Then, in her usual masterful way, she bade the foot-boys strip the bags off her horse and started for the hut door. With more of admiration for the maid than Sir Richard had felt since their meeting, he followed her brisk steps through the door.
After that there was nothing left for him to do but run upon errands. It would be—"Richard, do you do so?" and "Richard, do you do thus?" "Richard, ride you to the nearest goodwife and fetch me a gourd of goat's milk," or a measure of stum, or whatever other toothsome thing it chanced to be. Sir Richard was soon thinking that his friend's lean body must have grown to be a receptacle for all of the dainties from the multitude of hills about them. Almost every hour of the day he might have been seen careering over their round summits.
The clever foot-boys made over the lean-to into a quite habitable dwelling, thatching its sides and top with dried grass from off the meadow. Within its shelter Sir Richard and Harold and Thomas ate, slept, and loitered away the time.
There was a quaint old Scots herdsman who used often to visit them, bringing with him upon every such occasion his bagpipes, whereupon he could play with an uncommon deftness. It was this same simple, good-hearted herdsman who had looked in on de Claverlok twice or three times every day while the warrior was alone during the interval of his sickness. Sir Richard tried in many ways to make him the richer, or rather the less poor, because of the timely succor he had brought his friend, but the old herdsman would have none of the young knight's nobles.
It seemed curious to Sir Richard that, among the countless gruesome legends and wild tales that Kimbuchie had ever ready at his tongue's end, there was the same one of the Red Tavern that he had heard so often repeated whilst riding with Belwiggar along the Sauchieburn Pass. Good Tammas would not have it that twice the young knight had been beneath its roof, and was yet there before him to tell the tale. "Awell, lad," he would say, "awell. I ken well thou'st a muckle lang tongue betwixt thy teeth, ... a muckle lang tongue."
Following the first two or three days of their arrival, there remained but little for Sir Richard to do within the sick knight's quarters. Isabel had both a keen eye and a right willing hand. By stretching the tent cloth across one side of the room she secured to herself a fair sized retiring room of her own. She appeared to take a positive delight in the task of transforming the rude and not over clean interior of the hut into a place that was neat, cozy, and altogether inviting.
Sir Richard began to wonder why, in such a pleasing environment, de Claverlok was not making a more rapid progress toward health. They had been there now nearly a fortnight, and he appeared to have gained but little, if anything, in the way of weight or strength. Indeed, after the first day or two the sick knight had fallen into an unusual and melancholy silence. Often Sir Richard would steal a glance at him through the window, and always he would see him idly plucking at his coverings, the while his big, hollow eyes would be bent upon every movement of his fair nurse.
"Richard!" Isabel called to him one morning while he was having breakfast in the lean-to. It was just past dawn, with the sun painting a rose-glory above the eastern hills. When the young knight went to her she was standing just outside the closed door of the hut. He remarked to himself how pale seemed her face in despite of the sun's warm reflection upon it.
"What is it, Isabel?" he inquired, feeling a vague apprehension as to the welfare of his friend.
"'Tis this, Richard," said Isabel gravely, "one of the foot-boys must you post me on to Bannockburn. Counsel him to bring instantly a leech, ... the best in the town. I would e'en send you, but you may be needed here."