‘I will go,’ said Isabel, struggling with her. ‘I will see what is wrong. If he has hurt himself, he wants me all the more.’
‘He’s feeling nae hurt,’ cried Jean, holding her stepdaughter fast; her pale face working and her eyes straining. ‘He’s in nae pain—O my bonnie Isabel!’
‘What do you mean?’ said Isabel, with inward horror, under her breath.
‘O my lamb!’ Jean answered, clasping her in her arms. The young wife broke out of the embrace with her old petulant impatience. She threw the door wide open, rushing upon the knowledge of her fate. At the very moment when she did so, the men had entered the hall moving slowly with their burden. She stood uttering not a word, like a creature made out of stone. It was not that she was stupified. She recognised the men individually one by one, and through her mind there passed the curious speculation how they could all have been found together at such a time. And they carried—what? Something all covered over with a great grey plaid, stretched out upon a broad plank of the wood which had been lying by the roadside fresh from the sawmill—something which neither moved, nor groaned, nor betrayed the least uneasiness at the unsteady progress of its bearers. She gave a cry, as much of wonder as of misery. What was it? And then Mr. Galbraith tottered to her, staggering like a drunken man, with tears rolling down his grey ashy cheeks. ‘O my child!’ cried the old man, taking her into his arms. She looked him piteously in the face; she could not understand his tears, strange though the sight of them was. She would believe nothing but words. ‘What is it?’ she cried, ‘what does it mean?’
By degrees it was got into her mind—she never knew how; they did not tell her he was dead, though they believed so: but that the doctor had been sent for, and would tell what was to be done. Isabel did not faint—such an escape from the consciousness of evil was not possible to her. She retained all her faculties in an acuteness beyond all previous knowledge.
‘I should be there,’ she said, struggling with them, ‘to do what is wanted. Let me go—nobody shall nurse him but me.’ But she was stopped again by the doctor, who had arrived at once, and who put her back, exchanging a look of pity with the Dominie.
‘You must stay here, Mrs. Lothian,’ he said; ‘I must see him alone, and I’ll come and tell you.’ When he was gone, Isabel walked about the room with the fierce impatience of suspense. ‘You’ll no tell what it is,’ she said, wringing her hands. ‘Oh, tell me what it is. Is it his head or a leg broken, or what is it? Is it only me that must not know?’
And then Jean came to her and took her in her arms; but all that she said was, ‘My bonnie woman! my bonnie lamb!’ words that meant nothing. They waited, it seemed for an hour or more, and then a man’s steps sounded slowly and solemnly on the stair, and the doctor with a troubled face looked in. He did not look at Isabel, eagerly as she was confronting him; but cast an appealing glance over her head at Jean Campbell. ‘Tell her!’ he said, with agitation in his voice. And then the young widow knew.
‘God preserve us!’ the men were saying in the passage, ‘two hours ago he passed, as fine a man as ye could see—and now he’s a heap o’ motionless clay.’
‘There’s been foul play,’ said John Macwhirter. ‘Ye’ll never tell me but there’s been foul play.’