“It was only your reference to the thing,” the detected doctor said, with a grim laugh, “that made me open it.  Forty fears ago, sir, I—­Phew! it is forty-two years, and I have not got over it yet.”  He closed the locket with a snap.  “I hope you have come back, Dishart, to speak more rationally?”

Gavin told him why he had come back, and the doctor said he was a fool for his pains.

“Is it useless, Dishart, to make another appeal to you?”

“Quite useless, doctor,” Gavin answered, promptly.  “My mind is made up at last.”

CHAPTER XXI.

Night—­Margaret—­flashingof A lantern.

That evening the little minister sat silently in his parlour.  Darkness came, and with it weavers rose heavy-eyed from their looms, sleepy children sought their mothers, and the gate of the field above the manse fell forward to let cows pass to their byre; the great Bible was produced in many homes, and the ten o’clock bell clanged its last word to the night.  Margaret had allowed the lamp to burn low.  Thinking that her boy slept, she moved softly to his side and spread her shawl over his knees.  He had forgotten her.  The doctor’s warnings scarcely troubled him.  He was Babbie’s lover.  The mystery of her was only a veil hiding her from other men, and he was looking through it upon the face of his beloved.

It was a night of long ago, but can you not see my dear Margaret still as she bends over her son?  Not twice in many days dared the minister snatch a moment’s sleep from grey morning to midnight, and, when this did happen, he jumped up by-and-by in shame, to revile himself for an idler and ask his mother wrathfully why she had not tumbled him out of his chair?  Tonight Margaret was divided between a desire to let him sleep and a fear of his self-reproach when he awoke; and so, perhaps, the tear fell that roused him.

“I did not like to waken you,” Margaret said, apprehensively.  “You must have been very tired, Gavin?”

“I was not sleeping, mother,” he said, slowly.  “I was only thinking.”

“Ah, Gavin, you never rise from your loom.  It is hardly fair that your hands should be so full of other people’s troubles.”

“They only fill one hand, mother; I carry the people’s joys in the other hand, and that keeps me erect, like a woman between her pan and pitcher.  I think the joys have outweighed the sorrows since we came here.”

“It has been all joy to me, Gavin, for you never tell me of the sorrows.  An old woman has no right to be so happy.”

“Old woman, mother!” said Gavin.  But his indignation was vain.  Margaret was an old woman.  I made her old before her time.

“As for these terrible troubles,” he went on, “I forget them the moment I enter the garden and see you at your window.  And, maybe, I keep some of the joys from you as well as the troubles.”