And then old Farmer Gowrie came and stood with his hands behind his back, and a shadow on his furrowed face, as he gazed on his young servant with an uneasy stare. He kept restlessly moving backwards and forwards to see whether the still motionless figure showed any sign of life, till his wife reminded him that Granny Baxter was probably ignorant of the terrible accident which had happened to her grandson, and asked him to go and break the news to her. Little Jean had been there before him, however; and Gowrie found the old woman crawling helplessly along in the direction of the knolls, quite stupefied by the terrible tidings that Jean had managed to convey to her deaf ears. The little girl seemed possessed with the idea that Miss Campbell would be sure to be able to help Geordie in this extremity; and so she left her old granny to find her way alone, and had hurried away in the direction of Kirklands to tell her sorrowful tale, meeting Grace, as we know, in the elm avenue, after her eventful talk with her brother.
They were already half-way to the stepping-stones, when Grace remembered—feeling it unaccountable that, even in her anxiety, she should have forgotten for an instant—that Walter must know what had happened to Geordie—Geordie, to whom he owed so much. She felt that she could not leave the little weeping girl to go on her way alone; but just as she was standing hesitating what it might be best to do, she met one of the dwellers in the valley, who promised to go at once and convey a message to her brother, and then she and Jean hurried on towards the fatal pasture lands. Before they crossed the stepping-stones which led to the knolls, Grace could see a little group bending over a spot in the heather; but no sound reached them through the calm evening air, except the rippling of the sunset-tinted river, which rolled between. And so Geordie was lying there gored, maimed, perhaps dying, as Jean persisted in saying. Grace felt her heart sink with fear, lest the sorrowful refrain should be true, as she crept silently near to the place where the little company was gathered. But Geordie was not dead.
"Here comes Miss Campbell," somebody said, and then the circle opened up, and Grace caught a glimpse of her scholar lying very quietly among the heather with his blue eye turned gladly to welcome his friend.
"It was only a faint, after all,—and some bruises that will soon heal," Mistress Gowrie said, in a tone of relieved anxiety, as she rose from the turf where she had been kneeling to make way for Grace, who felt an intense relief as she bent smilingly over him, and talked gently of the danger past, with her heart full of thankfulness.
When little Jean saw the happy aspect of matters, her grief gave place to the wildest ecstasy of delight. Throwing herself down beside her brother, she shouted gleefully, "Oh, Geordie, Geordie, ye're no dyin' after all, ye're all right. I'll never greet again all the days o' my life," was the rash promise which she made in her joy, remembering Geordie's dislike to tears. Presently her thoughts reverted to her treasure, which, in her grief, had been forgotten. It had been dropped on the knoll when the accident happened, and Jean now bounded off gleefully in search of it.
A doctor had been sent for soon after the accident, but Geordie seemed so well that old Gowrie already began to regret that they had been in such haste in sending to fetch him. Presently Mistress Gowrie left the knolls and returned to her usual evening duties, which she felt were put sadly in arrear owing to this outbreak of Blackie's, and feeling truly thankful that it had ended so fortunately. She invited old Granny Baxter to have a cup of tea with her at the farm, which was a very great mark of graciousness on the part of "the mistress," and extremely gratifying to the old woman, to whom attentions of the kind came rarely.
It had been arranged, also, by the farmer's wife that Geordie should be moved into the "best bedroom" before the doctor came, and Granny Baxter was filled with pride when she was shown the woodruff-scented chamber, with its dark shining floor, and among other impressive decorations from the farmyard, a waving canopy of peacock feathers above the ancient chimney-piece, where Geordie was to sleep among snowy sheets that night. But each time that they proposed he should be carried there from his rough bed among the heather, Geordie pled rather wistfully, "Just wait a wee while. I'm right comfortable here among the heather," and once he added with a sad smile as he glanced at the farmer's wife, "But I'll no be able to supper the beasts the night, Mistress Gowrie. Maybe Sandy will look to them. Puir Blackie! give him a good supper; he didn't mean any ill."
Only Elsie Gray, of all the original group, still sat near Geordie, where she could watch every movement, though she could not be seen by him. She kept gazing at him with unutterable anguish in her eyes, and only she detected the sharp spasms that occasionally crossed his face, and felt his frame quiver with pain which he tried to conceal.
"Miss Campbell," she whispered to Grace who was seated near her, "he's very sore hurt, I'm sure of it. Oh, will the doctor no come soon!" and when Grace looked into Geordie's face she began to share Elsie's fears.
Presently Jean came bounding back in delight with her recovered treasure to lay it in Geordie's hands. He looked at the gaily-bound book with his most pleased smile, and then glancing at Jean proudly, he said, "Eh, Jean, but ye'll be learnin' to be a grand scholar. I'm right glad ye have got to the school."