The poor patient knew at once his master’s tongue, and lifting up one of his eyes, the other being stiff and barkened down said in a melancholy voice, “Ah, master, do you think I’ll get better?”
Doctor Peelbox, old man as he was, started back as if he had been a French dancing-master, or had stramped on a hot bar of iron. “Tom, Tom, is this you? what, in the name of wonder, has done this?” Then feeling his wrist—“but your pulse is quite good. Have you fallen, boy? Where is the blood coming from?”
“Somewhere about the hairy scalp,” answered Magneezhy,
in their own queer sort of lingo. “I doubt some artery’s cut through!”
The Doctor immediately bade him lie quiet and hush, as he was getting a needle and silken thread ready to sew it up; ordering me to have a basin and water ready, to wash the poor lad’s physog. I did so as hard as I was able, though I was not sure about the blood just; old Doctor Peelbox watching over my shoulder with a lighted penny candle in one hand, and the needle and thread in the other, to see where the blood spouted from. But we were as daft as wise; so he bade me take my big shears, and cut out all the hair on the fore part of the head as bare as my loof; and syne we washed, and better washed; so Magneezhy got the other eye up, when the barkened blood was loosed; looking, though as pale as a clean shirt, more frighted than hurt; until it became plain to us all, first to the Doctor, syne to me, and syne to Tammie Bodkin, and last of all to Magneezhy himself, that his skin was not so much as peeled. So we helped him out of the bed, and blithe was I to see the lad standing on the floor, without a hold, on his own feet.
I did my best to clean his neckcloth and shirt of the blood, making him look as decentish as possible, considering circumstances; and lending him, as the scripture commands, my tartan mantle to hide the infirmity of his bloody trowsers and waistcoat. Home went he and his master together; me standing at our close mouth, wishing them a good-morning, and blithe to see their backs. Indeed, a condemned thief with the rope about his neck, and the white cowl tied over his eyes, to say nothing of his hands yerked together behind his back, and on the nick of being thrown over, could not have been more thankful for a reprieve than I was, at the same blessed moment. It was like Adam seeing the deil’s rear marching out of Paradise, if one may be allowed to think such a thing.
The whole business, tag-rag and bob-tail, soon, however, spunked out, and was the town talk for more than one day—But you’ll hear.
At the first I pitied the poor lads, that I thought had fled for ever and aye from their native country, to Bengal, Seringapatam, Copenhagen, Botany Bay, or Jamaica, leaving behind
them all their friends and old Scotland, as they might never hear of the goodness of Providence in their behalf. But wait a wee.
Would you believe it? As sure’s death, the whole was but a wicked trick played by that mischievous loon Blister and his cronies, upon one that was a simple and soft-headed callant. De’il a hait was in the one pistol but a pluff of powder; and in the other, a cartridge-paper, full of blood, was rammed down upon the charge; the which, hitting Magneezhy on the ee-bree, had caused a business that seemed to have put him out of life, and nearly put me (though one of the volunteers) out of my seven senses.