with Gavin showed me that Margaret had kept from him the secret
which was hers and mine and so knocked the bottom out of my vain
hopes. I did not blame her then, nor do I blame her now, nor shall
anyone who blames her ever be called friend by me; but it was
bitter to look at the white manse among the trees and know that I
must never enter it. For Margaret's sake I had to keep aloof, yet
this new trial came upon me like our parting at Harvie. I thought
that in those eighteen years my passions had burned like a ship
till they sank, but I suffered again as on that awful night when
Adam Dishart came back, nearly killing Margaret and tearing up all
my ambitions by the root in a single hour. I waited in Thrums
until I had looked again on Margaret, who thought me dead, and
Gavin, who had never heard of me, and then I trudged back to the
school-house. Something I heard of them from time to time during
the winter--for in the gossip of Thrums I was well posted--but
much of what is to be told here I only learned afterwards from
those who knew it best. Gavin heard of me at times as the dominie
in the glen who had ceased to attend the Auld Licht kirk, and
Margaret did not even hear of me. It was all I could do for them.




CHAPTER II.

RUNS ALONGSIDE THE MAKING OF A MINISTER.


On the east coast of Scotland, hidden, as if in a quarry, at the
foot of cliffs that may one day fall forward, is a village called