John and Lucy Murdoch were sentenced to be imprisoned for a great many years. The man Andrew was also severely punished.
What they intended, to do with Elsie was not clear. Duncan they had left dangerously ill, without nursing or medical advice. The magistrate pointed out to him that they ought to be grateful to Meg, for if the child had died they would certainly have been charged with causing his death.
Probably they would have left Elsie to a similar fate: unless, indeed, they had succeeded in making her one of themselves, in which case she would, perhaps, have been tempted to join them in some hideous crime, and have ended her days in a prison.
CHAPTER XXIII.—BACK HOME AGAIN.
E
lsie and her mother travelled all night, and reached Edinburgh early the next morning. This time it was only a third-class carriage, crowded by very ordinary-looking men and women—a very different journey from the one with the wicked "fairy mother;" but the unhappy child, tired out with all she had gone through, leant her head against her mother's shoulder, and slept through the night with a sweet sense of safety and protection to which she had long been a stranger.
They found Duncan still slowly mending, but looking a mere shadow of his former bonnie self. Elsie was so overwhelmed at the sight of his poor little wasted figure, and cried so bitterly, that the nurse promptly ordered her out of the ward.
"Tell Elsie I'm quite well now," he said anxiously to Mrs. MacDougall. "She needn't cry, because we are going home; aren't we, mother? You did say we might."
"Yes, well all be happy again together soon, little lad," Mrs. MacDougall replied.
"Perhaps they hurt Elsie," Duncan continued, still anxious for Elsie. "They were bad people, mother;" and the little fellow shuddered.
They were obliged to calm him and turn his thoughts away. One of the worst points of his illness had been the fits of terror that came over him when a recollection of the Fergusons or the Murdochs passed through his brain. It had been feared that his mind was seriously affected by the fright he had undergone.