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 178 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. 179 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 182 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 185 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 188 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 190 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. T