This was because he had not yet decided which of two women she was.  Hardly had he started on one line of thought when she crossed his vision in a new light, and drew him after her.

Her “Need that make any difference?” sang in his ear like another divit, cast this time at religion itself, and now he spoke aloud, pointing his finger at a fir:  “I said at the mud house that I believed you because I knew you.  To my shame be it said that I spoke falsely.  How dared you bewitch me?  In your presence I flung away the precious hours in frivolity; I even forgot the Sabbath.  For this I have myself to blame.  I am an unworthy preacher of the Word.  I sinned far more than you who have been brought up godlessly from your cradle.  Nevertheless, whoever you are, I call upon you, before we part never to meet again, to repent of your—­”

And then it was no mocker of the Sabbath he was addressing, but a woman with a child’s face, and there were tears in her eyes.  “Do you care?” she was saying, and again he answered, “Yes, I care.”  This girl’s name was not Woman, but Babbie.

Now Gavin made an heroic attempt to look upon both these women at once.  “Yes, I believe in you,” he said to them, “but henceforth you must send your money to Nanny by another messenger.  You are a gypsy and I am a minister; and that must part us.  I refuse to see you again.  I am not angry with you, but as a minister—­”

It was not the disappearance of one of the women that clipped this argument short; it was Babbie singing—­

   “It fell on a day, on a bonny summer day,
      When the corn grew green and yellow,
   That there fell out a great dispute
      Between Argyle and Airly.

   “The Duke of Montrose has written to Argyle
      To come in the morning early,
   An’ lead in his men by the back o’ Dunkeld
      To plunder the bonny house o’ Airly.”

“Where are you?” cried Gavin in bewilderment.

“I am watching you from my window so high,” answered the Egyptian; and then the minister, looking up, saw her peering at him from a fir.

“How did you get up there?” he asked in amazement.

“On my broomstick,” Babbie replied, and sang on—­

   “The lady looked o’er her window sae high,
      And oh! but she looked weary,
   And there she espied the great Argyle
      Come to plunder the bonny house o’ Airly.”

“What are you doing there?” Gavin said, wrathfully.

“This is my home,” she answered.  “I told you I lived in a tree.”

“Come down at once,” ordered Gavin.  To which the singer responded--

   “‘Come down, come down, Lady Margaret,’ he says;
      ’Come down and kiss me fairly
   Or before the morning clear day light
      I’ll no leave a standing stane in Airly.’”

“If you do not come down this instant,” Gavin said in a rage, “and give me what I was so foolish as to come for, I—­”