* * * * *Nevertheless, the agitation for a change of ministry continued to increase rather than to diminish. It took the form of a petition to the Rev. Hugh Peebles to consider the spiritual needs of the congregation and forthwith to remove himself to another sphere of labour.Now, John McWhan's Zion was not one of the greater and richer denominations into which Presbytery in Scotland is unhappily divided. It was but a small and poor "body" of the faithful, and such changes of ministry as that proposed were frequent enough. The operative cause might be inability to pay the minister's "steepend" if it happened to be a bad year. Or, otherwise, and more frequently, a "split"—a psalm tune misplaced, an overplus of fervour in prayer for the Royal Family (a very deadly sin), or a laxity in dealing with a case of discipline—and, lo! the minister trudged down the glen with his goods before him in a red cart, to fight his battle over again in another glen, and among a people every whit as difficult and touchy. But one day there was an intimation read out in the Machermore Kirk of the Marrow to the following effect: "The Annual Sermon of the Stewartry Branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society will be preached in the Townhill Kirk at Cairn Edward, on Sabbath next, at 6 p.m., by the Rev. Hugh Peebles of the Marrow Kirk, Machermore."Mr. Peebles read this through falteringly, as if it concerned some one else, and then added a doubtful conclusion: "In consequence of this honour which has been done me, I know not why, there will be no service here on the evening of next Lord's Day!"It was observed by the acute that Mrs. Peebles put her face into her hands very quickly as her husband finished reading the intimations."Praying for him, was she?" said the Marrow folk, grimly, as they went homeward; "aye, an' she had muckle need!"To say that the congregation of Machermore was dumfounded is wholly to underestimate the state of their feelings. They were aghast. For the occasion was a most notable one.All the wale of the half-dozen central Galloway parishes, which were canvassed as one district by the agents of the Bible Society, would be there—the professional sermon-tasters of twenty congregations. At least a dozen ministers of all denominations (except the Episcopalian) would be seated in an awe-inspiring quadrilateral about the square elders' pew. The Townhill Kirk, the largest in Galloway, would be packed from floor to ceiling, and the sermon, published at length in the local paper, would be discussed in all its bearings at kirk-door and market-ring for at least a month to come.And all these things must be faced by their "reed shaken with the wind," their feckless shadow of a minister, weak in doctrine, ineffective in application, utterly futile in reproof. Hughie Peebles, and he alone, must represent the high ancient liberties of the Marrow Kirk before Free Kirk Pharisee and Erastian Sadducee.Considering these things, Machermore hung its head, and the wailing of its eldership was heard afar. Only John McWhan, as he had promised, kept his counsel, and went about with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. He continued to bring in the soup at Barlochan—indeed, he now waited all through dinner, and, though there was nothing said that he could definitely take hold upon, John had a shrewd suspicion that it was not for nothing that the young minister had been closeted with his master for two or three hours, six days a week, for the last month. But though it went sorely to his heart that he could not even bid Machermore and the folk thereof—"Wait till next Sabbath at six o'clock, an' ye'll maybes hear something!" he loyally refrained himself.* * * * *At last the hour came and the man. Mr. Erskine, having ordered a carriage from the town, drove the minister and his wife down to Cairn Edward in style. John McWhan held the reins, the urban "coachman" sitting, a silent and indignant hireling, on the lower place by his side.On the front seat within sat Mr. Peebles, very pale, and with his hands gripping each other nervously. But when he looked across at the calm face of Mr. Erskine, a sigh of relief broke from him. The Townhill Kirk was densely crowded. There was that kind of breathing hush over all, which one only hears in a country kirk on a very solemn occasion. Places had been kept for young Mrs. Peebles and Mr. Erskine in the pew of honour near the elders' seat, but the ex-minister of State, after accompanying Mrs. Peebles to her destination, went and sat immediately in front of the pulpit."Wondrous weel the laddie looks," said one of the judges as Hugh Peebles came in, boyish in his plain black coat, "though they say he is but a puir craitur for a' that!""Appearances are deceitful—beauty is vain!" agreed her neighbour, in the same unimpassioned whisper.There was nothing remarkable about the "preliminaries," as