear. In the
+first she thought Lord Rintoul had kidnapped her; but no sooner had
+her captor resolved himself into Dow, drunk with the events of the
+day and night, than in the earl's hands would have lain safety. Next,
+Dow was forgotten in the dread of a sudden death which he must share.
+And lastly, the rain seemed to be driving all other horrors back, that
+it might have her for its own. Her perils increased to the unbearable
+as quickly as an iron in the fire passes through the various stages
+between warmth and white heat. Then she had to do something; and as
+she could not cry out, she flung herself from the dogcart. She fell
+heavily in Caddam Wood, but the rain would not let her lie there
+stunned. It beat her back to consciousness, and she sat up on her
+knees and listened breathlessly, staring in the direction the trap had
+taken, as if her eyes could help her ears.
+
+All night, I have said, the rain poured, but those charges only rode
+down the deluge at intervals, as now and again one wave greater than
+the others stalks over the sea. In the first lull it appeared to
+Babbie that the storm had swept by, leaving her to Dow. Now she heard
+the rubbing of the branches, and felt the torn leaves falling on her
+gown. She rose to feel her way out of the wood with her bound hands,
+then sank in terror, for some one had called her name. Next moment she
+was up again, for the voice was Gavin's, who was hurrying after her,
+as he thought, down Windyghoul. He was no farther away than a whisper
+might have carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him, for
+already Dow was coming back. She could not see him, but she heard the
+horse whinny and the rocking of the dogcart. Dow was now at the
+brute's head, and probably it tried to bite him, for he struck it,
+crying:
+
+"Would you? Stand still till I find her.... I heard her move this
+minute."
+
+Babbie crouched upon a big stone and sat motionless while he groped
+for her. Her breathing might have been tied now, as well as her mouth.
+She heard him feeling for her, first with his feet and then with his
+hands, and swearing when his head struck against a tree.
+
+"I ken you're within hearing," he muttered, "and I'll hae you yet. I
+have a gully-knife in my hand. Listen!"
+
+He severed a whin-stalk with the knife, and Babbie seemed to see the
+gleam of the blade.
+
+"What do I mean by wanting to kill you?" he said, as if she had asked
+the question. "Do you no ken wha said to me, 'Kill this woman?' It was
+the Lord. 'I winna kill her,' I said, 'but I'll cart her out o' the
+country.' 'Kill her,' says He; 'why encumbereth she the ground?'"
+
+He resumed his search, but with new tactics. "I see you now," he would
+cry, and rush forward perhaps within a yard of her. Then she must have
+screamed had she had the power. When he tied that neckerchief round
+her mouth he prolonged her life.
+
+Then came the second hurricane of rain, so appalling that had Babbie's
+hands been free she would have pressed them to her ears. For a full
+minute she forgot Dow's presence. A living thing touched her face. The
+horse had found her. She recoiled from it, but its frightened head
+pressed heavily on her shoulder. She rose and tried to steal away, but
+the brute followed, and as the rain suddenly exhausted itself she
+heard the dragging of the dogcart. She had to halt.
+
+Again she heard Dow's voice. Perhaps he had been speaking throughout
+the roar of the rain. If so, it must have made him deaf to his own
+words. He groped for the horse's head, and presently his hand touched
+Babbie's dress, then jumped from it, so suddenly had he found her. No
+sound escaped him, and she was beginning to think it possible that he
+had mistaken her for a bush when his hand went over her face. He was
+making sure of his discovery.
+
+"The Lord has delivered you into my hands," he said in a low voice,
+with some awe in it. Then he pulled her to the ground, and, sitting
+down beside her, rocked himself backward and forward, his hands round
+his knees. She would have bartered the world for power to speak to
+him.
+
+"He wouldna hear o' my just carting you to some other countryside," he
+said confidentially. "'The devil would just blaw her back again,' says
+He, 'therefore kill her.' 'And if I kill her,' I says, 'they'll hang
+me.' 'You can hang yoursel',' says He. 'What wi'?' I speirs. 'Wi' the
+reins o' the dogcart,' says He. 'They would break,' says I. 'Weel,
+weel,' says He, 'though they do hang you, nobody'll miss you.' 'That's
+true,' says I, 'and You are a just God.'"
+
+He stood up and confronted her.
+
+"Prisoner at the bar," he said, "hae ye onything to say why sentence
+of death shouldna be pronounced against you? She doesna answer. She
+kens death is her deserts."
+
+By this time he had forgotten probably why his victim was dumb.
+
+"Prisoner at the bar, hand back to me the soul o' Gavin Dishart. You
+winna? Did the devil, your master, summon you to him and say, 'Either
+that noble man or me maun leave Thrums?' He did. And did you, or did
+you no, drag that minister, when under your spell, to the hill, and
+there marry him ower the tongs? You did. Witnesses, Rob Dow and Tammas
+Whamond."
+
+She was moving from him on her knees, meaning when out of arm's reach
+to make a dash for life.
+
+"Sit down," he grumbled, "or how can you expect a fair trial? Prisoner
+at the bar, you have been found guilty of witchcraft."
+
+For the first time his voice faltered.
+
+"That's the difficulty, for witches canna die, except by burning or
+drowning. There's no blood in you for my knife, and your neck wouldna
+twist. Your master has brocht the rain to put out a' the fires, and
+we'll hae to wait till it runs into a pool deep enough to drown you.
+
+"I wonder at You, God. Do You believe her master'll mak' the pool for
+her? He'll rather stop his rain. Mr. Dishart said You was mair
+powerful than the devil, but it doesna look like it. If You had the
+power, how did You no stop this woman working her will on the
+minister? You kent what she was doing, for You ken a' things. Mr.
+Dishart says You ken a' things. If You do, the mair shame to You.
+Would a shepherd, that could help it, let dogs worry his sheep? Kill
+her! It's fine to cry 'Kill her,' but whaur's the bonfire, whaur's the
+pool? You that made the heaven and the earth and all that in them is,
+can You no set fire to some wet whins, or change this stane into a
+mill-dam?"
+
+He struck the stone with his fist, and then gave a cry of exultation.
+He raised the great slab in his arms and flung it from him. In
+that moment Babbie might have run away, but she fainted. Almost
+simultaneously with Dow she knew this was the stone which covered the
+Caddam well. When she came to, Dow was speaking, and his voice had
+become solemn.
+
+"You said your master was mair powerful than mine, and I said it too,
+and all the time you was sitting here wi' the very pool aneath you
+that I have been praying for. Listen!"
+
+He dropped a stone into the well, and she heard it strike the water.
+
+"What are you shaking at?" he said in reproof. "Was it no yoursel'
+that chose the spot? Lassie, say your prayers. Are you saying them?"
+
+He put his hand over her face, to feel if her lips were moving, and
+tore off the neckerchief.
+
+And then again the rain came between them. In that rain one could not
+think. Babbie did not know that she had bitten through the string that
+tied her hands. She planned no escape. But she flung herself at the
+place where Dow had been standing. He was no longer there, and she
+fell heavily, and was on her feet again in an instant and running
+recklessly. Trees intercepted her, and she thought they were Dow, and
+wrestled with them. By and by she fell into Windyghoul, and there she
+crouched until all her senses were restored to her, when she
+remembered that she had been married lately.
+
+How long Dow was in discovering that she had escaped, and whether he
+searched for her, no one knows. After a time he jumped into the
+dogcart again, and drove aimlessly through the rain. That wild journey
+probably lasted two hours, and came to an abrupt end only when a tree
+fell upon the trap. The horse galloped off, but one of Dow's legs was
+beneath the tree, and there he had to lie helpless, for though the leg
+was little injured, he could not extricate himself. A night and day
+passed, and he believed that he must die; but even in this plight he
+did not forget the man he loved. He found a piece of slate, and in the
+darkness cut these words on it with his knife:
+
+  "Me being about to die, I solemnly swear I didna see the minister
+  marrying an Egyptian on the hill this nicht. May I burn in Hell if
+  this is no true.
+
+    (Signed) "ROB DOW."
+
+This document he put in his pocket, and so preserved proof of what he
+was perjuring himself to deny.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty.
+
+BABBIE AND MARGARET--DEFENCE OF THE MANSE CONTINUED.
+
+
+The Egyptian was mournful in Windyghoul, up which she had once danced
+and sung; but you must not think that she still feared Dow. I felt
+McKenzie's clutch on my arm for hours after he left me, but she was
+far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes
+only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that
+first made her play the coquette with Gavin. If she cried now, it was
+not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him.
+Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out
+the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at
+once, and the drooping head would have been proud again, and she would
+have gone away forever without another tear.
+
+What do I say? I am doing a wrong to the love these two bore each
+other. Babbie would not have taken so base a message from my lips. He
+would have had to say the words to her himself before she believed
+them his. What would he want her to do now? was the only question she
+asked herself. To follow him was useless, for in that rain and
+darkness two people might have searched for each other all night in a
+single field. That he would go to the Spittal, thinking her in
+Rintoul's dogcart, she did not doubt; and his distress was painful to
+her to think of. But not knowing that the burns were in flood, she
+underestimated his danger.
+
+Remembering that the mudhouse was near, she groped her way to it,
+meaning to pass the night there; but at the gate she turned away
+hastily, hearing from the door the voice of a man she did not know to
+be Nanny's brother. She wandered recklessly a short distance, until
+the rain began to threaten again, and then, falling on her knees in
+the broom, she prayed to God for guidance. When she rose she set off
+for the manse.
+
+The rain that followed the flash of lightning had brought Margaret to
+the kitchen.
