“Where is Campbell now?”

“Sleeping off the effect of the blow:  but Dow has fled.  He was terrified at the shouts of murder, and ran off up the West Town end.  The doctor’s dogcart was standing at a door there and Rob jumped into it and drove off.  They did not chase him far, because he is sure to hear the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will come back.”

Though in a few hours we were to wonder at our denseness, neither Gavin nor I saw why Dow had struck the Highlander down rather than let him tell his story in the minister’s presence.  One moment’s suspicion would have lit our way to the whole truth, but of the spring to all Rob’s behavior in the past eight months we were ignorant, and so to Gavin the Bull had only been the scene of a drunken brawl, while I forgot to think in the joy of finding him alive.

“I have a prayer-meeting for rain presently,” Gavin said, breaking a picture that had just appeared unpleasantly before me of Babbie still in agony at Nanny’s, “but before I leave you tell me why this rumor caused you such distress.”

The question troubled me, and I tried to avoid it.  Crossing the hill we had by this time drawn near a hollow called the Toad’s-hole, then gay and noisy with a caravan of gypsies.  They were those same wild Lindsays, for whom Gavin had searched Caddam one eventful night, and as I saw them crowding round their king, a man well known to me, I guessed what they were at.

“Mr. Dishart,” I said abruptly, “would you like to see a gypsy marriage?  One is taking place there just now.  That big fellow is the king, and he is about to marry two of his people over the tongs.  The ceremony will not detain us five minutes, though the rejoicings will go on all night.”

I have been present at more than one gypsy wedding in my time, and at the wild, weird orgies that followed them, but what is interesting to such as I may not be for a minister’s eyes, and, frowning at my proposal, Gavin turned his back upon the Toad’s-hole.  Then, as we recrossed the hill, to get away from the din of the camp, I pointed out to him that the report of his, death had brought McKenzie to Thrums, as well as me.

“As soon as McKenzie heard I was not dead,” he answered, “he galloped off to the Spittal, without ever seeing me.  I suppose he posted back to be in time for the night’s rejoicings there.  So you see, it was no solicitude for me that brought him.  He came because a servant at the Spittal was supposed to have done the deed.”

“Well, Mr. Dishart,” I had to say, “why should deny that I have a warm regard for you?  You have done brave work in our town.”

“It has been little,” he replied.  “With God’s help it will be more in future.”

He meant that he had given time to his sad love affair that he owed to his people.  Of seeing Babbit again I saw that he had given up hope.  Instead of repining, he was devoting his whole soul to God’s work.  I was proud of him, and yet I grieved, for I could no think that God wanted him to bury his youth so soon.