Part 46 (2/2)

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 s.h.i.+lling 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, G.o.d 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 rus.h.i.+ng to my fire like a s.h.i.+vering 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, ”G.o.d 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 hoa.r.s.ely, 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.

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