How had the Egyptian been spirited here from the Spittal? I did not
ask the question. To interest myself in Babbie at that dire hour of
Margaret's life would have been as impossible to me as to sit down to
a book. To others, however, it is only an old woman on whom the parlor
door of the manse has closed, only a garrulous dominie that is in pain
outside it. Your eyes are on the young wife.
When Babbie was plucked off the hill, she thought as little as Gavin
that her captor was Rob Dow. Close as he was to her, he was but a
shadow until she screamed the second time, when he pressed her to the
ground and tied his neckerchief over her mouth. Then, in the moment
that power of utterance was taken from her, she saw the face that had
startled her at Nanny's window. Half-carried, she was borne forward
rapidly, until some one seemed to rise out of the broom and strike
them both. They had only run against the doctor's trap; and huddling
her into it, Dow jumped up beside her. He tied her hands together with
a cord. For a time the horse feared the darkness in front more than
the lash behind; but when the rains became terrific, it rushed ahead
wildly--probably with its eyes shut.
In three minutes Babbie went through all the degrees of fear. In the
first she thought Lord Rintoul had kidnapped her; but no sooner had
her captor resolved himself into Dow, drunk with the events of the
day and night, than in the earl's hands would have lain safety. Next,
Dow was forgotten in the dread of a sudden death which he must share.
And lastly, the rain seemed to be driving all other horrors back, that
it might have her for its own. Her perils increased to the unbearable
as quickly as an iron in the fire passes through the various stages
between warmth and white heat. Then she had to do something; and as
she could not cry out, she flung herself from the dogcart. She fell
heavily in Caddam Wood, but the rain would not let her lie there
stunned. It beat her back to consciousness, and she sat up on her
knees and listened breathlessly, staring in the direction the trap had
taken, as if her eyes could help her ears.
All night, I have said, the rain poured, but those charges only rode
down the deluge at intervals, as now and again one wave greater than
the others stalks over the sea. In the first lull it appeared to
Babbie that the storm had swept by, leaving her to Dow. Now she heard
the rubbing of the branches, and felt the torn leaves falling on her
gown. She rose to feel her way out of the wood with her bound hands,
then sank in terror, for some one had called her name. Next moment she
was up again, for the voice was Gavin's, who was hurrying after her,
as he thought, down Windyghoul. He was no farther away than a whisper
might have carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him, for
already Dow was coming back. She could not see him, but she heard the
horse whinny and the rocking of the dogcart. Dow was now at the
brute's head, and probably it tried to bite him, for he struck it,
crying:
"Would you? Stand still till I find her.... I heard her move this
minute."
Babbie crouched upon a big stone and sat motionless while he groped
for her. Her breathing might have been tied now, as well as her mouth.
She heard him feeling for her, first with his feet and then with his
hands, and swearing when his head struck against a tree.
"I ken you're within hearing," he muttered, "and I'll hae you yet. I
have a gully-knife in my hand. Listen!"
He severed a whin-stalk with the knife, and Babbie seemed to see the
gleam of the blade.
"What do I mean by wanting to kill you?" he said, as if she had asked
the question. "Do you no ken wha said to me, 'Kill this woman?' It was
the Lord. 'I winna kill her,' I said, 'but I'll cart her out o' the
country.' 'Kill her,' says He; 'why encumbereth she the ground?'"
He resumed his search, but with new tactics. "I see you now," he would
cry, and rush forward perhaps within a yard of her. Then she must have
screamed had she had the power. When he tied that neckerchief round
her mouth he prolonged her life.
Then came the second hurricane of rain, so appalling that had Babbie's
hands been free she would have pressed them to her ears. For a full
minute she forgot Dow's presence. A living thing touched her face. The
horse had found her. She recoiled from it, but its frightened head
pressed heavily on her shoulder. She rose and tried to steal away, but
the brute followed, and as the rain suddenly exhausted itself she
heard the dragging of the dogcart. She had to halt.
Again she heard Dow's voice. Perhaps he had been speaking throughout
the roar of the rain. If so, it must have made him deaf to his own
words. He groped for the horse's head, and presently his hand touched
Babbie's dress, then jumped from it, so suddenly had he found her. No
sound escaped him, and she was beginning to think it possible that he
had mistaken her for a bush when his hand went over her face. He was
making sure of his discovery.
