Meanwhile, Gavin, unaware that talk about him and a woman unknown had broken out in Thrums, was gazing, sometimes lovingly and again with scorn, at a little bunch of holly-berries which Jean had gathered from her father’s garden.  Once she saw him fling them out of his window, and then she rejoiced.  But an hour afterwards she saw him pick them up, and then she mourned.  Nevertheless, to her great delight, he preached his third sermon against Woman on the following Sabbath.  It was universally acknowledged to be the best of the series.  It was also the last.

CHAPTER XVIII.

Caddam—­love leading to A rupture.

Gavin told himself not to go near the mud house on the following Monday; but he went.  The distance is half a mile, and the time he took was two hours.  This was owing to his setting out due west to reach a point due north; yet with the intention of deceiving none save himself.  His reason had warned him to avoid the Egyptian, and his desires had consented to be dragged westward because they knew he had started too soon.  When the proper time came they knocked reason on the head and carried him straight to Caddam.  Here reason came to, and again began to state its case.  Desires permitted him to halt, as if to argue the matter out, but were thus tolerant merely because from where he stood he could see Nanny’s doorway.  When Babbie emerged from it reason seems to have made one final effort, for Gavin quickly took that side of a tree which is loved of squirrels at the approach of an enemy.  He looked round the tree-trunk at her, and then reason discarded him.  The gypsy had two empty pans in her hands, For a second she gazed in the minister’s direction, then demurely leaped the ditch of leaves that separated Nanny’s yard from Caddam, and strolled into the wood.  Discovering with indignation that he had been skulking behind the tree, Gavin came into the open.  How good of the Egyptian, he reflected, to go to the well for water, and thus save the old woman’s arms!  Reason shouted from near the manse (he only heard the echo) that he could still make up on it.  “Come along.” said his desires, and marched him prisoner to the well.

The path which Babbie took that day is lost in blaeberry leaves now, and my little maid and I lately searched for an hour before we found the well.  It was dry, choked with broom and stones, and broken rusty pans, but we sat down where Babbie and Gavin had talked, and I stirred up many memories.  Probably two of those pans, that could be broken in the hands to-day like shortbread, were Nanny’s, and almost certainly the stones are fragments from the great slab that used to cover the well.  Children like to peer into wells to see what the world is like at the other side, and so this covering was necessary.  Rob Angus was the strong man who bore the stone to Caddam, flinging it a yard before him at a time.  The well had also a wooden lid with leather hinges, and over this the stone was dragged.