the service of praise and prayer was somewhat slightingly denominated by these impatient sermon-lovers."Sap, but nae fushion!" summed up Mistress Elspeth Milligan, the chief of these, after the first prayer.The preliminaries being out of the way, the great congregation luxuriously settled itself down to listen to the sermon. Machermore, which had hidden itself bodily in a remote corner of one of the galleries, began to perspire with sheer fright."They'll throw the psalm-buiks at him, I wadna wunner—siccan grand preachers as they hae doon here in Cairn Edward!" whispered the ruling elder to a friend. He had sneaked in after all the others, and was now sitting on one of the steps of the laft. It was John McWhan who occupied the corner seat beside him."Maybe aye, an' maybe no!" returned John, drily, keeping his eye on the pulpit. The hush deepened as Hugh Peebles gave out his text."And he built Tadmor in the Wilderness."Whereupon ensued a mighty rustling of turned leaves, as the folk in the "airy" and the three "galleries" pursued the strange text to its lair in the second book of Chronicles. It sounded like the blowing of a sudden gust of wind through the entire kirk.Then came the final stir of settling to attention point, and the first words of Hugh Peebles' sermon. Machermore, elder and kirk-member, adherent and communicant, young and old, bond and free, crouched deeper in their recesses. Some of the more bashful pulled up the collars of their coats and searched their Bibles as if they had not yet found the text. The seniors put on their glasses and stared hard at the minister as if they had never seen him before. They did not wish it to appear that he belonged to them.But when the first notes of the preacher's voice fell on their astonished ears, it is recorded that some of the more impulsive stood up on their feet.That was never their despised minister, Hughie Peebles. The strong yet restrained diction, the firmness of speech, the resonance of voice in the deeper notes—all were strange, yet somehow curiously familiar. They had heard them all before, but never without that terrible alloy of weakness, and the addition of a falsetto something that made the preacher's words empty and valueless.And the sermon—well, there never had been anything like it heard in the Ten Parishes before. There was, first of all, that great passage where the preacher pictured the Wise King sending out his builders and carpenters, his architects and cunning workmen—those very men who had caused the Temple to rise on Moriah and set up the mysterious twin pillars thereof—to build in that great and terrible wilderness a city like to none the world had ever seen. There was his gradual opening up of the text, and applying it to the sending of the Word of God to the heathen who dwelt afar off—without God and without hope in the world.Then came the searching personal appeal, which showed to each clearly that in his own heart there were wilderness tracts—as barren, as deadly, as apparently hopeless as the ground whereon Solomon set up his wonder-city—Tadmor, Palmyra, the city of temples and palaces and palm-trees.And above all, the preacher's application was long remembered, his gradual uprising from the picture of the earthly king, "golden-robed in that abyss of blue," to the Great King of all the worlds—"He who can make the wilderness, whether that of the heathen in distant lands and far isles of the sea, or that other more difficult, the wilderness in our own breasts, to blossom as the rose!" These things will never be forgotten by any in that congregation.Once only Hugh Peebles faltered. It was but for a moment. He gasped and glanced down to the first seat in the front of the church. Then in another moment he had gripped himself and resumed his argument. Some there were who said that he did this for effect, to show emotion, but there were two men in that congregation who knew better—the preacher and Mr. Erskine.All Machermore went home treading on the viewless air. They hardly talked to each other for sheer joy and astonishment. "Dinna look as if we were surprised, lads! Let on that we get the like o' that every day in oor kirk!"That was John McWhan's word, which passed from lip to lip. And Machermore and the Marrow Kirk thereof became almost insufferably puffed up."I'll no say a word mair," said the ruling elder, "gin he never preaches anither decent word till the day o' his death."This was, indeed, the general sense of the congregation. But Hugh Peebles, though perhaps he never reached the same pinnacle of fame, certainly preached much better than of old. With his wonderful success, too, he had gained a certain confidence in himself; added to which he was almost as often at Barlochan as before the missionary sermon.His wife came with him sometimes in the evenings to dinner, and then Mr. Erskine's eyes would dwell on her with a kind of