And so the kindly old lady, peering closely with her dim, short-sighted eyes, and the burly, red-gilled curate undressed Wat Gordon gently, and laid him in the bed on which his mother had died—the flanking pillars of which were hacked with the swords of the troopers from Carsphairn who had come to seek him after the sentence of outlawry.
"Peety me!" said Jean Gordon, "what will we do wi' the puir laddie? I'll get him some broth gin he can tak' them."
So, in a trice, Wat, having come a little to himself, was sitting up and taking "guid broth o' the very best, wi' a beef-bane boiled to ribbons intil't," as Jean Gordon nominated the savory stew, while she sat on the bed and fed him in mouthfuls with the only silver spoon Grier of Lag had left in the once well-plenished house of Lochinvar.
Wat sat fingering his gold heart and looking about him. He seemed like a man who has risen to the surface and finds himself unexpectedly in a boat after a nightmare experience of death in perilous deeps of the sea.
"Is there a horse about the house?" queried Wat, presently, looking at Jean Gordon out of his hollow, purple-rimmed eyes.
She thought that he still dreamed or doted.
"A horse, my laddie!" she cried. "How should there be a horse aboot the house of Lochinvar? The stables were never so extensive that I heard o'; and, troth, Rob Grier o' Lag, deil's lick-pot that he is, has no' left mony aboot the estates. There's a plough-horse ower by Gordiestoun, if that's what ye want."
And in her heart she said, "It's a lee, Guid forgie me. But onything to pacify the lad and get him asleep."
"I ken the best horse in a' this country-side," said the curate, going back to his ale as if nothing had happened, "and that's muckle Sandy Gordon's chairger ower at the Earlstoun. He's roarin' at the Convention in Edinburgh, I'se warrant, and he'll no' need 'Drumclog.' Gin ye hae a notion of the beast, I can borrow him for ye."
Wat started up with eager eyes.