The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of
her feet tapped angrily on the dry ground. Then,
child of impulse as she always was, she flashed an
indignant glance at him, and walked quickly down the
road.
“Where are you going?” he cried.
“To give myself up. You need not be alarmed;
I will clear you.”
There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke
without looking back.
“Stop!” Gavin called, but she would not,
until his hand touched her shoulder.
“What do you want?” she asked.
“Why—” whispered Gavin, giddily,
“why—why do you not hide in the manse
garden?—No one will look for you there.”
There were genuine tears in the gypsy’s eyes
now.
“You are a good man,” she said; “I
like you.”
“Don’t say that,” Gavin cried in
horror. “There is a summer-seat in the
garden.”
Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see
if she took his advice, hastened to the manse.
Once inside, he snibbed the door.
The woman considered in absence—adventures
of A military cloak.
About six o’clock Margaret sat up suddenly in
bed, with the conviction that she had slept in.
To her this was to ravel the day: a dire thing.
The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress,
had condensed morning worship into a sentence that
she might make up on the clock.
Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and
so rouse Jean, for Margaret had given Gavin a promise
to breakfast in bed, and remain there till her fire
was lit. Accustomed all her life, however, to
early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before
she remembered her vow, and then it was but a step
to the window to survey the morning. To Margaret,
who seldom went out, the weather was not of great
moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always
thought of it the first thing, and he not at all until
he had to decide whether his companion should be an
umbrella or a staff.
On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had
been rain since Gavin came in. Forgetting that
the water obscuring the outlook was on the other side
of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her
fist. It was of the soldiers she was thinking.
They might have been awaiting her appearance at the
window as their signal to depart, for hardly had she
raised the blind when they began their march out of
Thrums. From the manse she could not see them,
but she heard them, and she saw some people at the
Tenements run to their houses at sound of the drum.
Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with
execrations halfway to Tilliedrum. Margaret,
the only person, as it happened, then awake in the
manse, stood listening for some time. In the summer-seat
of the garden, however, there was another listener
protected from her sight by thin spars.
