“Your advice came too late, at any rate,” he said.  “You forget that the precentor was on the hill and saw everything.”

It was he who had forgotten to tell me this, and to me it was the most direful news of all.

“My God!” I cried.  “He will have gone to your mother and told her.”  And straightway I began to lace my boots.

“Where are you going?” he asked, staring at me.

“To Thrums,” I answered harshly.

“You said that to venture out into the glen was to court death,” he reminded me.

“What of that?” I said, and hastily put on my coat.

“Mr. Ogilvy,” he cried, “I will not allow you to do this for me.”

“For you?” I said bitterly.  “It is not for you.”

I would have gone at once, but he got in front of me, asking, “Did you ever know my mother?”

“Long ago,” I answered shortly, and he said no more, thinking, I suppose, that he knew all.  He limped to the door with me, and I had only advanced a few steps when I understood better than before what were the dangers I was to venture into.  Since I spoke to Waster Lunny the river had risen several feet, and even the hillocks in his turnip-field were now submerged.  The mist was creeping down the hills.  But what warned me most sharply that the flood was not satisfied yet was the top of the school-house dike; it was lined with field-mice.  I turned back, and Gavin, mistaking my meaning, said I did wisely.

“I have not changed my mind,” I told him, and then had some difficulty in continuing.  “I expect,” I said, “to reach Thrums safely, even though I should be caught in the mist, but I shall have to go round by the Kelpie brig in order to get across the river, and it is possible that—­that something may befall me.”

I have all my life been something of a coward, and my voice shook when I said this, so that Gavin again entreated me to remain at the school-house, saying that if I did not he would accompany me.

“And so increase my danger tenfold?” I pointed out.  “No, no, Mr. Dishart, I go alone; and if I can do nothing with the congregation, I can at least send your mother word that you still live.  But if anything should happen to me, I want you—­”

But I could not say what I had come back to say.  I had meant to ask him, in the event of my death, to take a hundred pounds which were the savings of my life; but now I saw that this might lead to Margaret’s hearing of me, and so I stayed my words.  It was bitter to me this, and yet, after all, a little thing when put beside the rest.

“Good-by, Mr. Dishart,” I said abruptly.  I then looked at my desk, which contained some trifles that were once Margaret’s.  “Should anything happen to me,” I said, “I want that old desk to be destroyed unopened.”

“Mr. Ogilvy,” he answered gently, “you are venturing this because you loved my mother.  If anything does befall you, be assured that I will tell her what you attempted for her sake.”