288 - The Little Minister

other word about her afore the minister.’ Rob
would have come away at once, in answer to my
appeal, but the piper was drunk, and would not
be silenced. ‘I'll tell the minister about her, too,’
he began. ‘You dinna ken what you’re doing,’
Rob roared, and then, as if to save my ears from
scandal at any cost, he struck Campbell a heavy
blow on the mouth. I tried to intercept the
blow, with the result that I fell, and then some
one ran out of the tavern crying, ‘ He’s killed!’
The piper had been stunned, but the story went
abroad that he had stabbed me for interfering
with him. That is really all. Nothing, as you
know, can overtake an untruth if it has a minute’s
start.”

“ ‘Where is Campbell now?”

“ Sleeping off the effect of the blow; but Dow
has fled. He was terrified at the shouts of mur-
der, and ran off up the West Town end. The
doctor’s dog-cart was standing at a door there,
and Rob jumped into it and drove off. They
did not chase him far, because he is sure to hear '
the truth soon, and then, doubtless, he will come
back.”

Though in a few hours we were to wonder at
our denseness, neither Gavin nor I saw why Dow
had struck the Highlander down rather than let
him tell his story in the minister’s presence. One
moment’s suspicion would have lit our way to the
whole truth, but of the spring to all Rob’s beha-
viour in the past eight months we were ignorant,
and so to Gavin the Bull had only been the scene
of a drunken brawl, while I forgot to think in the
joy of finding ‘him alive.