+
+"Jean, did you ever hear such a rain? It is trying to break into the
+manse."
+
+"I canna hear you, ma'am; is it the rain you're feared at?"
+
+"What else could it be?"
+
+Jean did not answer.
+
+"I hope the minister won't leave the church, Jean, till this is
+over?"
+
+"Nobody would daur, ma'am. The rain'll turn the key on them all."
+
+Jean forced out these words with difficulty, for she knew that the
+church had been empty and the door locked for over an hour.
+
+"This rain has come as if in answer to the minister's prayer, Jean."
+
+"It wasna rain like this they wanted."
+
+"Jean, you would not attempt to guide the Lord's hand. The minister
+will have to reprove the people for thinking too much of him again,
+for they will say that he induced God to send the rain. To-night's
+meeting will be remembered long in Thrums."
+
+Jean shuddered, and said, "It's mair like an ordinary rain now,
+ma'am."
+
+"But it has put out your fire, and I wanted another heater. Perhaps
+the one I have is hot enough, though."
+
+Margaret returned to the parlor, and from the kitchen Jean could hear
+the heater tilted backward and forward in the box-iron--a pleasant,
+homely sound when there is happiness in the house. Soon she heard a
+step outside, however, and it was followed by a rough shaking of the
+barred door.
+
+"Is it you, Mr. Dishart?" Jean asked nervously.
+
+"It's me, Tammas Whamond," the precentor answered. "Unbar the door."
+
+"What do you want? Speak low."
+
+"I winna speak low. Let me in. I hae news for the minister's mother."
+
+"What news?" demanded Jean.
+
+"Jean Proctor, as chief elder of the kirk I order you to let me do my
+duty."
+
+"Whaur's the minister?"
+
+"He's a minister no longer. He's married a gypsy woman and run awa wi'
+her."
+
+"You lie, Tammas Whamond. I believe----"
+
+"Your belief's of no consequence. Open the door, and let me in to tell
+your mistress what I hae seen."
+
+"She'll hear it first frae his ain lips if she hears it ava. I winna
+open the door."
+
+"Then I'll burst it open."
+
+Whamond flung himself at the door, and Jean, her fingers rigid with
+fear, stood waiting for its fall. But the rain came to her rescue by
+lashing the precentor until even he was forced to run from it.
+
+"I'll be back again," he cried. "Woe to you, Jean Proctor, that hae
+denied your God this nicht."
+
+"Who was that speaking to you, Jean?" asked Margaret, re-entering the
+kitchen. Until the rain abated Jean did not attempt to answer.
+
+"I thought it was the precentor's voice," Margaret said.
+
+Jean was a poor hand at lying, and she stuttered in her answer.
+
+"There is nothing wrong, is there?" cried Margaret, in sudden fright.
+"My son----"
+
+"Nothing, nothing."
+
+The words jumped from Jean to save Margaret from falling. Now she
+could not take them back. "I winna believe it o' him," said Jean to
+herself. "Let them say what they will, I'll be true to him; and when
+he comes back he'll find her as he left her."
+
+"It was Lang Tammas," she answered her mistress; "but he just came to
+say that----"
+
+"Quick, Jean! what?"
+
+"----Mr. Dishart has been called to a sick-bed in the country,
+ma'am--to the farm o' Look-About-You; and as it's sic a rain, he's to
+bide there a' nicht."
+
+"And Whamond came through that rain to tell me this? How good of him.
+Was there any other message?"
+
+"Just that the minister hoped you would go straight to your bed,
+ma'am," said Jean, thinking to herself, "There can be no great sin in
+giving her one mair happy nicht; it may be her last."
+
+The two women talked for a short time, and then read verse about in
+the parlor from the third chapter of Mark.
+
+"This is the first night we have been left alone in the manse,"
+Margaret said, as she was retiring to her bedroom, "and we must not
+grudge the minister to those who have sore need of him. I notice that
+you have barred the doors."
+
+"Ay, they're barred. Nobody can win in the nicht."
+
+"Nobody will want in, Jean," Margaret said, smiling.
+
+"I dinna ken about that," answered Jean below her breath. "Ay, ma'am,
+may you sleep for baith o' us this nicht, for I daurna gang to my
+bed."
+
+Jean was both right and wrong, for two persons wanted in within the
+next half-hour, and she opened the door to both of them. The first to
+come was Babbie.
+
+So long as women sit up of nights listening for a footstep, will they
+flatten their faces at the window, though all without be black. Jean
+had not been back in the kitchen for two minutes before she raised
+the blind. Her eyes were close to the glass, when she saw another face
+almost meet hers, as you may touch your reflection in a mirror. But
+this face was not her own. It was white and sad. Jean suppressed a
+cry, and let the blind fall, as if shutting the lid on some uncanny
+thing.
+
+"Won't you let me in?" said a voice that might have been only the sob
+of a rain-beaten wind; "I am nearly drowned."
+
+Jean stood like death; but her suppliant would not pass on.
+
+"You are not afraid?" the voice continued. "Raise the blind again, and
+you will see that no one need fear me."
+
+At this request Jean's hands sought each other's company behind her
+back.
+
+"Wha are you?" she asked, without stirring. "Are you--the woman?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Whaur's the minister?"
+
+The rain again became wild, but this time it only tore by the manse as
+if to a conflict beyond.
+
+"Are you aye there? I daurna let you in till I'm sure the mistress is
+bedded. Gang round to the front, and see if there's ony licht burning
+in the high west window."
+
+"There was a light," the voice said presently, "but it was turned out
+as I looked."
+
+"Then I'll let you in, and God kens I mean no wrang by it."
+
+Babbie entered shivering, and Jean rebarred the door. Then she looked
+long at the woman whom her master loved. Babbie was on her knees at
+the hearth, holding out her hands to the dead fire.
+
+"What a pity it's a fause face."
+
+"Do I look so false?"
+
+"Is it true? You're no married to him?"
+
+"Yes, it is true."
+
+"And yet you look as if you was fond o' him. If you cared for him, how
+could you do it?"
+
+"That was why I did it."
+
+"And him could hae had wha he liked."
+
+"I gave up Lord Rintoul for him."
+
+"What? Na, na; you're the Egyptian."
+
+"You judge me by my dress."
+
+"And soaking it is. How you're shivering--what neat fingers--what
+bonny little feet. I could near believe what you tell me. Aff wi'
+these rags, an I'll gie you on my black frock, if--if you promise me
+no to gang awa wi't."
+
+So Babbie put on some clothes of Jean's, including the black frock,
+and stockings and shoes.
+
+"Mr. Dishart cannot be back, Jean," she said, "before morning, and I
+don't want his mother to see me till he comes."
+
+"I wouldna let you near her the nicht though you gaed on your knees to
+me. But whaur is he?"
+
+Babbie explained why Gavin had set off for the Spittal; but Jean shook
+her head incredulously, saying, "I canna believe you're that grand
+leddy, and yet ilka time I look at you I could near believe it."
+
+In another minute Jean had something else to think of, for there came
+a loud rap upon the front door.
+
+"It's Tammas Whamond back again," she moaned; "and if the mistress
+hears, she'll tell me to let him in."
+
+"You shall open to me," cried a hoarse voice.
+
+"That's no Tammas' word," Jean said in bewilderment.
+
+"It is Lord Rintoul," Babbie whispered.
+
+"What? Then it's truth you telled me."
+
+The knocking continued; a door upstairs opened, and Margaret spoke
+over the banisters.
+
+"Have you gone to bed, Jean? Some one is knocking at the door, and a
+minute ago I thought I heard a carriage stop close by. Perhaps the
+farmer has driven Mr. Dishart home."
+
+"I'm putting on my things, ma'am," Jean answered; then whispered to
+Babbie, "What's to be done?"
+
+"He won't go away," Babbie answered. "You will have to let him into
+the parlor, Jean. Can she see the door from up there?"
+
+"No; but though he was in the parlor?"
+
+"I shall go to him there."
+
+"Make haste, Jean," Margaret called. "If it is any persons wanting
+shelter, we must give it them on such a night."
+
+"A minute, ma'am," Jean answered. To Babbie she whispered, "What shall
+I say to her?"
+
+"I--I don't know," answered Babbie ruefully. "Think of something,
+Jean. But open the door now. Stop, let me into the parlor first."
+
+The two women stole into the parlor.
+
+"Tell me what will be the result o' his coming here," entreated Jean.
+
+"The result," Babbie said firmly, "will be that he shall go away and
+leave me here."
+
+Margaret heard Jean open the front door and speak to some person or
+persons whom she showed into the parlor.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-One.
+
+RINTOUL AND BABBIE--BREAKDOWN OF THE DEFENCE OF THE MANSE.
+
+
+"You dare to look me in the face!"
+
+They were Rintoul's words. Yet Babbie had only ventured to look up
+because he was so long in speaking. His voice was low but harsh, like
+a wheel on which the brake is pressed sharply.
+
+"It seems to be more than the man is capable of," he added sourly.
+
+"Do you think," Babbie exclaimed, taking fire, "that he is afraid of
+you?"
+
+"So it seems; but I will drag him into the light, wherever he is
+skulking."
+
+Lord Rintoul strode to the door, and the brake was off his tongue
+already.
+
+"Go," said Babbie coldly, "and shout and stamp through the house; you
+may succeed in frightening the women, who are the only persons in
+it."
+
+"Where is he?"
+
+"He has gone to the Spittal to see you."
+
+"He knew I was on the hill."
+
+"He lost me in the darkness, and thought you had run away with me in
+your trap."
