Chapter 25 - Page 2

says to her after lousing times, 'I've been
noticing of late that the minister loses what a body tells him,'
all she answers is 'Havers.' Tod, but women's provoking."

"I allow," Birse said, "that on the first Sabbath o' June month,
and again on the third Sabbath, he poured out the Word grandly,
but I've ta'en note this curran Sabbaths that if he's no michty
magnificent he's michty poor. There's something damming up his
mind, and when he gets by it he's a roaring water, but when he
doesna he's a despizable trickle. The folk thinks it's a woman
that's getting in his way, but dinna tell me that about sic a
scholar; I tell you he would gang ower a toon o' women like a
loaded cart ower new-laid stanes."

Wearyworld hobbled after me up the Roods one day, pelting me with
remarks, though I was doing my best to get away from him. "Even
Rob Dow sees there's something come ower the minister," he bawled,
"for Rob's fou ilka Sabbath now. Ay, but this I will say for Mr.
Dishart, that he aye gies me a civil word," I thought I had left
the policeman behind with this, but next minute he roared, "And
whatever is the matter wi' him it has made him kindlier to me than
ever." He must have taken the short cut through Lunan's close, for
at the top of the Roods his voice again made up on me. "Dagone
you, for a cruel pack to put your fingers to your lugs ilka time I
open my mouth."

As for Waster Lunny's daughter Easie, who got her schooling free
for redding up the school-house and breaking my furniture, she
would never have been off the gossip about the minister, for she
was her mother in miniature, with a tongue that ran like a pump
after the pans are full, not for use but for the mere pleasure of
spilling.

On that awful fourth of August I not only had all this confused
talk in my head but reason for jumping my mind between it and the
Egyptian (as if to catch them together unawares), and I was like
one who, with the mechanism of a watch jumbled in his hand, could
set it going if he had the art.

Of the gypsy I knew nothing save what I had seen that night, yet
what more was there to learn? I was aware that she loved Gavin and
that he loved her. A moment had shown it to me. Now with the Auld
Lichts, I have the smith's acquaintance with his irons, and so I
could not believe that they would suffer their minister to marry a
vagrant. Had it not been for this knowledge, which made me fearful
for Margaret, I would have done nothing to keep these two young
people apart. Some to whom I have said this maintain that the
Egyptian turned my head at our first meeting. Such an argument is
not perhaps worth controverting. I admit that even now I