“Maybe another time, maybe another time,” said Helen, “for my heart’s too full to-day, and I can hear your poor Robina, that you have been so cruel to, coming up the stair, the kind creature, with a cup of tea.” CHAPTER XXIV Helen stayed till the first shade of the darkening stole over the moor, and till the minister’s man had told all the “clash” of the countryside to Katrin and Dougal, and received but a very limited stock of information in return. There was, indeed, much more danger to the secret which now dominated and filled the house of Dalrugas like an actual personage from that chatter in the kitchen than from any thing that could have taken place upstairs. For the minister’s man was dimly aware that the young lady from Dalrugas had been in the village on that day when something mysterious was believed to have taken place in the Manse parlor; that she had been seen with a gentleman, and that Katrin and Robina had also been visible at the Manse. “Ay, was I,” said Katrin; “I just took the minister a dizzen of my eggs. In this awfu’ weather nobody has an egg but me. I just warm them up and pepper them up till they’ve nae idea whether it’s summer or winter, and we lay regular a’ the year round. I never grudge twa-three new-laid eggs to a delicate person, and the minister, poor gentleman, is no that strong, I’m feared.” “He’s just as strong as a horse,” said the minister’s man, “and takes his dinner as if he followed the ploo, but new-laid eggs are nae doubt aye acceptable. The gentleman was from here that was paying him yon veesit twa days after the New Year?” “We have nae gentleman here,” said Katrin, stolid as her own cleanly scrubbed table, on which she rested her hand. Dougal cocked his bonnet over his right ear, but gave no further sign. “There’s been a gentleman, a friend of Sir Robert’s, at Tam Robison’s and we had to give him a bed a nicht or twa on account of the snaw. Now I think o’t, he was a friend o’ the minister’s too. It’s maybe him you’re meaning? but he’s back in Edinburgh as far as I ken, these twa-three----” “Weel, it would be him, or some other person,” said the minister’s man with an affectation of indifference; but he returned to the subject again and again, endeavoring, if he had been strong enough for the rôle, or if he had been confronted by a weak enough adversary, to surprise her into some avowal; but Katrin was too strong for him. It was with difficulty she could be got to understand what he meant. “Oh, it’s aye yon same gentleman you’re havering about! Eh, what would I ken about a strange gentleman? The minister is no my maister nor yet Dougal’s. He might get a visit from Auld Nick himself and it would be naething to him or me.” “It might be much to me,” said the minister’s man, who was known for a “bletherin’ idiot” all over the parish. “It’s just a secret, and a secret is aye worth siller.”