“There is some mistake,” said Jeanie, confounded at finding herself in the apartment of an invalid; “the servant told me that the minister”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” said the invalid, “there is no mistake. I know more of your affairs than my father, and I can manage them better.—Leave the room, Tom.” The servant obeyed.—“We must not,” said the invalid, “lose time, when we have little to lose. Open the shutters of that window.”
She did so, and as he drew aside the curtain of his bed, the light fell on his pale countenance, as, turban’d with bandages, and dressed in a night-gown, he lay, seemingly exhausted, upon the bed.
“Look at me,” he said, “Jeanie Deans; can you not recollect me?”
“No, sir,” said she, full of surprise. “I was never in this country before.”
“But I may have been in yours. Think—recollect. I should faint did I name the name you are most dearly bound to loathe and to detest. Think—remember!”
A terrible recollection flashed on Jeanie, which every tone of the speaker confirmed, and which his next words rendered certainty.
“Be composed—remember Muschat’s Cairn, and the moonlight night!”
Jeanie sunk down on a chair with clasped hands, and gasped in agony.
“Yes, here I lie,” he said, “like a crushed snake, writhing with impatience at my incapacity of motion—here I lie, when I ought to have been in Edinburgh, trying every means to save a life that is dearer to me than my own.—How is your sister?—how fares it with her?—condemned to death, I know it, by this time! O, the horse that carried me safely on a thousand errands of folly and wickedness, that he should have broke down with me on the only good mission I have undertaken for years! But I must rein in my passion—my frame cannot endure it, and I have much to say. Give me some of the cordial which stands on that table.—Why do you tremble? But you have too good cause.—Let it stand—I need it not.”