“Done,” said the minister, recklessly.

The dog-cart was now turned toward Windyghoul, its driver once more good-humoured, but Gavin silent.

“You would have been the better of my deaf ear just now, Mr. Dishart,” McQueen said after the loch had been left behind.  “Aye, and I’m thinking my pipe would soothe you.  But don’t take it so much to heart, man.  I’ll lick him easily.  He’s a decent man, the minister, but vain of his play, ridiculously vain.  However, I think the sight of you, in the place that should have been his, has broken his nerve for this day, and our side may win yet.”

“I believe,” Gavin said, with sudden enlightenment, “that you brought me here for that purpose.”

“Maybe,” chuckled the doctor; “maybe.”  Then he changed the subject suddenly.  “Mr. Dishart,” he asked, “were you ever in love?”

“Never!” answered Gavin violently.

“Well, well,” said the doctor, “don’t terrify the horse.  I have been in love myself.  It’s bad, but it’s nothing to curling.”

CHAPTER XII.

Tragedy of A mud house.

The dog-cart bumped between the trees of Caddam, flinging Gavin and the doctor at each other as a wheel rose on some beech-root or sank for a moment in a pool.  I suppose the wood was a pretty sight that day, the pines only white where they had met the snow, as if the numbed painter had left his work unfinished, the brittle twigs snapping overhead, the water as black as tar.  But it matters little what the wood was like.  Within a squirrel’s leap of it an old woman was standing at the door of a mud house listening for the approach of the trap that was to take her to the poorhouse.  Can you think of the beauty of the day now?

Nanny was not crying.  She had redd up her house for the last time and put on her black merino.  Her mouth was wide open while she listened.  If yon had, addressed her you would have thought her polite and stupid.  Look at her.  A flabby-faced woman she is now, with a swollen body, and no one has heeded her much these thirty years.  I can tell you something; it is almost droll.  Nanny Webster was once a gay flirt, and in Airlie Square there is a weaver with an unsteady head who thought all the earth of her.  His loom has taken a foot from his stature, and gone are Nanny’s raven locks on which he used to place his adoring hand.  Down in Airlie Square he is weaving for his life, and here is Nanny, ripe for the poorhouse, and between them is the hill where they were lovers.  That is all the story save that when Nanny heard the dog-cart she screamed.