CHAPTER XXXI.
In the spring, a little before the fall of Boston, Doctor John came home. Second Westings learned then for the first time what he had so studiously and considerately kept concealed,—the fact that he had been wounded in a skirmish two months before. As soon as he was well enough for the journey, he had been ordered home. He looked gaunt, and walked with some difficulty, but otherwise seemed fairly well; and he made haste to take back his old patients, with many expressions of amazement that they had not died off under Jim Pigeon's treatment.
His coming brought new cheer to Westings House; and to Barbara, reassured by his explicit accounts of her uncle's abounding health, it meant such stimulus and diversion as was to be had of endless, sympathetic talks. The little group of four were as close to one another as of old,—yet with a difference. The love and trust were as of old, but the dividing of hopes and aims threw Barbara more and more with Doctor John, Mistress Mehitable more and more with Doctor Jim. This seemed perfectly natural,—yet it soon began to cause a certain heaviness on Doctor John's part, which made his whimsical sallies grow infrequent. It caused, at the same time, a certain uneasiness on the part of Doctor Jim; and Mistress Mehitable was seen more than once with tears in her eyes, when, as it seemed to Barbara, there was no very definite reason for the phenomenon. And all these symptoms troubled Barbara. She grew more than commonly tender of Doctor John.
One day when she and Doctor John and Doctor Jim had strolled down to the tavern to see the Hartford coach come in, they found a knot of eager listeners gathered about two horsemen who were drinking a pot of ale. As the little party approached, its members were pointed out, and the horsemen turned to look at them with sharp interest. The two came from up the river, in the next county, and were on their way to join the Connecticut battalions under Putnam. They were bitter partisans, and one of them had lost a brother in the fighting at Quebec. To them it was of little account that Doctor John was a good rebel,—such, in their eyes, all good men were bound to be. And they did not appreciate the fact that he was an officer in the army they were about to join. What they saw was simply Doctor Jim, the declared Tory, shameless and unafraid. They eyed him with growing menace, uncertain, by reason of the fact that he was walking between Barbara and Doctor John, just what they wanted to do.
Presently Doctor Jim swung away by himself to speak to a lad whose mother he was treating. He was giving some little order, when the two horsemen, riding up to him, thrust him against the icy watering-trough so unexpectedly that he fell over it. Bewildered, and not understanding that he had been deliberately attacked, he was picking himself up in a sputter of vexation, when one of the riders, a fierce-eyed, burly fanatic, reached over the trough and cut at him viciously with his riding-whip, exclaiming, "Take that, you damned Tory dog!"
The blow missed Doctor Jim's head, but fell smartly across his shoulders. The next moment a great hand seized the rider, tore him from his seat, jammed him furiously against his horse's rump, and dashed him down upon the dirty snow. Then Doctor John turned to deal likewise with the second culprit. But he had forgotten his wound. He grew white, reeled, and would have fallen, but that two of the Second Westings men sprang to his aid and held him up.
When the stroke of the whip fell on his shoulders, Doctor Jim had understood. With one of his wordless explosive roars he had sprung right over the trough to take Homeric vengeance. But when he saw Doctor John he forgot all about vengeance, he forgot all about the attack.
"What is it, John?" he cried, picking him up as if the huge frame were a feather, and carrying him to the settee outside the inn door.
"Nothing, Jim, nothing! The old wound, you know, and the heart not yet just right," muttered Doctor John, recovering quickly, but leaning on his brother's shoulder. Barbara, meanwhile, had run to fetch brandy, which she now brought, along with the landlord.