+
+"Ha! So he is off to the Spittal to ask me to give you back to him."
+
+"To compel you," corrected Babbie.
+
+"Pooh!" said the earl nervously, "that was but mummery on the hill."
+
+"It was a marriage."
+
+"With gypsies for witnesses. Their word would count for less than
+nothing. Babbie, I am still in time to save you."
+
+"I don't want to be saved. The marriage had witnesses no court could
+discredit."
+
+"What witnesses?"
+
+"Mr. McKenzie and yourself."
+
+She heard his teeth meet. When next she looked at him, there were
+tears in his eyes as well as in her own. It was perhaps the first time
+these two had ever been in close sympathy. Both were grieving for
+Rintoul.
+
+"I am so sorry," Babbie began in a broken voice; then stopped, because
+they seemed such feeble words.
+
+"If you are sorry," the earl answered eagerly, "it is not yet too
+late. McKenzie and I saw nothing. Come away with me, Babbie, if only
+in pity for yourself."
+
+"Ah, but I don't pity myself."
+
+"Because this man has blinded you."
+
+"No, he has made me see."
+
+"This mummery on the hill----"
+
+"Why do you call it so? I believe God approved of that marriage, as He
+could never have countenanced yours and mine."
+
+"God! I never heard the word on your lips before."
+
+"I know that."
+
+"It is his teaching, doubtless?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And he told you that to do to me as you have done was to be pleasing
+in God's sight?"
+
+"No; he knows that it was so evil in God's sight that I shall suffer
+for it always."
+
+"But he has done no wrong, so there is no punishment for him?"
+
+"It is true that he has done no wrong, but his punishment will be
+worse, probably, than mine."
+
+[Illustration: "YOU DARE TO LOOK ME IN THE FACE!"]
+
+"That," said the earl, scoffing, "is not just."
+
+"It is just. He has accepted responsibility for my sins by marrying
+me."
+
+"And what form is his punishment to take?"
+
+"For marrying me he will be driven from his church and dishonored in
+all men's eyes, unless--unless God is more merciful to us than we can
+expect."
+
+Her sincerity was so obvious that the earl could no longer meet it
+with sarcasm.
+
+"It is you I pity now," he said, looking wonderingly at her. "Do you
+not see that this man has deceived you? Where was his boasted purity
+in meeting you by stealth, as he must have been doing, and plotting to
+take you from me?"
+
+"If you knew him," Babbie answered, "you would not need to be told
+that he is incapable of that. He thought me an ordinary gypsy until an
+hour ago."
+
+"And you had so little regard for me that you waited until the eve of
+what was to be our marriage, and then, laughing at my shame, ran off
+to marry him."
+
+"I am not so bad as that," Babbie answered, and told him what had
+brought her to Thrums. "I had no thought but of returning to you, nor
+he of keeping me from you. We had said good-by at the mudhouse
+door--and then we heard your voice."
+
+"And my voice was so horrible to you that it drove you to this?"
+
+"I--I love him so much."
+
+What more could Babbie answer? These words told him that, if
+love commands, home, the friendships of a lifetime, kindnesses
+incalculable, are at once as naught. Nothing is so cruel as love if
+a rival challenges it to combat.
+
+"Why could you not love me, Babbie?" said the earl sadly. "I have done
+so much for you."
+
+It was little he had done for her that was not selfish. Men are
+deceived curiously in such matters. When they add a new wing to their
+house, they do not call the action virtue; but if they give to a
+fellow-creature for their own gratification, they demand of God a good
+mark for it. Babbie, however, was in no mood to make light of the
+earl's gifts, and at his question she shook her head sorrowfully.
+
+"Is it because I am too--old?"
+
+This was the only time he ever spoke of his age to her.
+
+"Oh no, it is not that," she replied hastily, "I love Mr.
+Dishart--because he loves me, I think."
+
+"Have I not loved you always?"
+
+"Never," Babbie answered simply. "If you had, perhaps then I should
+have loved you."
+
+"Babbie," he exclaimed, "if ever man loved woman, and showed it by the
+sacrifices he made for her, I----"
+
+"No," Babbie said, "you don't understand what it is. Ah! I did not
+mean to hurt you."
+
+"If I don't know what it is, what is it?" he asked, almost humbly. "I
+scarcely know you now."
+
+"That is it," said Babbie.
+
+She gave him back his ring, and then he broke down pitifully.
+Doubtless there was good in him, but I saw him only once; and with
+nothing to contrast against it, I may not now attempt to breathe life
+into the dust of his senile passion. These were the last words that
+passed between him and Babbie:
+
+"There was nothing," he said wistfully, "in this wide world that you
+could not have had by asking me for it. Was not that love?"
+
+"No," she answered. "What right have I to everything I cry for?"
+
+"You should never have had a care had you married me. That is love."
+
+"It is not. I want to share my husband's cares, as I expect him to
+share mine."
+
+"I would have humored you in everything."
+
+"You always did: as if a woman's mind were for laughing at, like a
+baby's passions."
+
+"You had your passions, too, Babbie. Yet did I ever chide you for
+them? That was love."
+
+"No, it was contempt. Oh," she cried passionately, "what have not you
+men to answer for who talk of love to a woman when her face is all you
+know of her; and her passions, her aspirations, are for kissing to
+sleep, her very soul a plaything? I tell you, Lord Rintoul, and it is
+all the message I send back to the gentlemen at the Spittal who made
+love to me behind your back, that this is a poor folly, and well
+calculated to rouse the wrath of God."
+
+Now, Jean's ear had been to the parlor keyhole for a time, but some
+message she had to take to Margaret, and what she risked saying was
+this:
+
+"It's Lord Rintoul and a party that has been catched in the rain, and
+he would be obliged to you if you could gie his bride shelter for the
+nicht."
+
+Thus the distracted servant thought to keep Margaret's mind at rest
+until Gavin came back.
+
+"Lord Rintoul!" exclaimed Margaret. "What a pity Gavin has missed him.
+Of course she can stay here. Did you say I had gone to bed? I should
+not know what to say to a lord. But ask her to come up to me after he
+has gone--and, Jean, is the parlor looking tidy?"
+
+Lord Rintoul having departed, Jean told Babbie how she had accounted
+to Margaret for his visit. "And she telled me to gie you dry claethes
+and her compliments, and would you gang up to the bedroom and see
+her?"
+
+Very slowly Babbie climbed the stairs. I suppose she is the only
+person who was ever afraid of Margaret. Her first knock on the bedroom
+door was so soft that Margaret, who was sitting up in bed, did not
+hear it. When Babbie entered the room, Margaret's first thought was
+that there could be no other so beautiful as this, and her second was
+that the stranger seemed even more timid than herself. After a few
+minutes' talk she laid aside her primness, a weapon she had drawn in
+self-defence lest this fine lady should not understand the grandeur of
+a manse, and at a "Call me Babbie, won't you?" she smiled.
+
+"That is what some other person calls you," said Margaret archly. "Do
+you know that he took twenty minutes to say good-night? My dear," she
+added hastily, misinterpreting Babbie's silence, "I should have been
+sorry had he taken one second less. Every tick of the clock was a
+gossip, telling me how he loves you."
+
+In the dim light a face that begged for pity was turned to Margaret.
+
+"He does love you, Babbie?" she asked, suddenly doubtful.
+
+Babbie turned away her face, then shook her head.
+
+"But you love him?"
+
+Again Babbie shook her head.
+
+"Oh, my dear," cried Margaret, in distress, "if this is so, are you
+not afraid to marry him?"
+
+She knew now that Babbie was crying, but she did not know why Babbie
+could not look her in the face.
+
+"There may be times," Babbie said, most woeful that she had not
+married Rintoul, "when it is best to marry a man though we do not love
+him."
+
+"You are wrong, Babbie," Margaret answered gravely; "if I know
+anything at all, it is that."
+
+"It may be best for others."
+
+"Do you mean for one other?" Margaret asked, and the girl bowed her
+head. "Ah, Babbie, you speak like a child."
+
+"You do not understand."
+
+"I do not need to be told the circumstances to know this--that if two
+people love each other, neither has any right to give the other up."
+
+Babbie turned impulsively to cast herself on the mercy of Gavin's
+mother, but no word could she say; a hot tear fell from her eyes upon
+the coverlet, and then she looked at the door, as if to run away.
+
+"But I have been too inquisitive," Margaret began; whereupon Babbie
+cried, "Oh no, no, no: you are very good. I have no one who cares
+whether I do right or wrong."
+
+"Your parents----"
+
+"I have had none since I was a child."
+
+"It is the more reason why I should be your friend," Margaret said,
+taking the girl's hand.
+
+"You do not know what you are saying. You cannot be my friend."
+
+"Yes, dear, I love you already. You have a good face, Babbie, as well
+as a beautiful one."
+
+Babbie could remain in the room no longer. She bade Margaret
+good-night and bent forward to kiss her; then drew back, like a Judas
+ashamed.
+
+"Why did you not kiss me?" Margaret asked in surprise, but poor Babbie
+walked out of the room without answering.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Of what occurred at the manse on the following day until I reached it,
+I need tell little more. When Babbie was tending Sam'l Farquharson's
+child in the Tenements she learned of the flood in Glen Quharity, and
+that the greater part of the congregation had set off to the
+assistance of the farmers; but fearful as this made her for Gavin's
+safety, she kept the new anxiety from his mother. Deceived by another
+story of Jean's, Margaret was the one happy person in the house.
