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In Windyghoul there is either no wind or so much that it rushes down the sieve like an army, entering with a shriek of terror, and escaping with a derisive howl. The moon was crossing the avenue. But Gavin only saw the singer. She was still fifty yards away, sometimes singing gleefully, and again letting her body sway lightly as she came dancing up Windyghoul.
The Egyptian was mournful in Windyghoul, up which she had once danced and sung; but you must not think that she still feared Dow. I felt McKenzie's clutch on any arm for hours after he left me, but she was far braver than I; indeed, dangers at which I should have shut my eyes only made hers gleam, and I suppose it was sheer love of them that first made her play the coquette with Gavin.
If I asked her some questions between the hill and Windyghoul you must not blame me, for this was my affair as well as theirs. She did not answer me; I know now that she did not hear me. But at the mud house she looked abruptly into my face, and said "You love him, too!" I trudged to the school-house with these words for company, and it was less her discovery than her confession that tortured me.
Here Gavin and she had met first, and she was talking of that meeting to herself. "It was there," I heard her say softly, as she gazed at the bush beneath which she had seen him shaking his fist at her on the night of the riots. A little farther on she stopped where a path from Windyghoul sets off for the well in the wood.
Next moment she was up again, for the voice was Gavin's, who was hurrying after her, as he thought, down Windyghoul. He was no farther away than a whisper might have carried on a still night, but she dared not pursue him, for already Dow was coming back. She could not see him, but she heard the horse whinny and the rocking of the dogcart.
In talking of the gypsy, the little minister had, as it were, put on the black cap; but now, even though he shook his head angrily with every thought of her, the scene in Windyghoul glimmered before his eyes. Sometimes when he meant to frown he only sighed, and then having sighed he shook himself. He was unpleasantly conscious of his right hand, which had flung the divit.
I can fancy his mind made up to watch the mudhouse until Gavin and the gypsy separated, and then pounce upon her. I daresay his whole plot could be condensed into a sentence, "If she's got rid o' this nicht, we may cheat the Session yet," But this is mere surmise. All I know is that he waited near Nanny's house, and by and by heard another trap coming up Windyghoul.
I saw myself draw near her reverently and say, "Margaret, he is dead, and that is why I have come back," and I saw her put her arms around my neck as she often did long ago. But it was not to be. Never since that night at Harvie have I spoken to Margaret. The Egyptian and I were to come to Windyghoul before I heard her speak. She was not addressing me.
The Egyptian, I think, must have seen that his suspicions hurt me, for she said, softly, with a look of appeal in her eyes "You are the schoolmaster in Glen Quharity? Then you will perhaps save Mr. Dishart the trouble of coming farther by showing me the way to old Nanny Webster's house at Windyghoul?" "I have to pass the house at any rate," I answered eagerly, and she came quickly to my side.
In my sorrow for him I did not notice that we were moving on again, this time in the direction of Windyghoul. "She was only a gypsy girl," he said, abruptly, and I nodded. "But I hoped," he continued," that she would be my wife." "I understood that," I said. "There was nothing monstrous to you," he asked, looking me in the face, "in a minister's marrying a gypsy?"
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