Just What He Deserved - Page 2

and clasped hands. There was at this last hour
little left to say. Every promise known to Love had been given; they had
exchanged Bibles and broken a piece of silver and vowed an eternal
fidelity. So, in the cold sunset they walked silently by the river that
was running in flood like their own hearts. At the little stone bridge
they stopped, and leaning over the parapet watched the drumly water
rushing below; and there Jean reiterated her promise to be Gavin's wife
as soon as he was able to make a home for her.

"And I am not proud, Gavin," she said; "a little house, if it is filled
with love, will make me happy beyond all."

They were both too hopeful and trustful and too habitually calm to weep
or make much visible lament over their parting; and yet when Gavin
vanished into the dark of the lonely road, Jean shut the heavy house
door very slowly. She felt as if she was shutting part of herself out of
the old home forever, and she was shocked by this first breaking of the
continuity of life; this sharp cutting of regular events asunder.
Gavin's letters were at first frequent and encouraging, but as the
months went by he wrote more and more seldom. He said "he was kept so
busy; he was making himself indispensable, and could not afford to be
less busy. He was weary to death on the Saturday nights, and he could
not bring his conscience to write anent his own personal and earthly
happiness on the Sabbath day; but he was sure Jean trusted in him,
whether he wrote or not; and they were past being bairns, always telling
each other the love they were both so sure of."

Late in the autumn the minister died of typhoid fever, and Jean,
heartbroken and physically worn out, was compelled to face for her
mother and herself, a complete change of life. It had never seemed to
these two women that anything could happen to the father and head of the
family; in their loving hearts he had been immortal, and though the
disease had run its tedious course before their eyes, his death at the
last was a shock that shook their lives and their home to the very
centre. A new minister was the first inevitable change, and then a
removal from the comfortable manse to a little cottage in the village of
Lambrig.

While this sad removal was in progress they had felt the sorrow of it,
all that they could bear; and neither had dared to look into the future
or to speculate as to its necessities. Jean in her heart expected Gavin
would at once send for them to come to America. He had a fair salary,
and the sale of their furniture would defray their traveling expenses.

She was indeed so sure of this journey, that she did not regard the
cottage as more than a temporary shelter during the approaching