+
+"I believe you had only a lover's quarrel with Lord Rintoul last
+night," she said to Babbie in the afternoon. "Ah, you see I can guess
+what is taking you to the window so often. You must not think him long
+in coming for you. I can assure you that the rain which keeps my son
+from me must be sufficiently severe to separate even true lovers. Take
+an old woman's example, Babbie. If I thought the minister's absence
+alarming, I should be in anguish; but as it is, my mind is so much at
+ease that, see, I can thread my needle."
+
+It was in less than an hour after Margaret spoke thus tranquilly to
+Babbie that the precentor got into the manse.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Two.
+
+MARGARET, THE PRECENTOR, AND GOD BETWEEN.
+
+
+Unless Andrew Luke, who went to Canada, be still above ground, I am
+now the only survivor of the few to whom Lang Tammas told what passed
+in the manse parlor after the door closed on him and Margaret. With
+the years the others lost the details, but before I forget them the
+man who has been struck by lightning will look at his arm without
+remembering what shrivelled it. There even came a time when the scene
+seemed more vivid to me than to the precentor, though that was only
+after he began to break up.
+
+"She was never the kind o' woman," Whamond said, "that a body need be
+nane feared at. You can see she is o' the timid sort. I couldna hae
+selected a woman easier to speak bold out to, though I had ha'en my
+pick o' them."
+
+He was a gaunt man, sour and hard, and he often paused in his story
+with a puzzled look on his forbidding face.
+
+"But, man, she was so michty windy o' him. If he had wanted to put a
+knife into her, I believe that woman would just hae telled him to take
+care no to cut his hands. Ay, and what innocent-like she was! If she
+had heard enough, afore I saw her, to make her uneasy, I could hae
+begun at once; but here she was, shaking my hand and smiling to me, so
+that aye when I tried to speak I gaed through ither. Nobody can
+despise me for it, I tell you, mair than I despise mysel'.
+
+"I thocht to mysel', 'Let her hae her smile out, Tammas Whamond; it's
+her hinmost.' Syne wi' shame at my cowardliness, I tried to yoke to my
+duty as chief elder o' the kirk, and I said to her, as thrawn as I
+could speak, 'Dinna thank me; I've done nothing for you.'
+
+"'I ken it wasna for me you did it,' she said, 'but for him; but, oh,
+Mr. Whamond, will that make me think the less o' you? He's my all,'
+she says, wi' that smile back in her face, and a look mixed up wi't
+that said as plain, 'and I need no more.' I thocht o' saying that some
+builds their house upon the sand, but--dagont, dominie, it's a solemn
+thing the pride mithers has in their laddies. I mind aince my ain
+mither--what the devil are you glowering at, Andrew Luke? Do you think
+I'm greeting?
+
+"'You'll sit down, Mr. Whamond,' she says next.
+
+"'No, I winna,' I said, angry-like. 'I didna come here to sit.'
+
+"I could see she thocht I was shy at being in the manse parlor; ay,
+and I thocht she was pleased at me looking shy. Weel, she took my hat
+out o' my hand, and she put it on the chair at the door, whaur there's
+aye an auld chair in grand houses for the servant to sit on at family
+exercise.
+
+"'You're a man, Mr. Whamond,' says she, 'that the minister delights to
+honor, and so you'll oblige me by sitting in his own armchair.'"
+
+Gavin never quite delighted to honor the precentor, of whom he was
+always a little afraid, and perhaps Margaret knew it. But you must not
+think less of her for wanting to gratify her son's chief elder. She
+thought, too, that he had just done her a service. I never yet knew a
+good woman who did not enjoy flattering men she liked.
+
+"I saw my chance at that," Whamond went on, "and I says to her
+sternly, 'In worldly position,' I says, 'I'm a common man, and it's no
+for the like o' sic to sit in a minister's chair; but it has been
+God's will,' I says, 'to wrap around me the mantle o' chief elder o'
+the kirk, and if the minister falls awa frae grace, it becomes my duty
+to take his place.'
+
+"If she had been looking at me, she maun hae grown feared at that, and
+syne I could hae gone on though my ilka word was a knockdown blow. But
+she was picking some things aff the chair to let me down on't.
+
+"'It's a pair o' mittens I'm working for the minister,' she says, and
+she handed them to me. Ay, I tried no to take them, but--Oh, lads,
+it's queer to think how saft I was.
+
+"'He's no to ken about them till they're finished,' she says, terrible
+fond-like.
+
+"The words came to my mouth, 'They'll never be finished,' and I could
+hae cursed mysel' for no saying them. I dinna ken how it was, but
+there was something pitiful in seeing her take up the mittens and
+begin working cheerily at one, and me kenning all the time that they
+would never be finished. I watched her fingers, and I said to mysel',
+'Another stitch, and that maun be your last.' I said that to mysel'
+till I thocht it was the needle that said it, and I wondered at her no
+hearing.
+
+"In the tail o' the day I says, 'You needna bother; he'll never wear
+them,' and they sounded sic words o' doom that I rose up off the
+chair. Ay, but she took me up wrang, and she said, 'I see you have
+noticed how careless o' his ain comforts he is, and that in his zeal
+he forgets to put on his mittens, though they may be in his pocket a'
+the time. Ay,' says she, confident-like, 'but he winna forget these
+mittens, Mr. Whamond, and I'll tell you the reason: it's because
+they're his mother's work.'
+
+"I stamped my foot, and she gae me an apologetic look, and she says,
+'I canna help boasting about his being so fond o' me.'
+
+"Ay, but here was me saying to mysel', 'Do your duty, Tammas Whamond;
+you sluggard, do your duty,' and without lifting my een frae her
+fingers I said sternly, 'The chances are,' I said, 'that these mittens
+will never be worn by the hands they are worked for.'
+
+"'You mean,' says she, 'that he'll gie them awa to some ill-off body,
+as he gies near a' thing he has? Ay, but there's one thing he never
+parts wi', and that's my work. There's a young lady in the manse the
+now,' says she, 'that offered to finish the mittens for me, but he
+would value them less if I let ony other body put a stitch into
+them.'
+
+"I thocht to mysel', 'Tammas Whamond, the Lord has opened a door to
+you, and you'll be disgraced forever if you dinna walk straucht in.'
+So I rose again, and I says, boldly this time, 'Whaur's that young
+leddy? I hae something to say to her that canna be kept waiting.'
+
+"'She's up the stair,' she says, surprised, 'but you canna ken her,
+Mr. Whamond, for she just came last nicht.'
+
+"'I ken mair o' her than you think,' says I; 'I ken what brocht her
+here, and ken wha she thinks she is to be married to, and I've come to
+tell her that she'll never get him.'
+
+"'How no?' she said, amazed like.
+
+"'Because,' said I, wi' my teeth thegither, 'he is already married.'
+
+"Lads, I stood waiting to see her fall, and when she didna fall I just
+waited langer, thinking she was slow in taking it a' in.
+
+"'I see you ken wha she is,' she said, looking at me, 'and yet I canna
+credit your news.'
+
+"'They're true,' I cries.
+
+"'Even if they are,' says she, considering, 'it may be the best thing
+that could happen to baith o' them.'
+
+"I sank back in the chair in fair bewilderment, for I didna ken at
+that time, as we a' ken now, that she was thinking o' the earl when I
+was thinking o' her son. Dominie, it looked to me as if the Lord had
+opened a door to me, and syne shut it in my face.
+
+"Syne wi' me sitting there in a kind o' awe o' the woman's simpleness,
+she began to tell me what the minister was like when he was a bairn,
+and I was saying a' the time to mysel', 'You're chief elder o' the
+kirk, Tammas Whamond, and you maun speak out the next time she stops
+to draw breath.' They were terrible sma', common things she telled me,
+sic as near a' mithers minds about their bairns, but the kind o' holy
+way she said them drove my words down my throat, like as if I was some
+infidel man trying to break out wi' blasphemy in a kirk.
+
+"'I'll let you see something,' says she, 'that I ken will interest
+you.' She brocht it out o' a drawer, and what do you think it was? As
+sure as death it was no more than some o' his hair when he was a
+litlin, and it was tied up sic carefully in paper that you would hae
+thocht it was some valuable thing.
+
+"'Mr. Whamond,' she says solemnly, 'you've come thrice to the manse to
+keep me frae being uneasy about my son's absence, and you was the
+chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I'll gie you
+a little o' that hair.'
+
+"Dagont, what did I care about his hair? and yet to see her fondling
+it! I says to mysel', 'Mrs. Dishart,' I says to mysel', 'I was the
+chief instrument under God in bringing him to Thrums, and I've come
+here to tell you that I'm to be the chief instrument under God in
+driving him out o't.' Ay, but when I focht to bring out these words,
+my mouth snecked like a box.
+
+"'Dinna gie me his hair,' was a' I could say, and I wouldna take it
+frae her; but she laid it in my hand, and--and syne what could I do?
+Ay, it's easy to speak about thae things now, and to wonder how I
+could hae so disgraced the position o' chief elder o' the kirk, but I
+tell you I was near greeting for the woman. Call me names, dominie; I
+deserve them all."
+
+I did not call Whamond names for being reluctant to break Margaret's
+heart. Here is a confession I may make. Sometimes I say my prayers at
+night in a hurry, going on my knees indeed, but with as little
+reverence as I take a drink of water before jumping into bed, and for
+the same reason, because it is my nightly habit. I am only pattering
+words I have by heart to a chair then, and should be as well employed
+writing a comic Bible. At such times I pray for the earthly well-being
+of the precentor, though he has been dead for many years. He crept
+into my prayers the day he told me this story, and was part of them
+for so long that when they are only a recitation he is part of them
+still.
