He was quiet a little but presently spoke again.
“When they come to carry me home it may be the pain of lifting me over the wall will disorder my wits once more. So I should tell you what was to be a secret, that Mr. Ted comes home to-day. That was why I was so anxious the bad luck should be gone on this very night, and thanks to you, it is. He was not quite certain of the time and did not wish to disappoint his sister, so it was to old Michael he sent the message to be on the watch for him. We were always great friends, Mr. Ted and me, and to think that the blessed Saint Christopher has brought him home safe at last.”
He must have made an effort to tell this, feeling that his senses were once more slipping from him for almost immediately he went off again into confused muttering.
“He saved my life,” he said once, more clearly, “he saved my sheep, him and those great beautiful white dogs, but—” the thread of consciousness had snapped again—“they were always the hunters, those greyhounds of the King of Connemara; though they lived a thousand years ago you can hear their cry over the hills to this day!”
It was, to Betsey, a moment of great relief, when she heard feet upon the grassy pathway, saw the gleam of lanterns through the rifts in the broken walls and knew that help had come. Later, however, there was a very hard hour at the old man’s tiny cottage when the doctor attended to his broken leg and the gash in his head.
“He will get through all right,” was the cheerful assurance given when the affair was over. “I have attended Michael before, he gets himself into many scrapes but he always comes out of them.”
The nurse had come down to give assistance, but she and the doctor were both needed at Mr. Reynolds’ bedside. When questioned about Miss Miranda’s father, the doctor merely shook his head.
They went away, leaving Betsey to watch Michael alone, since David also had betaken himself to the cottage. She sat for hour after long hour until it was beginning to be morning, as she could see from her place by the bed near the tiny window. The birds were singing; perhaps it was that same thrush that had greeted her before, that was swinging from the drooping elm tree and calling its welcome to the dawn. Michael was sleeping peacefully, she felt very weary herself as she sat there watching the gray light turn slowly to bright day. A step fell on the threshold, a heavy step that could be none other than Mrs. Bassett’s.
“These are the strangest doings that ever I heard of,” she exclaimed as she came in, taking off her coat and putting on her apron almost with the same motion. “To think that I slept through it all and never knew a thing until that boy, tinkering in the workshop before it was light, happened to wake me. I’ve got the breakfast ready up there at Miss Miranda’s, and set everything to rights and now I am just going to stay here while you go back and get some sleep. What a time you have had, poor dear! They say Mr. Reynolds has got through the night a little better than they hoped, though there is still nothing that will rouse him from that stupor.”
The sun was really up and shining as Betsey passed through the garden toward the cottage. The world was very clean and glittering and very still, with only the old cock strutting across the poultry yard and lifting his voice in a loud, full crow that sounded far through the quiet of the dawn. It was a pleasant, homely, familiar sound after the strange adventures and unrealities of the night. Betsey began to wonder if it had not indeed been all a dream and she would not presently discover that she had dropped asleep before the toy-cupboard, the tree of jade or the silver Saint Christopher in her hand.