"Hae you heard o' Mr. Dishart? He'll never daur show face in Thrums again." Without giving her a word I hastened to the Tenements. "The leddy's no here," Sam'l Farquharson told me, "and Tammas is back at the manse again, trying to force his way in." From Sam'l, too, I turned, with no more than a groan; but he cried after me, "Perdition on the man that has played that leddy false." Had Margaret been at her window she must have seen me, so recklessly did I hurry up the minister's road, with nothing in me but a passion to take Whamond by the throat. He was not in the garden. The kitchen door was open. Jean was standing at it with her apron to her eyes. "Tammas Whamond?" I demanded, and my face completed the question. "You're ower late," she wailed. "He's wi' her. Oh, dominie, whaur's the minister?" "You base woman!" I cried, "why did you unbar the door?" [Illustration: "IT WAS BABBIE, THOUGH NO LONGER IN A GYPSY'S DRESS."] "It was the mistress," she answered. "She heard him shaking it, and I had to tell her wha it was. Dominie, it's a' my wite! He tried to get in last nicht, and roared threats through the door, and after he had gone awa she speired wha I had been speaking to. I had to tell her, but I said he had come to let her ken that the minister was taking shelter frae the rain in a farmhouse. Ay, I said he was to bide there till the flood gaed down, and that's how she has been easy a' day. I acted for the best, but I'm sair punished now; for when she heard Tammas at the door twa or three minutes syne, she ordered me to let him in, so that she could thank him for bringing the news last nicht, despite the rain. They're in the parlor. Oh, dominie, gang in and stop his mouth." This was hard. I dared not go to the parlor. Margaret might have died at sight of me. I turned my face from Jean. "Jean," said some one, opening the inner kitchen door, "why did you----?" She stopped, and that was what turned me round. As she spoke I thought it was the young lady; when I looked I saw it was Babbie, though no longer in a gypsy's dress. Then I knew that the young lady and Babbie were one. Chapter Thirty-Nine. HOW BABBIE SPENT THE NIGHT OF AUGUST FOURTH. How had the Egyptian been spirited here from the Spittal? I did not ask the question. To interest myself in Babbie at that dire hour of Margaret's life would have been as impossible to me as to sit down to a book. To others, however, it is only an old woman on whom the parlor door of the manse has closed, only a garrulous dominie that is in pain outside it. Your eyes are on the young wife.