6 _ The Little Minister

Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged witch dancing
up Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black
hair, and on your finger a jewel the little
minister could not have bought with five years
of toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I
cannot wonder that Gavin loved you. |

Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin’s
story, not mine. Yet must it be mine, too, in a
manner, and of myself I shall sometimes have to
speak ; not willingly, for it is time my little tragedy
had died of old age. I have kept it to myself so
long that now I would stand at its grave alone.
It is true that when I heard who was to be the
new minister I hoped for a day that the life broken
in Harvie might be mended in Thrums, but two
minutes’ talk with Gavin showed me that Mar-
garet had kept from him the secret which was
hers and mine, and so knocked the bottom out
of my vain hopes. I did not blame her then, nor
do I blame her now, nor shall any one who blames
her ever be called friend by me; but it was bitter
to look at the white manse among the trees and
know that I must never enter it. For Margaret’s
sake I had to keep aloof, yet this new trial came
upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought
that in those eighteen years my passions had
burned like a ship till they sank, but I suffered
again as on that awful night when Adam Dishart
came back, nearly killing Margaret and tearing up
all my ambitions by the root ina single hour. [
waited in Thrums until I had looked again on
Margaret, who thought me dead, and Gavin, who
had never heard of me, and then I trudged back
to the schoolhouse. Something I heard of them