I believe he thought it was to make some such request that I had turned back.

“You must tell her nothing about me,” I exclaimed, in consternation.  “Swear that my name will never cross your lips before her.  No, that is not enough.  You must forget me utterly, whether I live or die, lest some time you should think of me and she should read your thoughts.  Swear, man!”

“Must this be?” he said, gazing at me.

“Yes,” I answered more calmly, “it must be.  For nearly a score of years I have been blotted out of your mother’s life, and since she came to Thrums my one care has been to keep my existence from her.  I have changed my burying-ground even from Thrums to the glen, lest I should die before her, and she, seeing the hearse go by the Tenements, might ask, ‘Whose funeral is this?’”

In my anxiety to warn him, I had said too much.  His face grew haggard, and there was fear to speak on it; and I saw, I knew, that some damnable suspicion of Margaret—–­

“She was my wife!” I cried sharply.  “We were married by the minister of Harvie.  You are my son.”

CHAPTER XXXVI.

STORY OF THE DOMINIE.

When I spoke next, I was back in the school-house, sitting there with my bonnet on my head, Gavin looking at me.  We had forgotten the cannon at last.

In that chair I had anticipated this scene more than once of late.  I had seen that a time might come when Gavin would have to be told all, and I had even said the words aloud, as if he were indeed opposite me.  So now I was only repeating the tale, and I could tell it without emotion, because it was nigh nineteen years old; and I did not look at Gavin, for I knew that his manner of taking it could bring no change to me.

“Did you never ask your mother,” I said, addressing the fire rather than him, “why you were called Gavin?”

“Yes,” he answered, “it was because she thought Gavin a prettier name than Adam.”

“No,” I said slowly, “it was because Gavin is my name.  You were called after your father.  Do you not remember my taking you one day to the shore at Harvie to see the fishermen carried to their boats upon their wives’ backs, that they might start dry on their journey?”

“No,” he had to reply.  “I remember the women carrying the men through the water to the boats, but I thought it was my father who—­I mean—–­”

“I know whom you mean,” I said.  “That was our last day together, but you were not three years old.  Yet you remembered me when you came to Thrums.  You shake your head, but it is true.  Between the diets of worship that first Sabbath I was introduced to you, and you must have had some shadowy recollection of my face, for you asked, ‘Surely I saw you in church in the forenoon, Mr. Ogilvy?’ I said ‘Yes,’ but I had not been in the church in the forenoon.  You have forgotten even that, and yet I treasured it.”