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 mud-house 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.
The hill before darkness fell—scene
of the impending catastrophe.
