"God pity me! I can't throw you down, but——" then he lifted a white marble clock, and let it crash among the broken china. "Out of here!" he screamed. His usually deep, strong voice had been rising with every word he spoke, and his last order was given in a mad alto which terrified the woman browbeating him. It was not Robert's voice; its shrill shriek was the cry of extremity or insanity. She fled upstairs to McNab's room.
"Waken! waken! McNab," she cried. "Your master has lost his senses. Run for Dr. Fleming. Make him come back wi' you."
"What hae ye been doing to the poor man?" she asked sleepily as she put on her shoes.
"Nothing, nothing at all. Just advising him. It is that English cutty—she——"
"Meaning Mrs. Robert Campbell?"
"Call her what you like. It is her, it is her! She has taken the bairn and gone."
"Gone?"
"Left her husband forever. Be in a hurry, woman. Don't you hear the man raving like a wild beast?"
He was not raving when McNab looked at him in passing. He was lying on the sofa perfectly still, with his hands clasped above his head. So the doctor found him a quarter-of-an-hour later. "You have had a great shock, Campbell," he said.
"A shot in the backbone, doctor. My wife has left me, and taken my son with her."