The Egyptian turned her back upon him, and one of her feet tapped angrily on the dry ground.  Then, child of impulse as she always was, she flashed an indignant glance at him, and walked quickly down the road.

“Where are you going?” he cried.

“To give myself up.  You need not be alarmed; I will clear you.”

There was not a shake in her voice, and she spoke without looking back.

“Stop!” Gavin called, but she would not, until his hand touched her shoulder.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Why—­” whispered Gavin, giddily, “why—­why do you not hide in the manse garden?—­No one will look for you there.”

There were genuine tears in the gypsy’s eyes now.

“You are a good man,” she said; “I like you.”

“Don’t say that,” Gavin cried in horror.  “There is a summer-seat in the garden.”

Then he hurried from her, and without looking to see if she took his advice, hastened to the manse.  Once inside, he snibbed the door.

CHAPTER IX.

The woman considered in absence—­adventures of A military cloak.

About six o’clock Margaret sat up suddenly in bed, with the conviction that she had slept in.  To her this was to ravel the day:  a dire thing.  The last time it happened Gavin, softened by her distress, had condensed morning worship into a sentence that she might make up on the clock.

Her part on waking was merely to ring her bell, and so rouse Jean, for Margaret had given Gavin a promise to breakfast in bed, and remain there till her fire was lit.  Accustomed all her life, however, to early rising, her feet were usually on the floor before she remembered her vow, and then it was but a step to the window to survey the morning.  To Margaret, who seldom went out, the weather was not of great moment, while it mattered much to Gavin, yet she always thought of it the first thing, and he not at all until he had to decide whether his companion should be an umbrella or a staff.

On this morning Margaret only noticed that there had been rain since Gavin came in.  Forgetting that the water obscuring the outlook was on the other side of the panes, she tried to brush it away with her fist.  It was of the soldiers she was thinking.  They might have been awaiting her appearance at the window as their signal to depart, for hardly had she raised the blind when they began their march out of Thrums.  From the manse she could not see them, but she heard them, and she saw some people at the Tenements run to their houses at sound of the drum.  Other persons, less timid, followed the enemy with execrations halfway to Tilliedrum.  Margaret, the only person, as it happened, then awake in the manse, stood listening for some time.  In the summer-seat of the garden, however, there was another listener protected from her sight by thin spars.