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At eight o'clock, be dad, there was on'y wan; an' he was sittin' on th' roof iv Gavin's blacksmith shop, an' th' la-ads was thryin' to borrow a laddher fr'm th' injine-house f'r to get at him. 'Twas thruck eighteen; an' Hogan, that was captain, wudden't let thim have it. Not ye'er Hogan, Jawn, but th' meanest fireman in Bridgeport. He got kilt aftherwards.
At the Glen Quharity gathering I once saw Rob Angus lift a boulder with such apparent ease that its weight was discredited, until the cry arose that the effort had dislocated his arm. Perhaps Gavin's quietness deceived the Egyptian similarly. Had he stamped, she might have understood better what he suffered, standing there on the hot embers of his passion.
His friends gave them no weight, and when he wanted to talk emphatically he kept them back, though they were then as troublesome to him as eggs to the bird-nesting boy who has to speak with his spoil in his mouth. Adam was drowned on Gavin's fourth birthday, a year after I had to leave Harvie. He was blown off his smack in a storm, and could not reach the rope his partner flung him.
The affair baffled me at the time, and for the Egyptian's sake I would avoid mentioning it now, were it not one of Gavin's milestones. It includes the first of his memorable sermons against Woman.
The two were in their farming costumes, old bits of past grandeur, a purple velvet skirt for Janet and a sacque of ancient brocaded silk on Flora, both accompanied by Gavin's cast off boots and wide straw hats. But the wearers received Christina in her trim blue skirt and white blouse, of the latest Algonquin style, with a high bred unconsciousness of clothes.
God needs no minister to tell Him what to do, but it was His will that the poorhouse should not have this woman. He made use of a strange instrument, no other than the Egyptian, who now opened the mud-house door. The gypsy had been passing the house, perhaps on her way to Thrums for gossip, and it was only curiosity, born suddenly of Gavin's cry, that made her enter.
It was Gavin's reveille, and it summoned him across the hills to come away. But he knew he could not obey, and he stood silent saying no word of the tumult it raised in his heart. The next day the news that the drum had sent over the hills came to Orchard Glen. England was in the war and she would in all probability call for a Canadian contingent.
I was only out half an hour, but I had to wring my clothes as if they were fresh from the tub. The day wore on, and I did not disturb the sleeper. A dozen times, I suppose, I had to relight my fire of wet peats and roots; but I had plenty of time to stare out at the window, plenty of time to think. Probably Gavin's life depended on his sleeping, but that was not what kept my hands off him.
And they carried off a photograph of Gavin in his Highland bonnet and kilt, and it was all published in a great page of the Saturday issue, the pictures of the beautiful old home, and the thrilling tale of Gavin's glorious deed, with his picture in the centre of it all, and underneath his battle-cry, "Stand Fast, Craig-Ellachie!"
She managed to eject the joyous, scrambling quartette from the kitchen and led the visitor through the dusk of the parlour where Auntie Flora's organ stood with Gavin's fiddle on top of it, on into the gloom of the spare room, heaping welcomes upon her all the way, and asking after everything on the Lindsay farm from Grandpa's rheumatism to Christina's black kitten.
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