"A cannon is to be fired as soon as they're man and wife," he
bellowed. "We'll hear it."
With that we parted. On my way home, I remember, I stepped on a brood
of drowned partridge. I was only out half an hour, but I had to wring
my clothes as if they were fresh from the tub.
The day wore on, and I did not disturb the sleeper. A dozen times, I
suppose, I had to relight my fire of wet peats and roots; but I had
plenty of time to stare out at the window, plenty of time to think.
Probably Gavin's life depended on his sleeping, but that was not what
kept my hands off him. Knowing so little of what had happened in
Thrums since I left it, I was forced to guess, and my conclusion was
that the earl had gone off with his own, and that Gavin in a frenzy
had followed them. My wisest course, I thought, was to let him sleep
until I heard the cannon, when his struggle for a wife must end. Fifty
times at least did I stand regarding him as he slept; and if I did not
pity his plight sufficiently, you know the reason. What were
Margaret's sufferings at this moment? Was she wringing her hands for
her son lost in the flood, her son in disgrace with the congregation?
By one o'clock no cannon had sounded, and my suspense had become
intolerable. I shook Gavin awake, and even as I shook him demanded a
knowledge of all that had happened since we parted at Nanny's gate.
"How long ago is that?" he asked, with bewilderment.
"It was last night," I answered. "This morning I found you senseless
on the hillside, and brought you here, to the Glen Quharity
school-house. That dog was with you."
He looked at the dog, but I kept my eyes on him, and I saw intelligence
creep back, like a blush, into his face.
"Now I remember," he said, shuddering. "You have proved yourself my
friend, sir, twice in the four and twenty hours."
"Only once, I fear," I replied gloomily. "I was no friend when I sent
you to the earl's bride last night."
"You know who she is?" he cried, clutching me, and finding it agony to
move his limbs.
"I know now," I said, and had to tell him how I knew before he would
answer another question. Then I became listener, and you who read know
to what alarming story.
"And all that time," I cried reproachfully, when he had done, "you
gave your mother not a thought."
"Not a thought," he answered; and I saw that he pronounced a harsher
sentence on himself than could have come from me. "All that time!" he
repeated, after a moment. "It was only a few minutes, while the ten
o'clock bell was ringing."
"Only a few minutes," I said, "but they changed the channel of the
Quharity, and perhaps they have done not less to you."
"That may be," he answered gravely, "but it is of the present I must
think just now. Mr. Ogilvy, what assurance have I, while lying here
helpless, that the marriage at the Spittal is not going on?"
"None, I hope," I said to myself, and listened longingly for the
cannon. But to him I only pointed out that no woman need go through a
form of marriage against her will.
"Rintoul carried her off with no possible purport," he said, "but to
set my marriage at defiance, and she has had a conviction always that
to marry me would be to ruin me. It was only in the shiver Lord
Rintoul's voice in the darkness sent through her that she yielded to
my wishes. If she thought that marriage last night could be annulled
by another to-day, she would consent to the second, I believe, to save
me from the effects of the first. You are incredulous, sir; but you do
not know of what sacrifices love is capable."
Something of that I knew, but I did not tell him. I had seen from his
manner rather than his words that he doubted the validity of the gypsy
marriage, which the king had only consented to celebrate because
Babbie was herself an Egyptian. The ceremony had been interrupted in
the middle.
"It was no marriage," I said, with a confidence I was far from
feeling.
"In the sight of God," he replied excitedly, "we took each other for
man and wife."