like a ship till they sank, but I suffered again as
on that awful night when Adam Dishart came back, nearly
killing Margaret and tearing up all my ambitions by
the root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums
until I had looked again on Margaret, who thought me
dead, and Gavin, who had never heard of me, and then
I trudged back to the school-house. Something
I heard of them from time to time during the winter—for
in the gossip of Thrums I was well posted—but
much of what is to be told here I only learned afterwards
from those who knew it best. Gavin heard of me
at times as the dominie in the glen who had ceased
to attend the Auld Licht kirk, and Margaret did not
even hear of me. It was all I could do for them.
Runs alongside the making of
A minister.
On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a
quarry, at the foot of cliffs that may one day fall
forward, is a village called Harvie. So has it
shrunk since the day when I skulked from it that I
hear of a traveller’s asking lately at one of
its doors how far he was from a village; yet Harvie
throve once and was celebrated even in distant Thrums
for its fish. Most of our weavers would have
thought it as unnatural not to buy harvies in the square
on the Muckle Friday, as to let Saturday night pass
without laying in a sufficient stock of halfpennies
to go round the family twice.
Gavin was born in Harvie, but left it at such an early
age that he could only recall thatched houses with
nets drying on the roofs, and a sandy shore in which
coarse grass grew. In the picture he could not
pick out the house of his birth, though he might have
been able to go to it had he ever returned to the village.
Soon he learned that his mother did not care to speak
of Harvie, and perhaps he thought that she had forgotten
it too, all save one scene to which his memory still
guided him. When his mind wandered to Harvie,
Gavin saw the door of his home open and a fisherman
enter, who scratched his head and then said, “Your
man’s drowned, missis.” Gavin seemed
to see many women crying, and his mother staring at
them with a face suddenly painted white, and next to
hear a voice that was his own saying, “Never
mind, mother; I’ll be a man to you now, and
I’ll need breeks for the burial.”
But Adam required no funeral, for his body lay deep
in the sea.
Gavin thought that this was the tragedy of his mother’s
life, and the most memorable event of his own childhood.
But it was neither. When Margaret, even after
she came to Thrums, thought of Harvie, it was not
at Adam’s death she shuddered, but at the recollection
of me.
