But Pam was so sound asleep that it was hard work to rouse her. The horseman was very near, indeed, before she had come to a real understanding of what Sophy was saying. Then she stood for some seconds swaying to and fro, more asleep than awake.
“There is water in the out-kitchen. Run, dip your face in the bucket, you will feel better then!” urged Sophy, and Pam moved slowly away, found the bucket of water and a coarse towel, dipped her face, and, rubbing it vigorously, at once began to feel better. “Why, it is Father!” Sophy fairly shouted with delight as a grey-haired man mounted on a powerful black horse rode into view and lifted his whip in salutation. He rode up to the doorstep, slid from his horse, and Sophy rushed into his arms.
“The police told me that I should find you here, so I rode round this way,” said Dr. Grierson, as he held his daughter with one hand and lifted his hat to Pam with the other. “Is this Miss Walsh, of whom I have been hearing? I am very pleased to meet you, but I am real sorry that you should have been pitchforked, as it were, into such a peck of trouble, my dear. I have heard of your mother very often. Quite the belle of these parts she was, I should imagine, but more than a bit headstrong. Do you take after her?”
“I don’t know,” answered Pam, a little dubiously, for she thought the Doctor was making fun of her. “I am not so wise as my mother, and I am always getting into muddles.”
“So did she, according to all accounts, so doubtless you are a chip off the old block,” he said with a laugh; then he asked if Wrack Peveril had come back.
“No; we have seen nothing of him,” Pam replied; and Sophy immediately asked how Sam Buckle was.
“He is very bad indeed.” The Doctor’s tone was curt, a sure sign, as Sophy knew, that there was not much hope. The Doctor simply hated having his patients die, and he always behaved as if it were a personal affront when they showed signs of slipping out of life.
“Has he said anything about—about who hurt him?” asked Pam. She was determined to know all there was to be known, and she feared they would hide things from her unless she asked right out.
“He has not said much of anything that we can understand except to mutter over and over again that ‘it is his right, it is his right’,” said the Doctor; and Pam suddenly felt a great sinking of heart, for why should the injured man say words like those unless he were living over again the quarrel with his neighbour?
“He is such a fearfully disagreeable man!” exclaimed Sophy, as if she read the thought in the heart of Pam, and would give her comfort if she could. “I never knew anyone yet who really liked Mr. Buckle; even his own wife admits that he is a dreadfully hard man to live with. Father, you will never get your money for attending him; he will say that he did not call you himself, and so there is no obligation to pay you. That was how he served you the time the tree fell on him and nearly killed him; don’t you remember it?”