gladness. For now she had a colour in her cheek and a proud look on her face, which had not been there on the day when he had first heard her pray: "O God, help my Hughie!" in the square manse pew.God had indeed helped Hughie—as He mostly does, through human agency. And Mr. Erskine was happier too. He had found an object in life, and, on the whole, his pupil did him great credit.He also inserted a clause in his will, which ensures that Hugh and his wife shall not be dependent in their old age upon the goodwill of a faithful but scanty flock.And as for Hugh Peebles, probable plagiarist, he writes his own sermons now, though he always submits them before preaching to his wise friend up at Barlochan. But it is for his first success that he is always asked when he goes from home. There is a never-failing postscript to any invitation from a clerical brother upon a sacramental occasion: "The congregation will be dreadfully disappointed if you do not give us 'Tadmor in the Wilderness.'"And Hugh Peebles never disappoints them.PETERSON'S PATIENTWhen I go out on the round of a morning I generally take John with me. John is my "man," and of course it is etiquette that he should drive me to my patients' houses. But sometimes I tell him to put in old Black Bess for a long round-about journey, and then, in that case, I can drive myself.For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post—that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. I honestly believe Bess is more than half a cow, and chews the cud on the sly. So whenever I feel a trifle lazy, I take the outer round and Black Bess, leaving the town and what the ambitious might call its "suburbs" to Dr. Peterson, my assistant. Not that this helps me much in the long run, because I have to keep track of what is going on in Peterson's head and revise his treatment. For, though his zeal and knowledge are always to be counted on, Peterson is apt to be lacking in a certain tact which the young practitioner only acquires by experience.For instance, to take the important matter of diagnosis, Peterson used to think nothing of standing silent five or ten minutes making up his mind what was the matter with a patient. I once told him about this."Why," he replied, with, I must say, some slight disrespect for his senior, "you often do that yourself. You said this very morning that it took you twenty minutes to make up your mind whether to treat Job Sampson's wife for scarlet fever or for diphtheria!""Yes," I retorted, "I told you so, but I didn't stand agape all the time I was thinking it out. I took the temperature of the woman's armpits, and the back of her neck, and between her toes. I asked her about her breakfast, and her dinner, and her supper of the day before. Then I took a turn at her sleeping powers, and whether she had been eating too many vegetables lately. I inquired if she had had the measles, and the whooping-cough, and how often she had been vaccinated. I was just going to begin on her father, mother, and collateral relatives in order to trace hereditary tendencies, when I made up my mind that it would be safest to treat the woman for scarlet fever.""Yes," said Peterson, drily, "Job was praising you up to the skies this very day. 'There never was sic a careful doctor,' he swears; 'there wasna a blessed thing that he didna speer into, even unto the third and fourth generation.'""There, you hear, Peterson," I said, with sober triumph, "that is the first step in your profession. You must create confidence. Never let them think for a moment you don't know everything. Why, old Ned Harper sent for me to-day—said you didn't understand the case, because you declined to prescribe.""He is malingering," cried Peterson, hotly; "he only wants to draw full pay out of his two benefit societies. The man is a fraud, open and patent. I wouldn't have anything to do with him.""Now, Peterson," I said, very seriously, "once for all, this is my practice, 'not yours. You are my salaried assistant. That is what you have to attend to. You are not revising auditor of the local benefit societies. If you do as you did with old Harper a time or two, you will lose me my appointment as Society's doctor, and not that one appointment alone. They all follow each other like a flock of sheep jumping through a slap in a dyke. Besides, the Benefit Society officials don't thank you, not a bit! They expect Harper to do as much for them the next time they feel like taking a holiday between the sheets!""What would you do then?" cried this furious young apostle of righteousness. "You surely would not have me become art and part in a swindle."I patted him on the shoulder."Temper your zeal with discretion, my friend," I said. "I have found a rising blister between the shoulder-blades very efficacious in such cases."Yet my immaculate assistant, had he only known it, was to go further and fare worse.