CHAPTER XXXIV.

The great rain.

Gavin passed on through Windyghoul, thinking in his frenzy that he still heard the trap.  In a rain that came down like iron rods every other sound was beaten dead.  He slipped, and before he could regain his feet the dog bit him.  To protect himself from dikes and trees and other horrors of the darkness he held his arm before him, but soon it was driven to his side.  Wet whips cut his brow so that he had to protect it with his hands, until it had to bear the lash again, for they would not.  Now he had forced up his knees, and would have succumbed but for a dread of being pinned to the earth.  This fight between the man and the rain went on all night, and long before it ended the man was past the power of thinking.

In the ringing of the ten o’clock bell Gavin had lived the seventh part of a man’s natural life.  Only action was required of him.  That accomplished, his mind had begun to work again, when suddenly the loss of Babbie stopped it, as we may put out a fire with a great coal.  The last thing he had reflected about was a dogcart in motion, and, consequently, this idea clung to him.  His church, his mother, were lost knowledge of, but still he seemed to hear the trap in front.

The rain increased in violence, appalling even those who heard it from under cover.  However rain may storm, though it be an army of archers battering roofs and windows, it is only terrifying when the noise swells every instant.  In those hours of darkness it again and again grew in force and doubled its fury, and was louder, louder, and louder, until its next attack was to be more than men and women could listen to.  They held each other’s hands and stood waiting.  Then abruptly it abated, and people could speak.  I believe a rain that became heavier every second for ten minutes would drive many listeners mad.  Gavin was in it on a night that tried us repeatedly for quite half that time.

By and by even the vision of Babbie in the dogcart was blotted out.  If nothing had taken its place, he would not have gone on probably; and had he turned back objectless, his strength would have succumbed to the rain.  Now he saw Babbie and Rintoul being married by a minister who was himself, and there was a fair company looking on, and always when he was on the point of shouting to himself, whom he could see clearly, that this woman was already married, the rain obscured his words and the light went out.  Presently the ceremony began again, always to stop at the same point.  He saw it in the lightning-flash that had startled the hill.  It gave him courage to fight his way onward, because he thought he must be heard if he could draw nearer to the company.

A regiment of cavalry began to trouble him.  He heard it advancing from the Spittal, but was not dismayed, for it was, as yet, far distant.  The horsemen came thundering on, filling the whole glen of Quharity.  Now he knew that they had been sent out to ride him down.  He paused in dread, until they had swept past him.  They came back to look for him, riding more furiously than ever, and always missed him, yet his fears of the next time were not lessened.  They were only the rain.