+
+"She said to me," Whamond continued, "that the women o' the
+congregation would be fond to handle the hair. Could I tell her that
+the women was waur agin him than the men? I shivered to hear her.
+
+"'Syne when they're a' sitting breathless listening to his preaching,'
+she says, 'they'll be able to picture him as a bairn, just as I often
+do in the kirk mysel'.'
+
+"Andrew Luke, you're sneering at me, but I tell you if you had been
+there and had begun to say, 'He'll preach in our kirk no more,' I
+would hae struck you. And I'm chief elder o' the kirk.
+
+"She says, 'Oh, Mr. Whamond, there's times in the kirk when he is
+praying, and the glow on his face is hardly mortal, so that I fall
+a-shaking, wi' a mixture o' fear and pride, me being his mother; and
+sinful though I am to say it, I canna help thinking at sic times that
+I ken what the mother o' Jesus had in her heart when she found Him in
+the temple.'
+
+"Dominie, it's sax-and-twenty years since I was made an elder o' the
+kirk. I mind the day as if it was yestreen. Mr. Carfrae made me walk
+hame wi' him, and he took me into the manse parlor, and he set me in
+that very chair. It was the first time I was ever in the manse. Ay, he
+little thocht that day in his earnestness, and I little thocht mysel'
+in the pride o' my lusty youth, that the time was coming when I would
+swear in that reverenced parlor. I say swear, dominie, for when she
+had finished I jumped to my feet, and I cried, 'Hell!' and I lifted up
+my hat. And I was chief elder.
+
+"She fell back frae my oath," he said, "and syne she took my sleeve
+and speired, 'What has come ower you, Mr. Whamond? Hae you onything on
+your mind?'
+
+"'I've sin on it,' I roared at her. 'I have neglect o' duty on it. I
+am one o' them that cries "Lord, Lord," and yet do not the things
+which He commands. He has pointed out the way to me, and I hinna
+followed it.'
+
+"'What is it you hinna done that you should hae done?' she said. 'Oh,
+Mr. Whamond, if you want my help, it's yours.'
+
+"'Your son's a' the earth to you,' I cried, 'but my eldership's as
+muckle to me. Sax-and-twenty years hae I been an elder, and now I maun
+gie it up.'
+
+"'Wha says that?' she speirs.
+
+"'I say it,' I cried. 'I've shirked my duty. I gie up my eldership
+now. Tammas Whamond is no langer an elder o' the kirk;' ay, and I was
+chief elder.
+
+"Dominie, I think she began to say that when the minister came hame he
+wouldna accept my resignation, but I paid no heed to her. You ken what
+was the sound that keeped my ears frae her words; it was the sound o'
+a machine coming yont the Tenements. You ken what was the sicht that
+made me glare through the window instead o' looking at her; it was the
+sicht o' Mr. Dishart in the machine. I couldna speak, but I got my
+body atween her and the window, for I heard shouting, and I couldna
+doubt that it was the folk cursing him.
+
+"But she heard too, she heard too, and she squeezed by me to the
+window. I couldna look out; I just walked saft-like to the parlor
+door, but afore I reached it she cried joyously--
+
+"'It's my son come back, and see how fond o' him they are! They are
+running at the side o' the machine, and the laddies are tossing their
+bonnets in the air.'
+
+"'God help you, woman!' I said to mysel', 'it canna be bonnets--it's
+stanes and divits mair likely that they're flinging at him.' Syne I
+creeped out o' the manse. Dominie, you mind I passed you in the
+kitchen, and didna say a word?"
+
+Yes, I saw the precentor pass through the kitchen, with such a face on
+him as no man ever saw him wear again. Since Tammas Whamond died we
+have had to enlarge the Thrums cemetery twice; so it can matter not at
+all to him, and but little to me, what you who read think of him. All
+his life children ran from him. He was the dourest, the most unlovable
+man in Thrums. But may my right hand wither, and may my tongue be
+cancer-bitten, and may my mind be gone into a dry rot, before I forget
+what he did for me and mine that day!
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Three.
+
+RAIN--MIST--THE JAWS.
+
+
+To this day we argue in the glen about the sound mistaken by many of
+us for the firing of the Spittal cannon, some calling it thunder and
+others the tearing of trees in the torrent. I think it must have been
+the roll of stones into the Quharity from Silver Hill, of which a
+corner has been missing since that day. Silver Hill is all stones, as
+if creation had been riddled there, and in the sun the mica on them
+shines like many pools of water.
+
+At the roar, as they thought, of the cannon, the farmers looked up
+from their struggle with the flood to say, "That's Rintoul married,"
+as clocks pause simultaneously to strike the hour. Then every one in
+the glen save Gavin and myself was done with Rintoul. Before the hills
+had answered the noise, Gavin was on his way to the Spittal. The dog
+must have been ten minutes in overtaking him, yet he maintained
+afterward that it was with him from the start. From this we see that
+the shock he had got carried him some distance before he knew that he
+had left the school-house. It also gave him a new strength, that
+happily lasted longer than his daze of mind.
+
+Gavin moved northward quicker than I came south, climbing over or
+wading through his obstacles, while I went round mine. After a time,
+too, the dog proved useful, for on discovering that it was going
+homeward it took the lead, and several times drew him to the right
+road to the Spittal by refusing to accompany him on the wrong road.
+Yet in two hours he had walked perhaps nine miles without being four
+miles nearer the Spittal. In that flood the glen milestones were three
+miles apart.
+
+For some time he had been following the dog doubtfully, for it seemed
+to be going too near the river. When they struck a cart-track,
+however, he concluded rightly that they were nearing a bridge. His
+faith in his guide was again tested before they had been many minutes
+on this sloppy road. The dog stopped, whined, looked irresolute, and
+then ran to the right, disappearing into the mist in an instant. He
+shouted to it to come back, and was surprised to hear a whistle in
+reply. This was sufficient to make him dash after the dog, and in less
+than a minute he stopped abruptly by the side of a shepherd.
+
+"Have you brocht it?" the man cried almost into Gavin's ear; yet the
+roar of the water was so tremendous that the words came faintly, as if
+from a distance. "Wae is me; is it only you, Mr. Dishart?"
+
+"Is it only you!" No one in the glen would have addressed a minister
+thus except in a matter of life or death, and Gavin knew it.
+
+"He'll be ower late," the shepherd exclaimed, rubbing his hands
+together in distress. "I'm speaking o' Whinbusses' grieve. He has run
+for ropes, but he'll be ower late."
+
+"Is there some one in danger?" asked Gavin, who stood, he knew not
+where, with this man, enveloped in mist.
+
+"Is there no? Look!"
+
+"There is nothing to be seen but mist; where are we?"
+
+"We're on the high bank o' the Quharity. Take care, man; you was
+stepping ower into the roaring water. Lie down and tell me if he's
+there yet. Maybe I just think that I see him, for the sicht is painted
+on my een."
+
+Gavin lay prone and peered at the river, but the mist came up to his
+eyes. He only knew that the river was below from the sound.
+
+"Is there a man down there?" he asked, shuddering.
+
+"There was a minute syne; on a bit island."
+
+"Why does he not speak?"
+
+"He is senseless. Dinna move; the mist's clearing, and you'll see if
+he's there syne. The mist has been lifting and falling that way ilka
+minute since me and the grieve saw him."
+
+The mist did not rise. It only shook like a blanket, and then again
+remained stationary. But in that movement Gavin had seen twice, first
+incredulously, and then with conviction.
+
+"Shepherd," he said, rising, "it is Lord Rintoul."
+
+"Ay, it's him; and you saw his feet was in the water. They were dry
+when the grieve left me. Mr. Dishart, the ground he is on is being
+washed awa bit by bit. I tell you, the flood's greedy for him, and
+it'll hae him----Look, did you see him again?"
+
+"Is he living?"
+
+"We saw him move. Hst! Was that a cry?"
+
+It was only the howling of the dog, which had recognized its master
+and was peering over the bank, the body quivering to jump, but the
+legs restless with indecision.
+
+"If we were down there," Gavin said, "we could hold him secure till
+rescue comes. It is no great jump."
+
+"How far would you make it? I saw him again!"
+
+"It looked further that time."
+
+"That's it! Sometimes the ground he is on looks so near that you think
+you could almost drop on it, and the next time it's yards and yards
+awa. I've stood ready for the spring, Mr. Dishart, a dozen times, but
+I aye sickened. I daurna do it. Look at the dog; just when it's
+starting to jump, it pulls itsel' back."
+
+As if it had heard the shepherd, the dog jumped at that instant.
+
+"It sprang too far," Gavin said.
+
+"It didna spring far enough."
+
+They waited, and presently the mist thinned for a moment, as if it was
+being drawn out. They saw the earl, but there was no dog.
+
+"Poor brute," said the shepherd, and looked with awe at Gavin.
+
+"Rintoul is slipping into the water," Gavin answered. "You won't
+jump?"
+
+"No, I'm wae for him, and----"
+
+"Then I will," Gavin was about to say, but the shepherd continued,
+"And him only married twa hours syne."
+
+That kept the words in Gavin's mouth for half a minute, and then he
+spoke them.
+
+"Dinna think o't," cried the shepherd, taking him by the coat. "The
+ground he is on is slippery. I've flung a dozen stanes at it, and them
+that hit it slithered off. Though you landed in the middle o't, you
+would slide into the water."