* * * * *Meanwhile to pass the time I told him the story of old Maxwell Bone. Peterson was clearly getting restive, and it is not good for young men of the medical profession to think that they know everything at five-and-twenty. Maxwell was an aged hedger-and-ditcher, who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the upper end of Whinnyliggate. Of that parish I was (and still am) parish doctor, and Maxwell being in receipt of half-a-crown a week as parochial supplement to his scanty earnings, I was,ipso facto, responsible for Maxwell's state of health, and compelled in terms of my contract to obey any reasonable summons I might receive from him.Upon several occasions I had prescribed for the old ruffian, chiefly for rheumatism and the various internal pains and weaknesses affected by ancient paupers. When I was going away on one occasion Maxwell asked me for an order on the Inspector of Poor for a bottle of brandy "for outward application only." I refused him promptly, telling him with truth that he was far better without it."Weel, doctor," he said, shaking his head, "dootless ye ken best. But there's nocht like brandy when thae stammack pains come on me. It micht save ye a lang journey some cauld snawy nicht. The guard o' the late train will tak' doon ony message frae the junction, and if I dinna get the brandy to hae at hand to rub my legs wi' ye micht hae a lang road to travel! But gin ye let me hae it, doctor, it micht save ye a heap o' trouble——""The old wretch!" cried Peterson. "Of course you did not let him have it?""Peterson," I replied, sententiously, "I decline to answer you. Wait till you have been a winter here and know what a thirty-mile drive in a raging snowstorm to the head-end of the parish of Whinnyliggate means. Then you will not have much doubt whether Maxwell got his brandy or not."Now Peterson was really a very excellent fellow, and when he had run his head against the requisite number of stone walls, and learned to bite hard on his tongue when tempted to over-hasty speech, he made a capital assistant. I shall be sorry to lose him when the time comes.For one thing Nance is fond of him, especially since he fell in love, and that goes for a great deal in our house. Peterson performed the latter feat quite suddenly and unexpectedly, as he did everything. It happened thuswise.I had had a hard winter, and Nance was needing a change, so, about Easter, I took her south, for a few weeks in the mild and recuperative air of the Regent Street bonnet shops. I have noted more than once that in Nance's case the jewellers' windows along Bond Street possess tonic qualities, quite unconnected with going inside to buy anything, as also the dark windows of certain merchant tailors in which the patient can see her new dress and hat reflected as in a mirror. As for me, I enjoyed the British Medical Club and the Scientific Museums—which, of course, was what I came for.But when we went back home we found that Peterson's daily report of cases had not conveyed all the truth. Peterson himself was changed. So far as I could gather, he seemed to have done his work very well and to have given complete satisfaction. He had even added the names of several new patients to my list. One of these was that of a somewhat large proprietor in a neighbouring parish, who was said to be exceedingly eccentric, but of whom I knew nothing save by the vaguest report."How did you get hold of old Bliss Bulliston?" I asked my assistant, as I glanced over the list he handed me. We were sitting smoking in the study while Nance was unpacking upstairs and spreading her new things on the bed, amid the rapturous sighs and devotionally clasped hands of Betty Sim, our housemaid.Peterson turned away towards the mantelpiece for another spill. He appeared to have a difficulty with his pipe."Well, I don't exactly know," he said at last, when the problem was solved; "it just came about somehow. You know how these things happen.""They generally happen in our profession by the patient sending for the physician," I remarked, drily. "I hope you have not been poaching on anyone else's preserves, Peterson. Did Bulliston send for you?"Peterson stooped for a coal to light his pipe. It had gone out again. Perhaps it was the exertion that reddened his handsome face."No," he said, slowly, "he did not send for me. I went of my own accord."I started from my seat."Why, man," I cried, "you'll get me struck off the register, not to speak of yourself. You don't mean to say that you went to the house touting for custom?""Now don't get excited," he said, smoking calmly, "and I'll tell you all about it."I became at once violently calm. Nevertheless, in spite of this, it took some time to get him under way."Well," he said at last, "Bulliston has got a daughter.""Oh," said I, "so you were called in to attend on Mrs. Bulliston.""When I say he has a daughter, I mean a grown-up daughter, not