CHAPTER: 20x
END OF THE STATE OF INDECISION

ONG before I had any thought of writing
this story, I had told it so often to my little
maid that she now knows some of it better than I.
If you saw me looking up from my paper to ask
her, “ What was it that Birse said to Jean about
the minister’s flowers?’ or, “ Where was Hendry
Munn hidden on the night of the riots?” and
heard her confident answers, you would conclude
that she had been in the thick of these events,
instead of born many years after them. I men-
tion this now because I have reached a point
where her memory contradicts mine. She main-
tains that Rob Dow was told of the meeting in
the wood by the two boys whom it disturbed,
while my own impression is that he was a witness
of it. If she is right, Rob must have succeeded
in frightening the boys into telling no other per-
son, for certainly the scandal did not spread in
Thrums. After all, however, it is only important
to know that Rob did learn of the meeting. Its
first effect was to send him sullenly to the drink.
Many a time since these events have | pictured
what might have been their upshot had Dow con-
fided their discovery to me. Had I suspected
why Rob was grown so dour again, Gavin’s
future might have been very different. I was
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