Clergy -- Fiction; Love stories; Scotland -- Fiction
Now let those who think that Gavin has not yet paid toll for taking
the road with the Egyptian, follow the adventures of the cloak.
Shortly after gloaming fell that night Jean encountered her master in
the lobby of the manse. He was carrying something, and when he saw her
he slipped it behind his back. Had he passed her openly she would have
suspected nothing, but this made her look at him.
"Why do you stare so, Jean?" Gavin asked, conscience-stricken, and
he stood with his back to the wall until she had retired in
bewilderment.
"I have noticed her watching me sharply all day," he said to himself,
though it was only he who had been watching her.
Gavin carried the cloak to his bedroom, thinking to lock it away in
his chest, but it looked so wicked lying there that he seemed to see
it after the lid was shut.
The garret was the best place for it. He took it out of the chest and
was opening his door gently, when there was Jean again. She had been
employed very innocently in his mother's room, but he said tartly--
"Jean, I really cannot have this," which sent Jean to the kitchen with
her apron at her eyes.
Gavin stowed the cloak beneath the garret bed, and an hour afterwards
was engaged on his sermon, when he distinctly heard some one in the
garret. He ran up the ladder with a terrible brow for Jean, but it was
not Jean; it was Margaret.
"Mother," he said in alarm, "what are you doing here?"
"I am only tidying up the garret, Gavin."
"Yes, but--it is too cold for you. Did Jean--did Jean ask you to come
up here?"
"Jean? She knows her place better."
Gavin took Margaret down to the parlour, but his confidence in the
garret had gone. He stole up the ladder again, dragged the cloak
from its lurking place, and took it into the garden. He very nearly
met Jean in the lobby again, but hearing him coming she fled
precipitately, which he thought very suspicious.
In the garden he dug a hole, and there buried the cloak, but even now
he was not done with it. He was wakened early by a noise of scraping
in the garden, and his first thought was "Jean!" But peering from the
window, he saw that the resurrectionist was a dog, which already had
its teeth in the cloak.
That forenoon Gavin left the manse unostentatiously carrying a
brown-paper parcel. He proceeded to the hill, and having dropped the
parcel there, retired hurriedly. On his way home, nevertheless, he was
over-taken by D. Fittis, who had been cutting down whins. Fittis had
seen the parcel fall, and running after Gavin, returned it to him.
Gavin thanked D. Fittis, and then sat down gloomily on the cemetery
dyke. Half an hour afterwards he flung the parcel into a Tillyloss
garden.
In the evening Margaret had news for him, got from Jean.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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