Lying at the foot of the stairs was Hugh. Hugh! Low, and weak, and faint, there he lay, his blue eyes only half opened, and his pretty curls mingling with the dust.
“Hugh! is it you, my darling?”
Tod’s gasp was like a great cry. Hugh put up his little feeble hand, and a smile parted his lips.
“Yes, it’s me, Joe.”
The riddle is easily solved. When sent back by me, Hugh saw Hannah in the fold-yard; she was, in point of fact, looking after him. In his fear, he stole round to hide in the shrubbery, and thence got to the front of the house, and ran away down the road. Seeing the front barn-door open, for it was when Luke Mackintosh was getting the corn, Hugh slipped in and hid behind the door. Luke went out with the first lot of corn, and the senseless child, hearing Tod’s voice outside, got into the place leading to the stairs, and shut the door. Luke, talking to Tod, who had stepped inside the barn, saw the door was shut and slipped the big outside bolt, never remembering that it was not he who had shut it. Poor little Hugh, when their voices had died away, ran upstairs to get to the upper granary, and found its door fastened. And there the child was shut up beyond reach of call and hearing. The skylight in the roof, miles, as it seemed, above him, had its ventilator open. He had called and called; but his voice must have been lost amidst the space of the barn. It was too weak to disturb a rat now.
Tod took him up in his arms, tenderly as if he had been a new-born baby that he was hushing to the rest of death.
“Were you frightened, child?”
“I was till I heard the church-bells,” whispered Hugh. “I don’t know how long it was—oh, a great while—and I had ate the biscuit Johnny gave me and been asleep. I was not frightened then, Joe; I thought they’d come to me when church was over.”
I met the procession. What the dirty object might be in Tod’s arms was quite a mystery at first. Tod’s eyes were dropping tears upon it, and his breath seemed laboured. Luke brought up the rear a few yards behind, looking as if he’d never find his senses again.
“Oh, Tod! will he get over it?”