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.
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.
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 women-folk
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.
