Yet Rob’s heart opened for a moment to one man, or rather was forced open by that man.  A few days after the meeting at the well, Rob was bringing the smell of whisky with him down Banker’s Close when he ran against a famous staff, with which the doctor pinned him to the wall.

“Ay,” said the outspoken doctor, looking contemptuously into Rob’s bleary eyes, “so this is what your conversion amounts to?  Faugh!  Rob Dow, if you, were half a man the very thought of what Mr. Dishart has done for you would make you run past the public houses.”

“It’s the thocht o’ him that sends me running to them,” growled Rob, knocking down the staff.  “Let me alane.”

“What do you mean by that?” demanded McQueen, hooking him this time.

“Speir at himsel’; speir at the woman.”

“What woman?”

“Take your staff out o’ my neck.”

“Not till you tell me why you, of all people, are speaking against the minister.”

Torn by a desire for a confidant and loyalty to Gavin, Rob was already in a fury.

“Say again,” he burst forth, “that I was speaking agin the minister and I’ll practise on you what I’m awid to do to her.”

“Who is she?”

“Wha’s wha?”

“The woman whom the minister—­”

“I said nothing about a woman,” said poor Rob, alarmed for Gavin.  “Doctor, I’m ready to swear afore a bailie that I never saw them thegither at the Kaims.”

“The Kaims!” exclaimed the doctor suddenly enlightened.  “Pooh! you only mean the Egyptian.  Rob, make your mind easy about this.  I know why he met her there.”

“Do you ken that she has bewitched him; do you ken I saw him trying to put his arms round her; do you ken they have a trysting-place in Caddam wood?”

This came from Rob in a rush, and he would fain have called it all back.

“I’m drunk, doctor, roaring drunk,” he said, hastily, “and it wasna the minister I saw ava; it was another man.”

Nothing more could the doctor draw from Rob, but he had heard sufficient to smoke some pipes on.  Like many who pride themselves on being recluses, McQueen loved the gossip that came to him uninvited; indeed, he opened his mouth to it as greedily as any man in Thrums.  He respected Gavin, however, too much to find this new dish palatable, and so his researches to discover whether other Auld Lichts shared Rob’s fears were conducted with caution.  “Is there no word of your minister’s getting a wife yet?” he asked several, but only got for answers, “There’s word o’ a Glasgow leddy’s sending him baskets o’ flowers,” or “He has his een open, but he’s taking his time; ay, he’s looking for the blade o’ corn in the stack o’ chaff.”

This convinced McQueen that the congregation knew nothing of the Egyptian, but it did not satisfy him, and he made an opportunity of inviting Gavin into the surgery.  It was, to the doctor, the cosiest nook in his house, but to me and many others a room that smelled of hearses.  On the top of the pipes and tobacco tins that littered the table there usually lay a death certificate, placed there deliberately by the doctor to scare his sister, who had a passion for putting the surgery to rights.