“It was only your reference to the thing,”
the detected doctor said, with a grim laugh, “that
made me open it. Forty fears 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.”
Night—Margaret—flashingof 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? Tonight 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.”
