Of the gypsy I knew nothing save what I had seen that night, yet what more was there to learn?  I was aware that she loved Gavin and that he loved her.  A moment had shown it to me.  Now with the Auld Lichts, I have the smith’s acquaintance with his irons, and so I could not believe that they would suffer their minister to marry a vagrant.  Had it not been for this knowledge, which made me fearful for Margaret, I would have done nothing to keep these two young people apart.  Some to whom I have said this maintain that the Egyptian turned my head at our first meeting.  Such an argument is not perhaps worth controverting.  I admit that even now I straighten under the fire of a bright eye, as a pensioner may salute when he sees a young officer.  In the shooting season, should I chance to be leaning over my dyke while English sportsmen pass (as is usually the case if I have seen them approaching), I remember nought of them save that they call me “she,” and end their greetings with “whatever” (which Waster Lunny takes to be a southron mode of speech), but their ladies dwell pleasantly in my memory, from their engaging faces to the pretty crumpled thing dangling on their arms, that is a hat or a basket, I am seldom sure which.  The Egyptian’s beauty, therefore, was a gladsome sight to me, and none the less so that I had come upon it as unexpectedly as some men step into a bog.  Had she been alone when I met her I cannot deny that I would have been content to look on her face, without caring what was inside it; but she was with her lover, and that lover was Gavin, and so her face was to me as little for admiring as this glen in a thunderstorm, when I know that some fellow-creature is lost on the hills.

If, however, it was no quick liking for the gypsy that almost tempted me to leave these two lovers to each other, what was it?  It was the warning of my own life.  Adam Dishart had torn my arm from Margaret’s, and I had not recovered the wrench in eighteen years.  Rather than act his part between these two I felt tempted to tell them, “Deplorable as the result may be, if you who are a minister marry this vagabond, it will be still more deplorable if you do not.”

But there was Margaret to consider, and at thought of her I cursed the Egyptian aloud.  What could I do to keep Gavin and the woman apart?  I could tell him the secret of his mother’s life.  Would that be sufficient?  It would if he loved Margaret, as I did not doubt.  Pity for her would make him undergo any torture rather than she should suffer again.  But to divulge our old connection would entail her discovery of me. and I questioned if even the saving of Gavin could destroy the bitterness of that.

I might appeal to the Egyptian.  I might tell her even what I shuddered to tell him.  She cared for him, I was sure, well enough to have the courage to give him up.  But where was I to find her?

Were she and Gavin meeting still?  Perhaps the change which had come over the little minister meant that they had parted.  Yet what I had heard him say to her on the hill warned me not to trust in any such solution of the trouble.