an infant!"Peterson seemed quite unaccountably ruffled by my innocent remark. I thought of pointing out to him the advantages of habitual clearness of speech, but, on the whole, decided to let him tell his story, for I was really very anxious about Bulliston."Well," I said soothingly, "did Miss Bulliston call you in?""It might be looked at that way," he said."What was the case?""A nest of peregrine's eggs near the top of Carslaw Craig.""Peterson!" I exclaimed, somewhat sternly, "don't forget that I am talking to you seriously!"But he continued smoking."I am perfectly serious," he said, and stopped. After he had thought a while he continued: "It happened at the end of the first week you were away. I had left John at home. I had old Black Bess with me—you know she will stand anywhere. I took the long round, and was coming home a little tired. As I drove past the end of Carslaw Hill, happening to look up I saw something sticking to the sheer face of the cliff like a fly on a wall. At first I could not believe my eyes, for when I came nearer I saw it was a girl. She seemed to be calling for help. So of course I jumped down and tied old Bess to a post by the roadside. Then I began to climb up towards her, but I soon saw that I could not help the girl that way—to do her any good, that is. So I shouted to her to hold on and I would get at her over the top."I ran up an easier place, where the hill slopes away to the left, and came down opposite where the girl was. She had got to within ten feet of the top, but could not get a bit higher to save her life. It looked almost impossible, but luckily, right on top there was a hazel-bush, and I caught hold of the lower boughs—three or four of them—and lowered my legs down over the edge."'Catch hold of my ankles,' I shouted, 'and I'll pull you up.'"'Can't; they're too thick!' the girl cried; and from that I judged she must be a pretty cool one."'Then catch hold of one of them in both hands!' I shouted."'Right!' she said, and gripped."And it was as well that she did not take my first offer, for, as it turned out, I had all I could do to get her up, jamming the toe of my other boot in the crevices and barking my knee against the hazel roots. Still, I managed it finally.""Whereupon she promptly fainted away in your arms," I interjected, "and you recovered her with some smelling-salts and sal volatile you happened to have brought in your tail-coat pockets in view of such emergencies.""Not at all," said Peterson, quite unabashed; "she didn't faint—never thought of such a thing. Instead, she got behind the hazel-bush I had been hanging on to."'Stop where you are a moment,' she spluttered; 'till I get rid of these horrid eggs. Then I'll talk to you.'""Tears of beauty!" I cried; "emotion hidden behind a hazel-bush. 'Alfred, you have saved my life—accept my hand.' That was what she really said to you—you know it was, Peterson.""Not much," said Peterson. "She was back again in a trice, and, if you'll believe me, started in to give it me hot and strong for smashing her blissful birds' eggs."'Here I've been watching this peregrine for weeks, and I'd got two beauties, and just because I got stuck a bit on the cliff you must come along and jolt me so that I have broken both of them—one was in my mouth, and the other I had tied up in a handkerchief."But I told the girl that I knew where I could get her another pair and also a rough-legged buzzard's nest, and that did a lot to comfort her. She was a pretty girl, though I don't believe she had ever given it a thought; and she was dead on to getting enough birds' eggs to beat her brother, who had said that a girl could never get as good a collection as a boy, because of her petticoats!""And where are you going to get those eggs?" I said to Paterson. "If you think that hunting falcons' eggs for roving schoolgirls comes within your duties as my assistant—well, I shall have to explicate your responsibilities to you, that's all, young man!"Peterson laid his finger lightly on his cheek, not far from the bridge of his nose."You know old Davie Slimmon, the keeper up at the lodge? You remember I doctored his foot when he got it bitten with an adder. Well, anyway, he would do anything for me. I've had Davie on the egg-hunt ever since.""And the girl thinks you are getting them all yourself," I said, with some severity. "Peterson, this is both unbecoming and unscientific. More than that, you are a blackguard.""Oh," said Peterson, lightly, "it's all right. I go regularly to see the old boy. He is a patient properly on the books, and when all is over, you can charge him a swingeing fee. Well, to begin at the beginning, each time I saw the girl I took her all the eggs I could pick up in the interval. I got them properly blown and labelled—particulars, habitat, how many in the clutch, whether the nest was oriented due east and west, whether made of sticks or