364 The Little Minister

‘Ay, Gavin, I see they dinna teach everything
at Aberdeen.” You will not believe it, but I
walked away doubting her meaning. I thought
more of scholarship then than I donow. Adam
Dishart taught me its proper place.

“Well, that is the dull man I was; and yet,
though Adam was always saying and doing the
things I was making up my mind to say and do, I
think Margaret cared more forme. Nevertheless,
there was something about him that all women.
seemed to find lovable, a dash that made them
send him away, and then well-nigh run after him.
At any rate, I could have got her after her
mother’s death if I had been half a man. But
I went back to Aberdeen to write a poem about
her, and while I was at it Adam married her.”

I opened my desk, and took from it a yellow
manuscript.

‘riere,” J said; “1s. the posm. Yow: see
never finished it.”

I was fingering the thing grimly when Gavin’s
eye fell on something else in the desk. It was
an ungainly clasp-knife, as rusty as if it had spent
a winter beneath a hedge.

“J seem to remember that knife,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered, “ you should remember
it. Well, after three months Adam tired of his
wife.”

I stopped again. This was a story in which
only the pauses were eloquent.

“‘ Perhaps I have no right to say he tired of
her. One day, however, he sauntered away from
Harvie whistling, his dog at his heels as ever,
and was not seen again for nearly six years.