‘I wudna be dother til a king!’ returned Kirsty. ‘Gien I hed to be born again, I wudna be born ’cep it was to Dauvid Barclay.’
‘My ain lassie!’ murmured her father. ‘But, eh,’ he added, interrupting his own thoughts, ‘we maun haud oor tongues till we’ve dune the thing we’re sent to du!’
They bent at once to their task.
David was a strong man still, and Kirsty was as good at a lift as most men. They had no difficulty in raising Gordon between them, David taking his head and Kirsty his feet, but it was not without difficulty they got him through the passage. In the cart they covered him so that, had he been a new-born baby, he could have taken no harm except it were by suffocation, and then, Kirsty sitting with his head in her lap, they drove home as fast as the old horse could step out.
In the meantime Marion had got her best room ready, and warm. When they reached it, Francie was certainly still alive, and they made haste to lay him in the hot feather-bed. In about an hour they thought he swallowed a little milk. Neither Kirsty nor her parents went to bed that night, and by one or other of them the patient was constantly attended.
Kirsty took the first watch, and was satisfied that his breathing grew more regular, and by and by stronger. After a while it became like that of one in a troubled sleep. He moved his head a little, and murmured like one dreaming painfully. She called her father, and told him he was saying words she could not understand. He took her place and sat near him, when presently his soldier-ears, still sharp, heard indications of a hot siege. Once he started up on his elbow, and put his hand to the side of his head. For a moment he looked wildly awake, then sank back and went to sleep again.
As Marion was by him in the morning, all at once he spoke again, and more plainly.
‘Go away, mother!’ he said. ‘I am not mad. I am only troubled in my mind. I will tell my father you killed me.’
Marion tried to rouse him, telling him his mother should not come near him. He did not seem to understand, but apparently her words soothed him, for he went to sleep once more.
He was gaunt and ghastly to look at. The scar on his face, which Kirsty had taken for the mark of her whip, but which was left by the splinter that woke him, remained red and disfiguring. But the worst of his look was in his eyes, whose glances wandered about uneasy and searching. It was clear all was not right with his brain. I doubt if any other of his tenants would have recognized him.