weeds or curl-papers, the size of the shell in fractions of a millimetre——""Peterson," I said, sternly, "I don't believe you have the remotest idea what a millimetre is!""No more I have," answered Peterson, stoutly, not in the least put out; "but then, no more has she. And it looks well—thundering well!" he added, after a ruminant consideration of the visionary labelled egg. "You've no idea what a finish these tickets give to the collection.""So this was Miss Bulliston," I said, to bring him back to the point in which I was most immediately interested. "That's all very well, but what was the matter with old Bliss, her father?"Peterson looked as if he would have winked if he had dared, but the sternness in my eye checked him."Something nervous," he said, gazing at me blankly. "Truda kept stirring him up till the poor old boy nearly fretted himself into a fever, and so had me sent for. Oh, I was properly enough called in. You needn't look like that, McQuhirr. You've no gratitude for my getting you a good paying patient. I tell you the old man was so frightened that Truda——""It had got to 'Truda,' had it?" I interjected, bitterly. But Peterson took no notice, going composedly on with his story."... Truda ran all the way to the lodge gates, where I was waiting with two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier, unblown, but all done up in cotton wool.""What!" I cried, "the birds?""No, the eggs, of course," said Peterson; "and she said: 'What have you got there?' So I told her two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier. Then she said: 'Is that all? I thought you would have got that kite's you promised me by this time. But come along and cure my father of the cholera, and the measles, and the distemper, and the spavin! He's got them all this morning, besides several other things I've forgot the names of. Come quick! Cousin Jem from London is with him. He'll frighten him worse than anybody. I'll take you up through the shrubbery. Give me your hand!'"So she took my hand, and we ran up together to the house.""Peterson," I said, "you and I have a monthly engagement. On this day month I shall have no further occasion for your services. Suppose anyone had seen you! What would they have thought of Dr. McQuhirr's assistant?""I never gave it a thought," he said, waving the interruption away; "and anyway, if all tales are true, you did a good deal of light skirmishing up about Nether Neuk in your own day!"Now this was a most uncalled-for remark, and I answered: "That may be true or not, as the case may be. But, at all events, I was no one'slocum tenensat that time.""Oh," he said, "it's no use making a fuss now, McQuhirr. Nobody saw us, and as soon as we got to the open part near the house, Truda said: 'Now I'm going to get these eggs fixed into their cases. So you trot round and physic up the old man. And mind and ask to see his collection of dog-whips. It is the finest in the world. We all collect something here. Pa is crazy about dog-whips. And if you can't find anything else wrong with him, tell him that his corns want cutting. They always do!'"'But I haven't a knife with me,' I objected."'I'll lend you a ripper.' (Truda had an answer ready every time.) 'I keep it edged like a razor. It is a cobbler's leather knife. It will make the shavings fly off dad's old corns, I tell you!'"'But I never pared a corn in my life,' I said."'Then you've jolly well got to now, my friend,' she said, 'for I've yarned it to him that his life may depend on it, and that only a trained surgeon can operate on his sort. So don't you give me away, or he may let you have the contents of a shot-gun as you go out through the front window. And what will happen to me, I don't know. Now go on!'"And with that she vanished in the direction of the stables.""A most lively young lady!" I cried, with enthusiasm."Um-m," grunted Peterson (I have often had cause to remark Peterson's gruffness). "Lively, you think? Well, she nearly got me into a pretty mess with her liveliness. The butler put me into a waiting-room out of the hall. It was all sparred round with fishing-rods, and had crossed trophies of dog-whips festooned about the walls. I waited here for a quarter of an hour, listening to the rumbling bark of an angry voice in the distance, and wondering what the mischief Truda had let me in for."Presently the girl came round to the open window, and as the sill was a bit high she gave a sort of sidelong jump and sat perched on the ledge outside."'You are a great donkey,' she said, looking in at me; 'both the kestrels' are set as hard as a rock—here, take them!'"And with that she threw the eggs in at me one after another through the open sash of the window. One took me right on the pin of my tie and dripped on to my waistcoat. Smell? Well, rather! Just then the old butler came in, looking like a field-marshal and archbishop rolled in one, and