“Bring the lad here, to the Tower: come back to me yourself. Bring the aged and feeble with you, as many as can come. Mind that you return to me your own self. And now, sir, away!”
The carriage dashed out of the court, and at a pace to which Mrs. Catherine’s horses were not accustomed, took the way to Oranmore.
Fitzherbert and Whittret had left the glen, with their band of attendants. The Macalpines were alone; the shadows of the March evening began to gather darkly upon the hills. In Big Duncan’s roofless cottage, on a bed, hastily constructed before the fire, and shielded with a rude canopy of plaids, lay the sick lad, shivering and moaning, as the gust of wind which swept through the vacant window-frame, and burst in wild freedom overhead, shook the frail shelter over him, and tossed the coverings off his emaciated limbs. Mr. Lumsden stood beside him. In the first shock of that great misfortune, the minister endeavored to speak hopeful, cheering words—of earthly comfort yet to come—of heavenly strength and consolation, which no oppressing hand could bereave them of.—Homeless and destitute, in the stern silence of their restrained emotions, the Macalpines heard him; some vainly, the burning sense of personal wrong momentarily eclipsing even their religion; some with a noble patience which, had they been Romans of an older day, would have gained them the applauses of a world. These brief and lofty words of his were concluded with a prayer. The March evening was darkening, the wind sweeping chill and fierce above them. The tremulous old man leaned on the sick lad’s bed; the grandmother crouched by the fire upon her grandchild’s stool. Big Duncan Macalpine stood on his own threshold; without, close to the vacant window, stood the neighbors who could not find admission into the interior, and from the midst of them the voice of supplication ascended up to heaven, “For strength, for patience, for forgiveness to their enemy.”
A consultation followed. Mr. Lumsden was looking out eagerly for the chaise from Portoran. It could not arrive in less than an hour, Big Duncan said; and the minister with his own hands, endeavored to fix up more securely a shelter for the suffering lad.
“What are we to do?” exclaimed one of the Macalpines.—”Neighbors, what is to become of us?—where are we to gang?”
A loud scream from a young mother interrupted him; her infant was seized with the fearful cough and convulsive strugglings of croup. The poor young woman pressed it to her breast, and rushed to her own desolate cottage. Alas! what shelter was there? The roof lay in broken pieces on the ground; window and door were carried away; the fire had sunk into embers. She threw herself down before it, and tried to chafe the little limbs into warmth. Other mothers followed her. All the means known to their experience were adopted in vain. The terrible hoarse cough continued—the infant’s face was already black.
“What are we to do?” exclaimed the same voice again. “Are we to see our bairns die before our eyes? Duncan, we let them destroy our houses at your word! What are we to do?”
“If ye had dune onything else,” said Big Duncan Macalpine, “we would have had the roof of a jail ower our heads before this time—and it’s my hope there is nae faint heart among us, that would have left the wives and the bairns to fend for themsels.—Neighbors, I know not what to do; if we could but get ower this night, some better hope might turn up for us.”
His sister brushed past them as he spoke, carrying hot water to bathe the suffering infant—not hot enough, alas! to do it any good. The other women were heaping peats upon a fire, to make ready more; the old people within Duncan’s house crouched and shivered by the narrow hearth; the little children clinging to the skirts of their parents, were sobbing with the cold.
“Get ower the night?” said Roderick Macalpine, “we might get along oursels on the hillside; but what’s to come of them?” and he waved his hand towards the helpless circle by the fire—the aged, the dying, the children.