Chapter 28 - Page 2

an abrupt stop, saying to his companion, 'Dinna say another word
about her afore the minister.' Rob would have come away at once in
answer to my appeal, but the piper was drunk and would not be
silenced. 'I'll tell the minister about her, too,' he began. 'You
dinna ken what you're doing," Rob roared, and then, as if to save
my ears from scandal at any cost, he struck Campbell a heavy blow
on the mouth. I tried to intercept the blow, with the result that
I fell, and then some one ran out of the tavern crying, 'He's
killed!' The piper had been stunned, but the story went abroad
that he had stabbed me for interfering with him. That is really
all. Nothing, as you know, can overtake an untruth if it has a
minute's start."

"Where is Campbell now?"

"Sleeping off the effect of the blow: but Dow has fled. He was
terrified at the shouts of murder, and ran off up the West Town
end. The doctor's dogcart was standing at a door there and Rob
jumped into it and drove off. They did not chase him far, because
he is sure to hear the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will
come back."

Though in a few hours we were to wonder at our denseness, neither
Gavin nor I saw why Dow had struck the Highlander down rather than
let him tell his story in the minister's presence. One moment's
suspicion would have lit our way to the whole truth, but of the
spring to all Rob's behavior in the past eight months we were
ignorant, and so to Gavin the Bull had only been the scene of a
drunken brawl, while I forgot to think in the joy of finding him
alive.

"I have a prayer-meeting for rain presently," Gavin said, breaking
a picture that had just appeared unpleasantly before me of Babbie
still in agony at Nanny's, "but before I leave you tell me why
this rumor caused you such distress."

The question troubled me, and I tried to avoid it. Crossing the
hill we had by this time drawn near a hollow called the Toad's-
hole, then gay and noisy with a caravan of gypsies. They were
those same wild Lindsays, for whom Gavin had searched Caddam one
eventful night, and as I saw them crowding round their king, a man
well known to me, I guessed what they were at.

"Mr. Dishart," I said abruptly, "would you like to see a gypsy
marriage? One is taking place there just now. That big fellow is
the king, and he is about to marry two of his people over the
tongs. The ceremony will not detain us five minutes, though the
rejoicings will go on all night."

I have been present at more than one gypsy wedding in my time, and
at the wild, weird orgies that followed them, but what is
interesting to such as I may not be for a minister's eyes, and,