“Oh, ay!”
“Then I might have been tried as one of the ringleaders of the riot?”
“To be surely!”
“Well, and if so, ten to one I should have been tried next by the Senatus Academicus, and deprived of my bursary. God bless you this night, men; good-bye now. But come back and see me.”
Sandie’s landlady was kindness personified. Dr. Kilgour himself attended the poor fellow, and Willie constituted himself his constant nurse. There was at no time any real danger, so the patient did not write to alarm his father and mother.
He had plenty of callers to keep up his heart. The great Africander came every evening.
“I never saw any one fight more bravely against fearful odds,” he said over and over again, “than you did, Sandie M‘Crae.”
“Oh,” said Sandie, smiling, “I assure you fighting is not much in my line, and but for my friend Willie, you ne’er would have seen me there.”
But with his temperate habits and his wonderful constitution, Sandie was at last able to get up, and though pale and stiff, rejoin his classes.
The first day he appeared, leaning on a stick in the quad, he was the recipient of a regular ovation. The students cheered and cheered again and crowded round him to shake hands, and I believe they would have hoisted him shoulder high had not his ribs been still so weak.