How long Dow was in discovering that she had escaped, and whether he searched for her, no one knows.  After a time he jumped into the dogcart again, and drove aimlessly through the rain.  That wild journey probably lasted two hours, and came to an abrupt end only when a tree fell upon the trap.  The horse galloped off, but one of Dow’s legs was beneath the tree, and there he had to lie helpless, for though the leg was little injured, he could not extricate himself.  A night and day passed, and he believed that he must die; but even in this plight he did not forget the man he loved.  He found a piece of slate, and in the darkness cut these words on it with his knife: 

“Me being about to die, I solemnly swear I didna see the minister marrying an Egyptian on the hill this nicht.  May I burn in Hell if this is no true.”

(Signed) “Rob Dow.”

This document he put in his pocket, and so preserved proof of what he was perjuring himself to deny.

CHAPTER XL.

Babbie and Margaret—­defence of the manse continued.

The Egyptian was mournful in Windyghoul, up which she had once danced and sung; but you must not think that she still feared Dow.  I felt McKenzie’s clutch on any arm for hours after he left me, but she was far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin.  If she cried now, it was not for herself; it was because she thought she had destroyed him.  Could I have gone to her then and said that Gavin wanted to blot out the gypsy wedding, that throbbing little breast would have frozen at once, and the drooping head would have been proud again, and she would have gone away forever without another tear.

What do I say?  I am doing a wrong to the love these two bore each other.  Babbie would not have taken so base a message from my lips.  He would have had to say the words to her himself before she believed them his.  What would he want her to do now? was the only question she asked herself.  To follow him was useless, for in that rain and darkness two people might have searched for each other all night in a single field.  That he would go to the Spittal, thinking her in Rintoul’s dogcart, she did not doubt; and his distress was painful to her to think of.  But not knowing that the burns were in flood, she underestimated his danger.

Remembering that the mudhouse was near, she groped her way to it, meaning to pass the night there; but at the gate she turned away hastily, hearing from the door the voice of a man she did not know to be Nanny’s brother.  She wandered recklessly a short distance, until the rain began to threaten again, and then, falling on her knees in the broom, she prayed to God for guidance.  When she rose she set off for the manse.