Clergy -- Fiction; Country life -- Scotland -- Fiction; Deception -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction; 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 bed-room, 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 overtaken 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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