“It was I who found you,” Gavin answered.  “You must have been swept away by the flood.”

“And you too?”

In a few words Gavin told how he came to be beside the earl.

“I suppose they will say you have saved my life,” was Rintoul’s commentary.

“It is not saved yet.  If help does not come, we shall be dead men in an hour.  What have you done with my wife?”

Rintoul ceased to listen to him, and shouted sums of money to the shepherd, who shook his head and bawled an answer that neither Gavin nor the earl heard.  Across that thundering water only Gavin’s voice could carry, the most powerful ever heard in a Thrums pulpit, the one voice that could be heard all over the Commonty during the time of the tent-preaching.  Yet he never roared, as some preachers do of whom we say, “Ah, if they could hear the Little Minister’s word!”

Gavin caught the gesticulating earl by the sleeve. and said, “Another man has gone for ropes.  Now, listen to me; how dared you go through a marriage ceremony with her, knowing her already to be my wife?”

Rintoul did listen this time.

“How do you know I married her?” he asked sharply,

“I heard the cannon.”

Now the earl understood, and the shadow on his face shook and lifted, and his teeth gleamed.  His triumph might be short-lived, but he would enjoy it while he could.

“Well,” he answered, picking the pebbles for his sling with care, “you must know that I could not have married her against her will.  The frolic on the hill amused her, but she feared you might think it serious, and so pressed me to proceed with her marriage to-day despite the flood.”

This was the point at which the shepherd saw the minister raise his fist.  It fell, however, without striking.

“Do you really think that I could doubt her?” Gavin, said compassionately, and for the second time in twenty-four hours the earl learned that he did not know what love is.

For a full minute they had forgotten where they were.  Now, again, the water seemed to break loose, so that both remembered their danger simultaneously and looked up.  The mist parted for long enough to show them that where had only been the shepherd was now a crowd of men, with here and there a woman.  Before the mist again came between the minister had recognized many members of his congregation.

In his unsuccessful attempt to reach Whinbusses. the grieve had met the relief party from Thrums.  Already the weavers had helped Waster Lunny to stave off ruin, and they were now on their way to Whinbusses, keeping together through fear of mist and water.  Every few minutes Snecky Hobart rang his bell to bring in stragglers.