"The Lord has delivered you into my hands," he said in a low voice,
with some awe in it. Then he pulled her to the ground, and, sitting
down beside her, rocked himself backward and forward, his hands round
his knees. She would have bartered the world for power to speak to
him.
"He wouldna hear o' my just carting you to some other countryside," he
said confidentially. "'The devil would just blaw her back again,' says
He, 'therefore kill her.' 'And if I kill her,' I says, 'they'll hang
me.' 'You can hang yoursel',' says He. 'What wi'?' I speirs. 'Wi' the
reins o' the dogcart,' says He. 'They would break,' says I. 'Weel,
weel,' says He, 'though they do hang you, nobody'll miss you.' 'That's
true,' says I, 'and You are a just God.'"
He stood up and confronted her.
"Prisoner at the bar," he said, "hae ye onything to say why sentence
of death shouldna be pronounced against you? She doesna answer. She
kens death is her deserts."
By this time he had forgotten probably why his victim was dumb.
"Prisoner at the bar, hand back to me the soul o' Gavin Dishart. You
winna? Did the devil, your master, summon you to him and say, 'Either
that noble man or me maun leave Thrums?' He did. And did you, or did
you no, drag that minister, when under your spell, to the hill, and
there marry him ower the tongs? You did. Witnesses, Rob Dow and Tammas
Whamond."
She was moving from him on her knees, meaning when out of arm's reach
to make a dash for life.
"Sit down," he grumbled, "or how can you expect a fair trial? Prisoner
at the bar, you have been found guilty of witchcraft."
For the first time his voice faltered.
"That's the difficulty, for witches canna die, except by burning or
drowning. There's no blood in you for my knife, and your neck wouldna
twist. Your master has brocht the rain to put out a' the fires, and
we'll hae to wait till it runs into a pool deep enough to drown you.
"I wonder at You, God. Do You believe her master'll mak' the pool for
her? He'll rather stop his rain. Mr. Dishart said You was mair
powerful than the devil, but it doesna look like it. If You had the
power, how did You no stop this woman working her will on the
minister? You kent what she was doing, for You ken a' things. Mr.
Dishart says You ken a' things. If You do, the mair shame to You.
Would a shepherd, that could help it, let dogs worry his sheep? Kill
her! It's fine to cry 'Kill her,' but whaur's the bonfire, whaur's the
pool? You that made the heaven and the earth and all that in them is,
can You no set fire to some wet whins, or change this stane into a
mill-dam?"
He struck the stone with his fist, and then gave a cry of exultation.
He raised the great slab in his arms and flung it from him. In
that moment Babbie might have run away, but she fainted. Almost
simultaneously with Dow she knew this was the stone which covered the
Caddam well. When she came to, Dow was speaking, and his voice had
become solemn.
"You said your master was mair powerful than mine, and I said it too,
and all the time you was sitting here wi' the very pool aneath you
that I have been praying for. Listen!"
He dropped a stone into the well, and she heard it strike the water.
"What are you shaking at?" he said in reproof. "Was it no yoursel'
that chose the spot? Lassie, say your prayers. Are you saying them?"
He put his hand over her face, to feel if her lips were moving, and
tore off the neckerchief.
And then again the rain came between them. In that rain one could not
think. Babbie did not know that she had bitten through the string that
tied her hands. She planned no escape. But she flung herself at the
place where Dow had been standing. He was no longer there, and she
fell heavily, and was on her feet again in an instant and running
recklessly. Trees intercepted her, and she thought they were Dow, and
wrestled with them. By and by she fell into Windyghoul, and there she
crouched until all her senses were restored to her, when she
remembered that she had been married lately.
How long Dow was in discovering that she had escaped, and whether he
searched for her, no one knows. After a time he jumped into the
dogcart again, and drove aimlessly through the rain. That wild journey
probably lasted two hours, and came to an abrupt end only when a tree
fell upon the trap. The horse galloped off, but one of Dow's legs was
beneath the tree, and there he had to lie helpless, for though the leg
was little injured, he could not extricate himself. A night and day
passed, and he believed that he must die; but even in this plight he
did not forget the man he loved. He found a piece of slate, and in the
darkness cut these words on it with his knife:
"Me being about to die, I solemnly swear I didna see the minister
marrying an Egyptian on the hill this nicht. May I burn in Hell if
this is no true.
(Signed) "ROB DOW."
This document he put in his pocket, and so preserved proof of what he
was perjuring himself to deny.
Chapter Forty.