Babbie, what shall I say of you who make me write these things? I
am not your judge. Shall we not laugh at the student who chafes
when between him and his book comes the song of the thrushes, with
whom, on the mad night you danced into Gavin's life, you had more
in common than with Auld Licht ministers? The gladness of living
was in your step, your voice was melody, and he was wondering what
love might be.

You were the daughter of a summer night, born where all the birds
are free, and the moon christened you with her soft light to
dazzle the eyes of man. Not our little minister alone was stricken
by you into his second childhood. To look upon you was to rejoice
that so fair a thing could be; to think of you is still to be
young. Even those who called you a little devil, of whom I have
been one, admitted that in the end you had a soul, though not that
you had been born with one. They said you stole it, and so made a
woman of yourself. But again I say I am not your judge, and when I
picture you as Gavin saw you first, a bare-legged witch dancing up
Windyghoul, rowan berries in your black hair, and on your finger a
jewel the little minister could not have bought with five years of
toil, the shadows on my pages lift, and I cannot wonder that Gavin
loved you.

Often I say to myself that this is to be Gavin's story, not mine.
Yet must it be mine too, in a manner, and of myself I shall
sometimes have to speak; not willingly, for it is time my little
tragedy had died of old age. I have kept it to myself so long that
now I would stand at its grave alone. It is true that when I heard
who was to be the new minister I hoped for a day that the life
broken in Harvie might be mended in Thrums, but two minutes' talk