+
+"He shook himsel' free o' me," the shepherd told afterward, "and I saw
+him bending down and measuring the distance wi' his een as cool as if
+he was calculating a drill o' tatties. Syne I saw his lips moving in
+prayer. It wasna spunk he needed to pray for, though. Next minute
+there was me, my very arms prigging wi' him to think better o't, and
+him standing ready to loup, his knees bent, and not a tremble in them.
+The mist lifted, and I----Lads, I couldna gie a look to the earl. Mr.
+Dishart jumped; I hardly saw him, but I kent, I kent, for I was on the
+bank alane. What did I do? I flung mysel' down in a sweat, and if een
+could bore mist mine would hae done it. I thocht I heard the
+minister's death-cry, and may I be struck if I dinna believe now that
+it was a skirl o' my ain. After that there was no sound but the jaw
+o' the water; and I prayed, but no to God, to the mist to rise, and
+after an awful time it rose, and I saw the minister was safe; he had
+pulled the earl into the middle o' the bit island and was rubbing him
+back to consciousness. I sweat when I think o't yet."
+
+The Little Minister's jump is always spoken of as a brave act in the
+glen, but at such times I am silent. This is not because, being timid
+myself, I am without admiration for courage. My little maid says that
+three in every four of my poems are to the praise of prowess, and she
+has not forgotten how I carried her on my shoulder once to Tilliedrum
+to see a soldier who had won the Victoria Cross, and made her shake
+hands with him, though he was very drunk. Only last year one of my
+scholars declared to me that Nelson never said "England expects every
+man this day to do his duty," for which I thrashed the boy and sent
+him to the cooling-stone. But was it brave of Gavin to jump? I have
+heard some maintain that only misery made him so bold, and others that
+he jumped because it seemed a fine thing to risk his life for an
+enemy. But these are really charges of cowardice, and my boy was never
+a coward. Of the two kinds of courage, however, he did not then show
+the nobler. I am glad that he was ready for such an act, but he should
+have remembered Margaret and Babbie. As it was, he may be said to have
+forced them to jump with him. Not to attempt a gallant deed for which
+one has the impulse, may be braver than the doing of it.
+
+"Though it seemed as lang time," the shepherd says, "as I could hae
+run up a hill in, I dinna suppose it was many minutes afore I saw
+Rintoul opening and shutting his een. The next glint I had o' them
+they were speaking to ane another; ay, and mair than speaking. They
+were quarrelling. I couldna hear their words, but there was a moment
+when I thocht they were to grapple. Lads, the memory o' that'll hing
+about my deathbed. There was twa men, edicated to the highest pitch,
+ane a lord and the other a minister, and the flood was taking awa a
+mouthful o' their footing ilka minute, and the jaws o' destruction was
+gaping for them, and yet they were near fechting. We ken now it was
+about a woman. Ay, but does that make it less awful?"
+
+No, that did not make it less awful. It was even awful that Gavin's
+first words when Rintoul opened his eyes and closed them hastily were,
+"Where is she?" The earl did not answer; indeed, for the moment the
+words had no meaning to him.
+
+"How did I come here?" he asked feebly.
+
+"You should know better than I. Where is my wife?"
+
+"I remember now," Rintoul repeated several times. "Yes, I had left the
+Spittal to look for you--you were so long in coming. How did I find
+you?"
+
+"It was I who found you," Gavin answered. "You must have been swept
+away by the flood."
+
+"And you too?"
+
+In a few words Gavin told how he came to be beside the earl.
+
+"I suppose they will say you have saved my life," was Rintoul's
+commentary.
+
+"It is not saved yet. If help does not come, we shall be dead men in
+an hour. What have you done with my wife?"
+
+Rintoul ceased to listen to him, and shouted sums of money to the
+shepherd, who shook his head and bawled an answer that neither Gavin
+nor the earl heard. Across that thundering water only Gavin's voice
+could carry, the most powerful ever heard in a Thrums pulpit, the one
+voice that could be heard all over the Commonty during the time of the
+tent-preaching. Yet he never roared, as some preachers do of whom we
+say, "Ah, if they could hear the Little Minister's word!"
+
+Gavin caught the gesticulating earl by the sleeve, and said, "Another
+man has gone for ropes. Now, listen to me; how dared you go through a
+marriage ceremony with her, knowing her already to be my wife?"
+
+Rintoul did listen this time.
+
+"How do you know I married her?" he asked sharply.
+
+"I heard the cannon."
+
+Now the earl understood, and the shadow on his face shook and lifted,
+and his teeth gleamed. His triumph might be short-lived, but he would
+enjoy it while he could.
+
+"Well," he answered, picking the pebbles for his sling with care, "you
+must know that I could not have married her against her will. The
+frolic on the hill amused her, but she feared you might think it
+serious, and so pressed me to proceed with her marriage to-day despite
+the flood."
+
+This was the point at which the shepherd saw the minister raise his
+fist. It fell, however, without striking.
+
+"Do you really think that I could doubt her?" Gavin said compassionately,
+and for the second time in twenty-four hours the earl learned that he
+did not know what love is.
+
+For a full minute they had forgotten where they were. Now, again, the
+water seemed to break loose, so that both remembered their danger
+simultaneously and looked up. The mist parted for long enough to show
+them that where had only been the shepherd was now a crowd of men,
+with here and there a woman. Before the mist again came between the
+minister had recognized many members of his congregation.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In his unsuccessful attempt to reach Whinbusses, the grieve had met
+the relief party from Thrums. Already the weavers had helped Waster
+Lunny to stave off ruin, and they were now on their way to Whinbusses,
+keeping together through fear of mist and water. Every few minutes
+Snecky Hobart rang his bell to bring in stragglers.
+
+"Follow me," was all the panting grieve could say at first, but his
+agitation told half his story. They went with him patiently, only
+stopping once, and then excitedly, for they come suddenly on Rob Dow.
+Rob was still lying a prisoner beneath the tree, and the grieve now
+remembered that he had fallen over this tree, and neither noticed the
+man under it nor been noticed by the man. Fifty hands released poor
+Dow, and two men were commissioned to bring him along slowly while the
+others hurried to the rescue of the earl. They were amazed to learn
+from the shepherd that Mr. Dishart also was in danger, and after "Is
+there a woman wi' him?" some cried, "He'll get off cheap wi'
+drowning," and "It's the judgment o' God."
+
+The island on which the two men stood was now little bigger than the
+round tables common in Thrums, and its centre was some feet farther
+from the bank than when Gavin jumped. A woman, looking down at it,
+sickened, and would have toppled into the water, had not John Spens
+clutched her. Others were so stricken with awe that they forgot they
+had hands.
+
+Peter Tosh, the elder, cast a rope many times, but it would not carry.
+The one end was then weighted with a heavy stone, and the other tied
+round the waists of two men. But the force of the river had been
+underestimated. The stone fell short into the torrent, which rushed
+off with it so furiously that the men were flung upon their faces and
+trailed to the verge of the precipice. A score of persons sprang to
+their rescue, and the rope snapped. There was only one other rope, and
+its fate was not dissimilar. This time the stone fell into the water
+beyond the island, and immediately rushed down stream. Gavin seized
+the rope, but it pressed against his body, and would have pushed him
+off his feet had not Tosh cut it. The trunk of the tree that had
+fallen on Rob Dow was next dragged to the bank and an endeavor made to
+form a sloping bridge of it. The island, however, was now soft and
+unstable, and, though the trunk was successfully lowered, it only
+knocked lumps off the island, and finally it had to be let go, as the
+weavers could not pull it back. It splashed into the water, and was at
+once whirled out of sight. Some of the party on the bank began hastily
+to improvise a rope of cravats and the tags of the ropes still left,
+but the mass stood helpless and hopeless.
+
+"You may wonder that we could have stood still, waiting to see the
+last o' them," Birse, the post, has said to me in the school-house,
+"but, dominie, I couldna hae moved, magre my neck. I'm a hale man, but
+if this minute we was to hear the voice o' the Almighty saying
+solemnly, 'Afore the clock strikes again, Birse, the post, will fall
+down dead of heart disease,' what do you think you would do? I'll tell
+you. You would stand whaur you are, and stare, tongue-tied, at me till
+I dropped. How do I ken? By the teaching o' that nicht. Ay, but
+there's a mair important thing I dinna ken, and that is whether I
+would be palsied wi' fear like the earl, or face death with the
+calmness o' the minister."
+
+Indeed, the contrast between Rintoul and Gavin was now impressive.
+When Tosh signed that the weavers had done their all and failed, the
+two men looked in each other's faces, and Gavin's face was firm and
+the earl's working convulsively. The people had given up attempting to
+communicate with Gavin save by signs, for though they heard his
+sonorous voice, when he pitched it at them, they saw that he caught
+few words of theirs. "He heard our skirls," Birse said, "but couldna
+grip the words ony mair than we could hear the earl. And yet we
+screamed, and the minister didna. I've heard o' Highlandmen wi' the
+same gift, so that they could be heard across a glen."
+
+"We must prepare for death," Gavin said solemnly to the earl, "and it
+is for your own sake that I again ask you to tell me the truth.
+Worldly matters are nothing to either of us now, but I implore you not
+to carry a lie into your Maker's presence."
+
+"I will not give up hope," was all Rintoul's answer, and he again
+tried to pierce the mist with offers of reward. After that he became
+doggedly silent, fixing his eyes on the ground at his feet. I have a
+notion that he had made up his mind to confess the truth about Babbie
+when the water had eaten the island as far as the point at which he
+was now looking.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Four.
+
+END OF THE TWENTY-FOUR HOURS.
+
+
+Out of the mist came the voice of Gavin, clear and strong--
+
+"If you hear me, hold up your hands as a sign."
