“No; you only amused me,” she said, like one determined to stint nothing of the truth.  “Even at the well I laughed at your vows.”

This wounded Gavin afresh, wretched as her story had made him, and he said tragically, “You have never cared for me at all.”

“Oh, always, always,” she answered, “since I knew what love was; and it was you who taught me.”

Even in his misery he held his head high with pride.  At least she did love him.

“And then,” Babbie said, hiding her face, “I could not tell you what I was because I knew you would loathe me.  I could only go away.”

She looked at him forlornly through her tears, and then moved toward the door.  He had sunk upon a stool, his face resting on the table, and it was her intention to slip away unnoticed.  But he heard the latch rise, and jumping up, said sharply, “Babbie, I cannot give you up.”

She stood in tears, swinging the door unconsciously with her hand.

“Don’t say that you love me still,” she cried; and then, letting her hand fall from the door, added imploringly, “Oh, Gavin, do you?”

CHAPTER XXX.

The meeting for rain.

Meanwhile the Auld Lichts were in church, waiting for their minister, and it was a full meeting, because nearly every well in Thrums had been scooped dry by anxious palms.  Yet not all were there to ask God’s rain for themselves.  Old Charles Yuill was in his pew, after dreaming thrice that he would break up with the drought; and Bell Christison had come, though her man lay dead at home, and she thought it could matter no more to her how things went in the world.

You, who do not love that little congregation, would have said that they were waiting placidly.  But probably so simple a woman as Meggy Rattray could have deceived you into believing that because her eyes were downcast she did not notice who put the three-penny-bit in the plate.  A few men were unaware that the bell was working overtime, most of them farmers with their eyes on the windows, but all the women at least were wondering.  They knew better, however, than to bring their thoughts to their faces, and none sought to catch another’s eye.  The men-folk looked heavily at their hats in the seats in front.  Even when Hendry Munn, instead of marching to the pulpit with the big Bible in his hands, came as far as the plate and signed to Peter Tosh, elder, that he was wanted in the vestry, you could not have guessed how every woman there, except Bell Christison, wished she was Peter Tosh.  Peter was so taken aback that he merely gaped at Hendry, until suddenly he knew that his five daughters were furious with him, when he dived for his hat and staggered to the vestry with his mouth open.  His boots cheeped all the way, but no one looked up.