A litter flicker of the eyelashes was the only response.
'Thank God, he lives!' exclaimed the girl.
'Annot, Annot!' he murmured.
'Always—always the idea of chat girl!' sighed Hester bitterly, and she withdrew her face from its vicinity to his as Elliot, Gavin Fowler, Spens, and others came splashing along the bed of the stream from two directions, above and below the Cleugh, and ample succour had come now.
What his injuries were, whether internal or external, or both, none could know then. He seemed passive as a child, weak and utterly exhausted. To all it was but too apparent that had succour been longer of coming it had come too late; but now there was no lack of loving and tender hands to bear him homeward, and into his father's house.
'Annot's name was the first word that escaped his lips,' said Hester, as with torn and tremulous fingers she knotted up her back hair into a coil, and seemed on the verge of sinking, after her recent toil, and under her present excitement and anxiety.
'That girl has been his evil genius—his weird—I think,' said Maude, who never liked Annot, and mistrusted her; 'and he will never be free so long as this weird hangs on him.'
'She, a Drummond! The town-bred coward!' exclaimed Hester, her dark violet eyes flashing fire, while she coloured at her own girlish energy.
'The sooner she changes it to some characteristic one like Popkins or Slopkins the better,' said Maude; 'but I think she would prefer Lindsay.'
'Telegraph to Edinburgh at once for Professor —— and Dr. ——,' said Mrs. Lindsay, naming two of the chief medical men (as Roland was carried up to his room), and evincing an interest that surprised Maude, and for which her brother, Mr. Hawkey Sharpe, would not have thanked her.