+
+They heard, and none wondered at his voice crossing the chasm while
+theirs could not. When the mist cleared, they were seen to have done
+as he bade them. Many hands remained up for a time because the people
+did not remember to bring them down, so great was the awe that had
+fallen on all, as if the Lord was near.
+
+Gavin took his watch from his pocket, and he said--
+
+"I am to fling this to you. You will give it to Mr. Ogilvy, the
+schoolmaster, as a token of the love I bear him."
+
+The watch was caught by James Langlands, and handed to Peter Tosh, the
+chief elder present.
+
+"To Mr. Ogilvy," Gavin continued, "you will also give the chain. You
+will take it off my neck when you find the body.
+
+"To each of my elders, and to Hendry Munn, kirk officer, and to my
+servant Jean, I leave a book, and they will go to my study and choose
+it for themselves.
+
+"I also leave a book for Nanny Webster, and I charge you, Peter Tosh,
+to take it to her, though she be not a member of my church.
+
+"The pictorial Bible with 'To my son on his sixth birthday' on it, I
+bequeath to Rob Dow. No, my mother will want to keep that. I give to
+Rob Dow my Bible with the brass clasp.
+
+"It is my wish that every family in the congregation should have some
+little thing to remember me by. This you will tell my mother.
+
+"To my successor I leave whatsoever of my papers he may think of any
+value to him, including all my notes on Revelation, of which I meant
+to make a book. I hope he will never sing the paraphrases.
+
+"If Mr. Carfrae's health permits, you will ask him to preach the
+funeral sermon; but if he be too frail, then you will ask Mr. Trail,
+under whom I sat in Glasgow. The illustrated 'Pilgrim's Progress' on
+the drawers in my bedroom belongs to Mr. Trail, and you will return it
+to him with my affection and compliments.
+
+"I owe five shillings to Hendry Munn for mending my boots, and a
+smaller sum to Baxter, the mason. I have two pounds belonging to Rob
+Dow, who asked me to take charge of them for him. I owe no other man
+anything, and this you will bear in mind if Matthew Cargill, the
+flying stationer, again brings forward a claim for the price of
+Whiston's 'Josephus,' which I did not buy from him.
+
+"Mr. Moncur, of Aberbrothick, had agreed to assist me at the
+Sacrament, and will doubtless still lend his services. Mr. Carfrae or
+Mr. Trail will take my place if my successor is not elected by that
+time. The Sacrament cups are in the vestry press, of which you will
+find the key beneath the clock in my parlor. The tokens are in the
+topmost drawer in my bedroom.
+
+"The weekly prayer-meeting will be held as usual on Thursday at eight
+o'clock, and the elders will officiate.
+
+"It is my wish that the news of my death be broken to my mother by Mr.
+Ogilvy, the schoolmaster, and by no other. You will say to him that
+this is my solemn request, and that I bid him discharge it without
+faltering and be of good cheer.
+
+"But if Mr. Ogilvy be not now alive, the news of my death will be
+broken to my mother by my beloved wife. Last night I was married on
+the hill, over the tongs, but with the sanction of God, to her whom
+you call the Egyptian, and despite what has happened since then, of
+which you will soon have knowledge, I here solemnly declare that she
+is my wife, and you will seek for her at the Spittal or elsewhere till
+you find her, and you will tell her to go to my mother and remain with
+her always, for these are the commands of her husband."
+
+It was then that Gavin paused, for Lord Rintoul had that to say to him
+which no longer could be kept back. All the women were crying sore,
+and also some men whose eyes had been dry at the coffining of their
+children.
+
+"Now I ken," said Cruickshanks, who had been an atheist, "that it's
+only the fool wha' says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"
+
+Another said, "That's a man."
+
+Another said, "That man has a religion to last him all through."
+
+A fourth said, "Behold, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand."
+
+A fifth said, "That's our minister. He's the minister o' the Auld
+Licht Kirk o' Thrums. Woe is me, we're to lose him."
+
+Many cried, "Our hearts was set hard against him. O Lord, are you
+angry wi' your servants that you're taking him frae us just when we
+ken what he is?"
+
+Gavin did not hear them, and again he spoke:
+
+"My brethren, God is good. I have just learned that my wife is with my
+dear mother at the manse. I leave them in your care and in His."
+
+No more he said of Babbie, for the island was become very small.
+
+"The Lord calls me hence. It is only for a little time I have been
+with you, and now I am going away, and you will know me no more. Too
+great has been my pride because I was your minister, but He who sent
+me to labor among you is slow to wrath; and He ever bore in mind that
+you were my first charge. My people, I must say to you, 'Farewell.'"
+
+Then, for the first time, his voice faltered, and wanting to go on he
+could not. "Let us read," he said, quickly, "in the Word of God in the
+fourteenth of Matthew, from the twenty-eighth verse."
+
+He repeated these four verses:--
+
+"'And Peter answered Him and said, Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come
+unto Thee on the water.
+
+"'And He said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he
+walked on the water, to go to Jesus.
+
+"'But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to
+sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me.
+
+"'And immediately Jesus stretched forth His hand and caught him, and
+said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt?'"
+
+After this Gavin's voice was again steady, and he said, "The
+sand-glass is almost run out. Dearly beloved, with what words shall I
+bid you good-by?"
+
+Many thought that these were to be the words, for the mist parted, and
+they saw the island tremble and half of it sink.
+
+"My people," said the voice behind the mist, "this is the text I leave
+with you: 'Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon earth, where moth
+and rust doth corrupt, and where thieves break through and steal; but
+lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust
+doth corrupt, and where thieves do not break through nor steal.' That
+text I read in the flood, where the hand of God has written it. All
+the pound-notes in the world would not dam this torrent for a moment,
+so that we might pass over to you safely. Yet it is but a trickle of
+water, soon to be dried up. Verily, I say unto you, only a few hours
+ago the treasures of earth stood between you and this earl, and what
+are they now compared to this trickle of water? God only can turn
+rivers into a wilderness, and the water-springs into dry ground. Let
+His Word be a lamp unto your feet and a light unto your path; may He
+be your refuge and your strength. Amen."
+
+This amen he said quickly, thinking death was now come. He was seen to
+raise his hands, but whether to Heaven or involuntarily to protect his
+face as he fell none was sure, for the mist again filled the chasm.
+Then came a clap of stillness. No one breathed.
+
+But the two men were not yet gone, and Gavin spoke once more.
+
+"Let us sing in the twenty-third Psalm."
+
+He himself raised the tune, and so long as they heard his voice they
+sang--
+
+  "The Lord's my shepherd, I'll not want;
+    He makes me down to lie
+  In pastures green; He leadeth me
+    The quiet waters by.
+
+  "My soul He doth restore again;
+    And me to walk doth make
+  Within the paths of righteousness
+    Ev'n for His own name's sake.
+
+  "Yea, though I walk in Death's dark vale,
+    Yet will I fear none ill;
+  For Thou art with me; and Thy rod
+    And staff----"
+
+But some had lost the power to sing in the first verse, and others at
+"Death's dark vale," and when one man found himself singing alone he
+stopped abruptly. This was because they no longer heard the minister.
+
+"O Lord!" Peter Tosh cried, "lift the mist, for it's mair than we can
+bear."
+
+The mist rose slowly, and those who had courage to look saw Gavin
+praying with the earl. Many could not look, and some of them did not
+even see Rob Dow jump.
+
+For it was Dow, the man with the crushed leg, who saved Gavin's life,
+and flung away his own for it. Suddenly he was seen on the edge of the
+bank, holding one end of the improvised rope in his hand. As Tosh
+says--
+
+"It all happened in the opening and shutting o' an eye. It's a queer
+thing to say, but though I prayed to God to take awa the mist, when He
+did raise it I couldna look. I shut my een tight, and held my arm
+afore my face, like ane feared o' being struck. Even when I daured to
+look, my arm was shaking so that I could see Rob both above it and
+below it. He was on the edge, crouching to leap. I didna see wha had
+haud o' the other end o' the rope. I heard the minister cry, 'No, Dow,
+no!' and it gae through me as quick as a stab that if Rob jumped he
+would knock them both into the water. But he did jump, and you ken how
+it was that he didna knock them off."
+
+It was because he had no thought of saving his own life. He jumped,
+not at the island, now little bigger than the seat of a chair, but at
+the edge of it, into the foam, and with his arm outstretched. For a
+second the hand holding the rope was on the dot of land. Gavin tried
+to seize the hand; Rintoul clutched the rope. The earl and the
+minister were dragged together into safety, and both left the water
+senseless. Gavin was never again able to lift his left hand higher
+than his head. Dow's body was found next day near the school-house.
+
+
+
+
+Chapter Forty-Five.
+
+TALK OF A LITTLE MAID SINCE GROWN TALL.
+
+
+My scholars have a game they call "The Little Minister," in which the
+boys allow the girls as a treat to join. Some of the characters in the
+real drama are omitted as of no importance--the dominie, for
+instance--and the two best fighters insist on being Dow and Gavin. I
+notice that the game is finished when Dow dives from a haystack, and
+Gavin and the earl are dragged to the top of it by a rope. Though
+there should be another scene, it is only a marriage, which the girls
+have, therefore, to go through without the help of the boys. This
+warns me that I have come to an end of my story for all except my
+little maid. In the days when she sat on my knee and listened it had
+no end, for after I told her how her father and mother were married a
+second time she would say, "And then I came, didn't I? Oh, tell me
+about me!" So it happened that when she was no higher than my staff
+she knew more than I could write in another book, and many a time she
+solemnly told me what I had told her, as--
+
+"Would you like me to tell you a story? Well, it's about a minister,
+and the people wanted to be bad to him, and then there was a flood,
+and a flood is lochs falling instead of rain, and so of course he was
+nearly drownded, and he preached to them till they liked him again,
+and so they let him marry her, and they like her awful too, and, just
+think! it was my father; and that's all. Now tell me about grandmother
+when father came home."
+
+I told her once again that Margaret never knew how nearly Gavin was
+driven from his kirk. For Margaret was as one who goes to bed in the
+daytime and wakes in it, and is not told that there has been a black
+night while she slept. She had seen her son leave the manse the idol
+of his people, and she saw them rejoicing as they brought him back. Of
+what occurred at the Jaws, as the spot where Dow had saved two lives
+is now called, she learned, but not that these Jaws snatched him and
+her from an ignominy more terrible than death, for she never knew that
+the people had meditated driving him from his kirk. This Thrums is
+bleak and perhaps forbidding, but there is a moment of the day when a
+setting sun dyes it pink, and the people are like their town. Thrums
+was never colder in times of snow than were his congregation to their
+minister when the Great Rain began, but his fortitude rekindled their
+hearts. He was an obstinate minister, and love had led him a dance,
+but in the hour of trial he had proved himself a man.
+
+When Gavin reached the manse, and saw not only his mother but Babbie,
+he would have kissed them both; but Babbie could only say, "She does
+not know," and then run away crying. Gavin put his arm round his
+mother, and drew her into the parlor, where he told her who Babbie
+was. Now Margaret had begun to love Babbie already, and had prayed to
+see Gavin happily married; but it was a long time before she went
+upstairs to look for his wife and kiss her and bring her down. "Why
+was it a long time?" my little maid would ask, and I had to tell her
+to wait until she was old, and had a son, when she would find out for
+herself.
+
+[Illustration: "BABBIE COULD ONLY SAY, 'SHE DOES NOT KNOW.'"]
+
+While Gavin and the earl were among the waters, two men were on
+their way to Mr. Carfrae's home, to ask him to return with them and
+preach the Auld Licht kirk of Thrums vacant; and he came, though now
+so done that he had to be wheeled about in a little coach. He
+came in sorrow, yet resolved to perform what was asked of him if
+it seemed God's will; but, instead of banishing Gavin, all he had
+to do was to remarry him and kirk him, both of which things he did,
+sitting in his coach, as many can tell. Lang Tammas spoke no more
+against Gavin, but he would not go to the marriage, and he insisted on
+resigning his eldership for a year and a day. I think he only once
+again spoke to Margaret. She was in the manse garden when he was
+passing, and she asked him if he would tell her now why he had been
+so agitated when he visited her on the day of the flood. He answered
+gruffly, "It's no business o' yours." Dr. McQueen was Gavin's best
+man. He died long ago of scarlet fever. So severe was the epidemic
+that for a week he was never in bed. He attended fifty cases
+without suffering, but as soon as he had bent over Hendry Munn's
+youngest boys, who both had it, he said, "I'm smitted," and went
+home to die. You may be sure that Gavin proved a good friend to
+Micah Dow. I have the piece of slate on which Rob proved himself a
+good friend to Gavin; it was in his pocket when we found the body.
+Lord Rintoul returned to his English estates, and never revisited
+the Spittal. The last thing I heard of him was that he had been
+offered the Lord-Lieutenantship of a county, and had accepted it in
+a long letter, in which he began by pointing out his unworthiness.
+This undid him, for the Queen, or her councillors, thinking from his
+first page that he had declined the honor, read no further, and
+appointed another man. Waster Lunny is still alive, but has gone to
+another farm. Sanders Webster, in his gratitude, wanted Nanny to
+become an Auld Licht, but she refused, saying, "Mr. Dishart is worth
+a dozen o' Mr. Duthie, and I'm terrible fond o' Mrs. Dishart, but
+Established I was born and Established I'll remain till I'm carried
+out o' this house feet foremost."
+
+"But Nanny went to Heaven for all that," my little maid told me.
+"Jean says people can go to Heaven though they are not Auld Lichts,
+but she says it takes them all their time. Would you like me to tell
+you a story about my mother putting glass on the manse dike? Well, my
+mother and my father is very fond of each other, and once they was in
+the garden, and my father kissed my mother, and there was a woman
+watching them over the dike, and she cried out--something naughty."
+
+"It was Tibbie Birse," I said, "and what she cried was, 'Mercy on us,
+that's the third time in half an hour!' So your mother, who heard her,
+was annoyed, and put glass on the wall."
+
+"But it's me that is telling you the story. You are sure you don't
+know it? Well, they asked father to take the glass away, and he
+wouldn't; but he once preached at mother for having a white feather in
+her bonnet, and another time he preached at her for being too fond of
+him. Jean told me. That's all."
+
+No one seeing Babbie going to church demurely on Gavin's arm could
+guess her history. Sometimes I wonder whether the desire to be a gypsy
+again ever comes over her for a mad hour, and whether, if so, Gavin
+takes such measures to cure her as he threatened in Caddam Wood. I
+suppose not; but here is another story:
+
+[Illustration: "THERE WAS A WOMAN WATCHING THEM OVER THE DIKE."]
+
+"When I ask mother to tell me about her once being a gypsy she says I
+am a bad 'quisitive little girl, and to put on my hat and come with
+her to the prayer-meeting; and when I asked father to let me see
+mother's gypsy frock he made me learn Psalm forty-eight by heart. But
+once I see'd it, and it was a long time ago, as long as a week ago.
+Micah Dow gave me rowans to put in my hair, and I like Micah because
+he calls me Miss, and so I woke in my bed because there was noises,
+and I ran down to the parlor, and there was my mother in her gypsy
+frock, and my rowans was in her hair, and my father was kissing
+her, and when they saw me they jumped; and that's all."
+
+"Would you like me to tell you another story? It is about a little
+girl. Well, there was once a minister and his wife, and they hadn't no
+little girls, but just little boys, and God was sorry for them, so He
+put a little girl in a cabbage in the garden, and when they found her
+they were glad. Would you like me to tell you who the little girl was?
+Well, it was me, and, ugh! I was awful cold in the cabbage. Do you
+like that story?"
+
+"Yes; I like it best of all the stories I know."
+
+"So do I like it, too. Couldn't nobody help loving me, 'cause I'm so
+nice? Why am I so fearful nice?"
+
+"Because you are like your grandmother."
+
+"It was clever of my father to know when he found me in the cabbage
+that my name was Margaret. Are you sorry grandmother is dead?"
+
+"I am glad your mother and father were so good to her and made her so
+happy."
+
+"Are you happy?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"But when I am happy I laugh."
+
+"I am old, you see, and you are young."
+
+"I am nearly six. Did you love grandmother? Then why did you never
+come to see her? Did grandmother know you was here? Why not? Why
+didn't I not know about you till after grandmother died?"
+
+"I'll tell you when you are big."
+
+"Shall I be big enough when I am six?"
+
+"No, not till your eighteenth birthday."
+
+"But birthdays comes so slow. Will they come quicker when I am big?"
+
+"Much quicker."
+
+On her sixth birthday Micah Dow drove my little maid to the
+school-house in the doctor's gig, and she crept beneath the table and
+whispered--
+
+"Grandfather!"
+
+"Father told me to call you that if I liked, and I like," she said
+when I had taken her upon my knee. "I know why you kissed me just now.
+It was because I looked like grandmother. Why do you kiss me when I
+look like her?"
+
+"Who told you I did that?"
+
+"Nobody didn't tell me. I just found out. I loved grandmother too. She
+told me all the stories she knew."
+
+"Did she ever tell you a story about a black dog?"
+
+"No. Did she know one?"
+
+"Yes, she knew it."
+
+"Perhaps she had forgotten it?"
+
+"No, she remembered it."
+
+"Tell it to me."
+
+"Not till you are eighteen."
+
+"But will you not be dead when I am eighteen? When you go to Heaven,
+will you see grandmother?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Will she be glad to see you?"
+
+My little maid's eighteenth birthday has come, and I am still in
+Thrums, which I love, though it is beautiful to none, perhaps, save to
+the very done, who lean on their staves and look long at it, having
+nothing else to do till they die. I have lived to rejoice in the
+happiness of Gavin and Babbie; and if at times I have suddenly had to
+turn away my head after looking upon them in their home surrounded by
+their children, it was but a moment's envy that I could not help.
+Margaret never knew of the dominie in the glen. They wanted to tell
+her of me, but I would not have it. She has been long gone from this
+world; but sweet memories of her still grow, like honeysuckle, up the
+white walls of the manse, smiling in at the parlor window and
+beckoning from the door, and for some filling all the air with
+fragrance. It was not she who raised the barrier between her and me,
+but God Himself; and to those who maintain otherwise, I say they do
+not understand the purity of a woman's soul. During the years she was
+lost to me her face ever came between me and ungenerous thoughts; and
+now I can say, all that is carnal in me is my own, and all that is
+good I got from her. Only one bitterness remains. When I found Gavin
+in the rain, when I was fighting my way through the flood, when I saw
+how the hearts of the people were turned against him--above all, when
+I found Whamond in the manse--I cried to God, making promises to Him,
+if He would spare the lad for Margaret's sake, and he spared him; but
+these promises I have not kept.
+
+_The End._
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber Note
+
+Table of Contents added.
+
+Passages in italics indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Greek transliterations are surrounded by ~tildes~.
+
+
+
+
+
+
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