"I will call the men. We can get him home among us."
He ran over the wall and on to the field where men were hoeing. When they had dropped their work and followed him, they found Electra sitting there by the roadside, as if she were the one mourner over the dead, and she did not rise until they stooped to lift him, and arranged how he should be carried. Then she said to Peter, again as if it were her right,—
"Have him taken to my house."
Peter stared at her, but he remembered Rose.
"That will be better," he said; and added, "but who will tell her?"
"His daughter?" said Electra, in her clear tone. "I will tell her. But there is a great deal to do before that. She can wait."
So they walked along the road like a strange funeral procession, Electra in front, as if she had a right to lead. She turned in at her own gate, and they followed, and she walked on up the steps and into the library, where they laid him down. Madam Fulton and Billy Stark had gone for a drive, and the house, in its morning order, looked as if it had been prepared for the solemnity of this entrance. Now Electra's methodical capacity came into play. She sent one man for the doctor and another to the kitchen for hot water and for brandy. But when they were hurriedly dispersed, she turned to Peter and said, with a heart-breaking quiet,—
"And yet, he is dead!"
She sat down upon the floor beside the couch and laid her head on the dead man's heart. Peter knew it was to listen for a flutter there, but with his sensitive apprehension of all emotion, he felt also that she was glad to put her head upon MacLeod's breast. He was conscious of being useless in his inactivity, but he could only stand and stare down at them, the dead man and the mourning woman. Presently Electra got up and stood, dry-eyed, and looked at him.
"He was coming to me," she said, in awe at the loneliness of the event. "I couldn't sleep last night. I wish I had known a little more. Instead of thinking about him, I could have met him. I could have been with him."