"Did you ring, sir? Ech, Lord, the mon's deein'!" were the two very different exclamations made by Elspeth as she entered the room, after the departure of the doctor, and caught sight of the situation in which the master seemed to be lying.
"No, Elspeth, I am not 'deein' as you call it," he growled out, when the pain of his exertion had again somewhat subsided and he could find breath for words. "But I wish I was! Is that cursed doctor gone?"
"He was gettin' to his carriage the minute, and he's awa by this," answered the housekeeper. "But what ava has he been doin' to ye? Murderin' ye maybe!—they're a dolefu' uncanny set, the doctors!"
"If you ever see that man here again, and you don't have him shot or set the dog on him, out of the house you go, neck and crop, the whole pack of you—do you hear!" was the reply to Elspeth's comment on the medical profession.
"Just as ye say, master," said Elspeth. "I'll set Carlo at him myself, if ye say so; and wo but the brute will just worry him, for he does na like him and is unco fond of snappin' aboot his heels!"
"Where is Elsie?" was the next question.
"Gone over to Mistress Hayley's the mornin'. Can I do any thing for your leg, sir?—for the wench in the kitchen's clean daft, and I'll be wanted there, maybe."
"No—you can do nothing. My leg is better. But send Elsie to me the moment she comes in."
"Hark!" said the housekeeper, as a light foot sounded on the piazza and came in through the hall. "There's the lassie hersel—I ken her step among a thousand. I'll just send her in to you the moment she has thrawn aff her bonnet." And the old woman departed on her errand.
There must have been an acuteness beyond nature, in the ears of old Elspeth, if she indeed knew the tread of the young girl; for her step, as she entered the room, was so slow, laggard and lifeless, so unlike the usual springing rapidity of her girlish nature, that even her lover might have been pardoned for failing to recognize it. It was as if some crushing weight fettered her limbs and bowed down her brow. And a crushing weight indeed rested upon her—the first unendurable grief of her young life—the knowledge of her only brother's shame. Robert Brand marked the slow step and saw the downcast head; and little as he could possibly know of the connection of that demeanor with the subject of his previous thought, it was not of that cheerful and reassuring character calculated to restore the lost equanimity of a man insulted in the tenderest point of his honor and chafed beyond human endurance. His first words were rough and peremptory: