266 The Little Minister

her even what I shuddered to tell him. She cared
for him, I was sure, well enough to have the cour-
age to give him up. But where was I to find her?

Were she and Gavin meeting still? Perhaps
the change which had come over the little minis-
ter meant that they had parted. Yet what I had
heard him say to her on the hill warned me not
to trust in ‘any such solution of the trouble.

_ Boys play at casting a humming-top into the
midst of others on the ground, and if well aimed
it scatters them prettily.. I seemed to be playing
such a game with my thoughts, for each new one
sent the others here and there, and so what could
I do in the end but fling my tops aside, and return
to the heeling of my boot?

I was thus engaged when the sudden waking of
the glen into life took me to my window. There
is seldom silence up here, for if the wind be not
sweeping the heather, the Quharity, that I may
not have heard for days, seems to have crept
nearer to the schoolhouse in the night, and if
both wind and water be out of earshot, there is
the crack of a gun, or Waster Lunny’s shepherd
is on a stone near at hand whistling, or a lamb is
scrambling through a fence, and kicking foolishly
with its hind legs. These sounds I am unaware
of until they stop, when I look up. Such a still-
ness was broken now by music.

From my window I saw a string of people
walking rapidly down the glen, and Waster
Lunny crossing his potato field to meet them.
Remembering that, though I was in my stocking
soles, the ground was dry, I hastened to join the
farmer, for I like to miss nothing. I saw a