And with that every remaining student lad ran his best in the direction of his own lodging.
“Well, sir, have ye killed the Speyside Hielandman?” said the Doctor from his window, when I remained alone by the fallen chieftain. The Regent came from the West himself, and, they say, bore the Grants no love, for all that he was so holy a man.
“I think not,” I answered doubtfully, “but I’ll take him round to the infirmary and see!”
And with that I hoisted up the Red Grant on my shoulders, carried him down the Infirmary Close, and hammered on the door till the young chirurgeon who kept the place, thinking me to be drunk, came to threaten me with the watch.
Then, the bolts being drawn, I backed the Highlandman into the crack of the door and discharged him upon the floor.
“There’s a heap of good college divinity,” I said. “The Regent sent me to bid ye find out if he be dead or alive.”
So with no more said we got him on a board, and at the first jag of the lancet my Grant lad sat him up on end with a loup like a Jack-in-the-box. But when he saw where he was, and the poor bits of dead folk that the surgeon laddies had been learning on that day, he fetched a yell up from the soles of his Highland shoon, and bounced off the board, crying, “Ye’ll no cut me up as lang as Donald Grant’s a leeving man, whatever ye may do when he’s dead!”
And so he took through the door as if the dogs had been after him.
Then the blood-letting man was for charging me with the cost of his time, but I bade him apply to Regent Campbell over at the college, telling him that it was he who had sent me. But whether ever he did so or not I never heard.
Now the rarest jest of the whole matter was on the morrow, when Quintin went to attend his prelection in Hall. The lesson, so he told me, was in the Latin of Essenius, his Compend, and Quintin was called up. After he had answered upon his portion, and well, as I presume, for Quintin was no dullard at his books, Dr. Campbell looked down a little queerly at him.