there was I rubbing the abominable yolk from my waistcoat. Truda had dropped off the window-sill like a bird, and the old fellow looked round the room very suspiciously. I think he thought I must have been pocketing the spoons or something."'Mr. Bliss Bulliston waits!' he said, as if he were taking me into the presence-chamber of royalty. And so he was, by George! I was shown into a large library-looking room where two men were sitting. One was a little Skye-terrier of a man, with bristly grey hair that stood out everyway about his head. He was lying in a long chair, half reclining, a rug over his knees though the day was warm. The other man sat apart in the window, a quiet fellow to all appearance, bald-headed, and rather tired-looking."'You are the doctor from Cairn Edward my daughter has been pestering me to see,' snapped the elder man. 'My case is a very difficult and complicated one, and quite beyond the reach of an average local practitioner, but I understand from my daughter that you have very special qualifications.' Whereupon I bowed, and said that I was your assistant.""Good heavens!" I cried. "Peterson, had you no sense? Why on earth did you bring my name into the affair? I shall never get over it!""Oh," he answered, lightly; "wait a bit. I cleared you sufficiently in the end. Just listen."I was in a tight place, you will admit, but I thought it was best to put on my most impressive manner, and after a look or two at the old fellow, I resolved to treat him for nervous exhaustion. It was a dead fluke, but I had been reading Webb-Playfair's article on Neurasthenia just before I went out, and though men don't often have it, I thought it would do as well for old Bulliston as anything else."So I yarned away to him about his condition and symptoms, emaciated physical state, and so forth. Well, when I was getting pretty well warmed up I saw the young man with the hair thin-sown on top rise and go quietly over to another window. I put this down to modesty on his part. He wished to leave me alone with my patient. So I became more and more confidential to old Bulliston."("Peterson," I moaned, "all is over between us from this moment!")"But the old ruffian would not allow Mr. Baldhead to remove himself quietly," said Peterson, continuing his tale calmly."'James,' he cried, sharply, 'stop where you are. All this should be very interesting to you.'"'So it is,' said the young man, smiling in the rummest way, 'very interesting indeed!'"So, somewhat elated, I went on prescribing rest, massage, the double-feeding dodge, and, above all, no intercourse with his own family. When I got through my rigmarole, the old fellow cocked his head to the side like a blessed dicky-bird, and remarked: 'It shows what wonderful similarity there is between the minds of you men of science. Talk of the transference of ideas! Why, that is just what my nephew was saying before you came in—almost in the same words. Let me introduce you to my nephew, Dr. Webb-Playfair, of Harley Street.'"You could have knocked me down with a straw. I could hardly return the fellow's very chilly nod. I heartily confounded that little bird-nesting minx who had got me into such a scrape. But I had an idea."'Perhaps, sir,' I said, 'if you would allow me to consult Dr. Webb-Playfair we might be able to assist one another.'"'Certainly,' cried the little old man, speaking as sharply as a Skye-terrier yelps; 'be off into the library. Jem, you know the way!'"I tell you what, McQuhirr, I did not feel particularly chirpy as I followed that fellow's shiny crown into the next room. He sat down on a table, swinging one leg and looking at me without speaking. For a moment I could not find words to begin, but his eyes were on me with a kind of twinkle in them."'Well?' he said, as if he had a right to demand an explanation. That decided me. I would make a clean breast of it."So I told him the whole story—how I had first met Truda, of our bird-nesting, and how Truda wanted me to be able to come often to the house—because of the eggs."The bald young man began to laugh as I went on with my narrative, though it was no laughing matter to me, I can tell you. And especially when I confessed that I did not think there was anything the matter with his uncle, and that Neurasthenia was the first thing that came into my head, because I had been reading his own article in theLancetbefore I came out. He thought that was the cream of the joke. He was all of a good fellow, and no mistake."'So,' he said, 'to speak plainly, you are in love with my cousin, and you plotted to keep the father in bed in order that you might make love to the daughter! That is the most remarkable recent application of medical science I have heard of!'"'Oh no,' I cried, 'I assure you it was Truda who——!"'Ah,' he said, quietly, 'it was Truda, was it? I can well believe that.'"Then he thought a long while, and at last he said, 