This was so very unusual a request that Elspie was somewhat alarmed by it, as well as surprised—all the more so that the old man left the room without finishing either his pipe or glass. Still, she did not suppose that anything serious would come of it. A night’s rest, she thought, would do away with the evils of the shock.
“Dear father,” she said, as she kissed him at parting, “do believe that God is waiting to be gracious: that He really means it when He says, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ And, consider—we have no reason to suppose that dear Duncan’s wound is very dangerous.”
“Goot-night, Elspie,” was all the reply.
Next morning McKay did not make his appearance at the usual breakfast-hour, and, on going to his room, they found him lying speechless in his bed, suffering under a stroke of paralysis.
He soon recovered the power of speech, but not the use of his limbs, and it became evident ere long that the poor man had received a shock which would probably cripple him for life. Whatever may have been his secret thoughts, however, he carefully concealed them from every one, and always referred to his complaint as, “this nasty stiff feeling about the legs which iss a long time of goin’ away—whatever.”
In a few days, Fergus returned from the plains, bringing his brother in a cart, which had been made tolerably easy by means of a springy couch of pine-branches. They did not tell him at first of his father’s illness, lest it should interfere with his own recovery from the very critical condition in which he lay. At first he took no notice of his father’s non-appearance, attributing it to indifference; but when he began slowly to mend, he expressed some surprise. Then they told him.
Whatever may have been his thoughts on the subject, he gave no sign, but received the information—as, indeed, he received nearly all information at that time—in absolute silence.
Fortunately, the bullet which struck him had passed right through his side, so that he was spared the pain, as well as the danger, of its extraction. But, from his total loss of appetite and continued weakness, it was evident that he had received some very severe, if not fatal, internal injury. At last, very slowly, he began to grow a little stronger, but he was a very shadow or wreck of his former self. Nevertheless, the more sanguine members of the family began to entertain some faint hope of his recovery.
Of course, during these first days of his weakness his sister Elspie nursed him. She would, if permitted, have done so night and day, but in this matter she had to contend with one who was more than a match for her. This was Old Peg, the faithful domestic.
“No, no, dearie,” said that resolute old woman, when Elspie first promulgated to her the idea of sitting up all night with Duncan, “you will do nothin’ of the sort. Your sainted mother left your father an’ Fergus an’ yourself to my care, an’ I said I would never fail you, so I can’t break my promise by letting you break your health. I will sit up wi’ him, as I’ve done many a time when he was a bairn.”