And, rushing into the empty waiting-room, he laid hold of a newly-erected partition which had recently been set up to keep the draughts from the passengers.
It resisted his strength, but with the station master to help him, and a "One, Two, Three," it yielded, and the men tore down the platform with it.
With the help of poor, dazed James Cannon and another, they laid the giant tenderly upon it. But they had to wait for other two, hastily summoned from the nearest railway houses, before they dared try to lift Muckle Alick.
"Does it hurt, Alick?" asked Duncan of Inverness, gently, like a Highland man.
"It's no that sair," said Alick, as quietly, "but juist try no to be ower lang wi' me!"
They carried him to the left-luggage office, into which, a few weeks before, he had taken the children whom, at the peril of his life, he had saved from death. They were going to lay down the partition with its load upon the table on which he had been arranging the parcels half an hour before.
"Pit me on the bench," said Alick, calmly, "dinna meddle the parcels. They are a' ready to gang oot wi' the first delivery the morn."
So, even as he bade them, on the bench they laid Alick down. What like he was I know, but I am not going to tell. His wife, Mirren, might chance to read it.
There were tears running down Duncan Urquhart's face. The station master had already run for a doctor.