In the garden McQueen said to Gavin:—­

“You may be right, Mr. Dishart, in this matter, for there is this in our favour, that the woman can gain nothing by tricking us.  She did seem to feel for Nanny.  But who can she be?  You saw she could put on and off the Scotch tongue as easily as if it were a cap.”

“She is as much a mystery to me as to you,” Gavin answered, “but she will give me the money, and that is all I ask of her.”

“Ay, that remains to be seen.  But take care of yourself; a man’s second childhood begins when a woman gets hold of him.”

“Don’t alarm yourself about me, doctor.  I daresay she is only one of those gypsies from the South.  They are said to be wealthy, many of them, and even, when they like, to have a grand manner.  The Thrums people had no doubt but that she was what she seemed to be.”

“Ay, but what does she seem to be?  Even that puzzles me.  And then there is this mystery about her which she admits herself, though perhaps only to play with us.”

“Perhaps,” said Gavin, “she is only taking precautions against her discovery by the police.  You must remember her part in the riots.”

“Yes, but we never learned how she was able to play that part.  Besides, there is no fear in her, or she would not have ventured back to Thrums.  However, good luck attend you.  But be wary.  You saw how she kept her feet among her shalls and wills?  Never trust a Scotch man or woman who does not come to grief among them.”

The doctor took his seat in the dog-cart.

“And, Mr. Dishart,” he called out, “that was all nonsense about the locket.”

CHAPTER XIV.

The minister dances to the woman’s piping.

Gavin let the doctor’s warnings fall in the grass.  In his joy over Nanny’s deliverance he jumped the garden gate, whose hinges were of yarn, and cleverly caught his hat as it was leaving his head in protest.  He then re-entered the mud house staidly.  Pleasant was the change.  Nanny’s home was as a clock that had been run out, and is set going again.  Already the old woman was unpacking her box, to increase the distance between herself and the poorhouse.  But Gavin only saw her in the background, for the Egyptian, singing at her work, had become the heart of the house.  She had flung her shawl over Nanny’s shoulders, and was at the fireplace breaking peats with the leg of a stool.  She turned merrily to the minister to ask him to chop up his staff for firewood, and he would have answered wittily but could not.  Then, as often, the beauty of the Egyptian surprised him into silence.  I could never get used to her face myself in the after-days.  It has always held me wondering, like my own Glen Quharity on a summer day, when the sun is lingering and the clouds are on the march, and the glen is never the same for two minutes, but always so beautiful as to make me sad.  Never will I attempt to picture the Egyptian as she seemed to Gavin while she bent over Nanny’s fire, never will I describe my glen.  Yet a hundred times have I hankered after trying to picture both.