olmes' car with the Piper,
and actually persuaded that staid and proper pillar of the Baptist
Church to race with Dr. McGarry. And the Piper was so shaken up he
couldn't play at all. And young Mr. Martin's horse took fright at the
noise and confusion, and nearly ran away, and just escaped throwing all
the children into the ditch. And so they all scampered gaily,
helter-skelter, back to the village, the hero far in the rear, hidden
in clouds of dust, with his friends gambolling ahead. And indeed
Gavin's homecoming was no more like a triumphal procession than any of
the foot-ball games in which he used to take part in the river pasture.

But whatever faults The Woman or Tremendous K. might have found with
his reception, it was perfect in Gavin's eyes and the eyes of the three
Aunties. For all its mistakes were but the result of the overwhelming
sympathy and joy of his friends, and relief that the Aunties had not,
after all, lost the light of their eyes. And indeed if no one had met
him but had left him to find his way to Craig-Ellachie alone, and
afterwards over the hills to Christina, Gavin would have been perfectly
happy. For he was still much the same shy boy who had gone away, with
no thought of glory or public notice, but only a simple desire to do
his duty. He was not a boy any more, for he had been through scenes
that make men old, and the remembrance of them lingered in his deep
eyes, and showed in a new staidness of manner. But he was the same
simple-hearted Gavin, reticent and unassuming and in his heart he
almost could wish, except for the joy it gave his Aunties, that he had
never heard of the Victoria Cross. He had only done his duty, he
repeated over and over, and all the men at the Front were doing that.

And so he lay back among the cushions, surrounded by flowers, his one
hand in Auntie Elspie's, and looked with shining eyes, not at the
beautiful familiar bits of landscape which were passing, and to which
the Aunties were calling his attention, but at the gleam of a
golden-brown head that was occasionally visible from John Lindsay's
buggy. Marmaduke pointed out this and that historical landmark; the
hill where they used to go coasting in winter; the old burnt stump up
which Gavin had climbed to get the hawk's nest one day at recess; the
hole below the mill where the teacher forbade them to swim and into
which they all plunged at noon quite regularly, and Gavin smiled and
nodded, and saw nothin