"When the great trouble comes, Sandy, when the trouble comes and covers both of us with care, will you remember that you would not put me off? When the trouble comes, will you ever remember that you would not let me go away? that you would not go away? Will you remember, Sandy?"
She was getting wild again, and sprang up in bed as she said this last, and looked the man in his face so earnest, so pleading, so pitiful, that Sandy put up his two hands and swore a solemn oath to remember.
She sank back in bed, drew the clothes about her, hid her face from the light, and then Sandy drew back and stood by the fire, and the awful thought came fully and with all its force upon him that she was insane.
Ah! that was what it was. She feared she would go mad. Mad! mad! He thought of all the mad people he had ever seen or heard of; thought how he had been told that it runs in families; how people go mad and murder their friends, destroy themselves, go into the woods and are eaten by wild beasts, lost in the snow, or drowned in the waters hurrying by wood and mountain wall, and then he feared that he should go mad himself.
"Poor little soul!" he kept saying over to himself. "Poor, noble little soul! would not marry me because she knew she would go mad." And she was dearer to the man now than ever before.
"Sandy."
The sufferer barely breathed his name, but he leaned above her while yet she spoke.
"Sandy, bring Billy Piper."
"What?" He threw up his two hands in the air. The woman did not seem to heed him, but, resting and lying quite still a moment, said, softly—
"Bring Bunker Hill."