“Oh Herbert!” said O'Donoghue, with a tone of evident relief, that his misfortunes had taken any other shape than the much-dreaded one of money-calamity. “What of him?”
“He's in a fever; his mind is wandering already.”
“Not a bit of it; it's a mere wetting—a common cold: the boy fell into the river last night at the old bridge there; Kerry told me something about it; and so, maybe, Mark may reach Cork in good time after all.”
“I am no speaking of Mark just now,” said M'Nab tartly, “but of the other lad, wha may be dangerously ill, if something be nae done quickly.”
“Then, send for Roach. Let one of the boys saddle a horse and ride over to Killarney. Oh! I was forgetting; let a fellow go off on foot, he'll get there before evening. It is confoundedly hard to have nothing in the stables, even to mount a messenger. I hope Mark may be able to manage matters in Cork. Poor fellow, he hates business as much as I do myself.”
Sir Archy did not wait for the conclusion of this rambling reply. Long before it was over, he was half-way down stairs in search of a safe messenger to despatch to Killarney for Doctor Roach, muttering between his teeth as he went—
“We hae nae muckle chance of the docter if we canna send the siller to fetch him, as weel as the flunkie. Eh, sirs?—he's a cannie chiel, is auld Roach, and can smell a fee as soon as scent a fever,” and with this sensible reflection he proceeded on his way.
Meanwhile the O'Donoghue himself had summoned energy enough to slip on an old and ragged dressing-gown, and a pair of very unlocomotive slippers, with which attired, he entered the sick boy's room.
“Well, Herbert, lad,” said he, drawing the curtains back, and suffering the grey light to fall on the youth's features, “what is the matter? your uncle has been routing me up with a story about you.”
He ceased suddenly, as his eyes beheld the change a few hours had wrought in the boy's appearance: “His eyes, deep-buried in their orbits, shone with an unnatural lustre—his cheeks were pale and sunken, save where a bright patch of florid red marked the centre of each; his lips were dry and shrivelled, and had a slight tremulous motion, as if he were muttering to himself.