"Nothing," he rejoined. "It would be cruelty to tell my mother of her
now that she is gone."
Gavin's calmness had left him, and he was striding quickly nearer to
Windyghoul. I was in dread lest he should see the Egyptian at Nanny's
door, yet to have turned him in another direction might have roused
his suspicions. When we were within a hundred yards of the mudhouse, I
knew that there was no Babbie in sight. We halved the distance and
then I saw her at the open window. Gavin's eyes were on the ground,
but she saw him. I held my breath, fearing that she would run out to
him.
"You have never seen her since that night?" Gavin asked me, without
hope in his voice.
Had he been less hopeless he would have wondered why I did not reply
immediately. I was looking covertly at the mudhouse, of which we were
now within a few yards. Babbie's face had gone from the window, and
the door remained shut. That she could hear every word we uttered now,
I could not doubt. But she was hiding from the man for whom her soul
longed. She was sacrificing herself for him.
"Never," I answered, notwithstanding my pity of the brave girl, and
then while I was shaking lest he should go in to visit Nanny, I heard
the echo of the Auld Licht bell.
"That calls me to the meeting for rain," Gavin said, bidding me
good-night. I had acted for Margaret, and yet I had hardly the
effrontery to take his hand. I suppose he saw sympathy in my face, for
suddenly the cry broke from him--
"If I could only know that nothing evil had befallen her!"
Babbie heard him and could not restrain a heart-breaking sob.
"What was that?" he said, starting.
A moment I waited, to let her show herself if she chose. But the
mudhouse was silent again.
"It was some boy in the wood," I answered.
"Good-bye," he said, trying to smile.
Had I let him go, here would have been the end of his love story, but
that piteous smile unmanned me, and I could not keep the words back.
"She is in Nanny's house," I cried.
In another moment these two were together for weal or woe, and I had
set off dizzily for the school-house, feeling now that I had been
false to Margaret, and again exulting in what I had done. By and by
the bell stopped, and Gavin and Babbie regarded it as little as I
heeded the burns now crossing the glen road noisily at places that had
been dry two hours before.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.