“And I am not proud, Gavin,” she said; “a little house, if it is filled with love, will make me happy beyond all.”

They were both too hopeful and trustful and too habitually calm to weep or make much visible lament over their parting; and yet when Gavin vanished into the dark of the lonely road, Jean shut the heavy house door very slowly.  She felt as if she was shutting part of herself out of the old home forever, and she was shocked by this first breaking of the continuity of life; this sharp cutting of regular events asunder.  Gavin’s letters were at first frequent and encouraging, but as the months went by he wrote more and more seldom.  He said “he was kept so busy; he was making himself indispensable, and could not afford to be less busy.  He was weary to death on the Saturday nights, and he could not bring his conscience to write anent his own personal and earthly happiness on the Sabbath day; but he was sure Jean trusted in him, whether he wrote or not; and they were past being bairns, always telling each other the love they were both so sure of.”

Late in the autumn the minister died of typhoid fever, and Jean, heartbroken and physically worn out, was compelled to face for her mother and herself, a complete change of life.  It had never seemed to these two women that anything could happen to the father and head of the family; in their loving hearts he had been immortal, and though the disease had run its tedious course before their eyes, his death at the last was a shock that shook their lives and their home to the very centre.  A new minister was the first inevitable change, and then a removal from the comfortable manse to a little cottage in the village of Lambrig.

While this sad removal was in progress they had felt the sorrow of it, all that they could bear; and neither had dared to look into the future or to speculate as to its necessities.  Jean in her heart expected Gavin would at once send for them to come to America.  He had a fair salary, and the sale of their furniture would defray their traveling expenses.

She was indeed so sure of this journey, that she did not regard the cottage as more than a temporary shelter during the approaching winter.  In the spring, no doubt, Gavin would have a little home ready, and they would cross the ocean to it.  The mother had the same thought.  As they sat on their new hearthstone, lonely and poor, they talked of this event, and if any doubts lurked unconsciously below their love and trust they talked them away, while they waited for Gavin’s answer to the sorrowful letter Jean had sent him on the night of her father’s burial.