'Well, it will do the old man a great deal of good to stay in bed and not worry his own family and the whole neighbourhood with his whimsies. Moreover, milk diet is a very soothing thing. We will let it go at that. You can settle your own affairs with my cousin Gertrude, Dr. Peterson; I have nothing to do with that. Indeed, I would not meddle with that volcanic young person's private concerns for all the wealth of the Indies! Let us go back to my uncle.'"So," concluded Peterson, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the bars of the grate, "the old fellow has been in bed ever since and has drunk his own weight in good cow's milk several times over. He is putting on flesh every day, and his temper is distinctly improving. He can be trusted with a candlestick beside him on the stand now, without the certainty of his throwing it at his nurse.""And Truda?" I suggested, "what did she say?""Well, of course I told her how her cousin had said that I had ordered the father to bed, in order that I might make love to the daughter. She and I were in the waterside glade beyond the pond at the time. You know the place. We were looking for dippers' nests. She stopped and said:"'Jem Playfair said that, did he?'"'Yes, these were his very words,' I said, with a due sense of their heinousness."'He said you sent my father to bed that you might make love to me?'"'Yes.'"She looked all about the glade, and then up at me."'Well, did you?' she said."* * * * *This is Peterson's story exactly as he told it to me on my return. That is some time ago now, but there is little to add. Mr. Bliss Bulliston is now much better both in health and in temper, and there is every reason to believe that I shall lose my assistant some of these days. The young couple are talking of going out to British Columbia. No complete collection of the eggs of that Colony has ever been made, and Peterson says that the climate is so healthy there, that for some years there will be nothing for him to do but to help Truda with her collecting.This is all very well now, in the first months of an engagement, but as a family man myself, I have my doubts as to the permanence of such an arrangement.TWO HUMOURISTSOur gentle humourist is Nathan Monypenny. No man ever heard him laugh aloud, yet as few had ever seen him without a gleam of something akin to kindly humour in his eye. Even now, when the bitterness of life and its ultimate loneliness are upon him, it is a pleasure to be next Nathan, even at a funeral. During that dreadful ten minutes when the black-coated, crinkle-trousered company waits outside for the "service" to be over, his company is universally considered "as good as a penny bap and a warm drink." In former days, within the memory of my father, he had a friend and fellow-humourist in the village, one "Doog" (that is, Douglas) Carnochan.The contrast between the two companions was remarkable. They both lived in the same street of our little country hamlet. Indeed, necessarily so, for Whinnyliggate has but one street, strictly so called. The few cottages along the "Well-road," and the more pretentious cluster of upstarts which keeps the Free Kirk in countenance on the braeface, have never arrogated to themselves the name of a street.So at one end of the Piccadilly-cum-Regent-street of Whinnyliggate—the upper end—lived Nathan Monypenny, and at the other end dwelt his rival, Doog, also, though less worthily, denominated "humourist." They were thus separated by something considerably less than a quarter of a mile of honest unpavemented king's highway. But, though they were personally friends, green oceans and trackless continents lay between their several characters and dispositions.Nathan, at the upper end, was a bachelor, hale, fresh, and hearty as when he had finished his 'prenticeship. Doog at forty possessed several children, all that remained of a poor, over-worked, downtrodden wife, and a countenance so marled and purpled with drink, that he looked an old man before his time. Nathan's shop was his own, and he was understood to have already a "weel-filled stocking-fit up the lum," or, in the modern interpretation, a comfortable balance down at Cairn Edward Bank, and a quiet old age assured to him by a life of industrious self-denial.Doog never had a penny to bless himself with, later in the week than Tuesday; and, indeed, often enough very few to bless his wife withal even on Saturday nights, when, as was his custom, he staggered homewards with the poor remnants of his week's wage in his pocket.Nathan's wit was of the kind which goes best with the sedate tapping of a snuffmull, or the tinkling of brass weights into counter-scales—Doog's rang loudest to the jingling of toddy tumblers. Nathan loved to gossip doucely at the door of even-tide with the other tradesmen of the village, with Bob Carter the joiner, his apron twisted about his scarred hands, with bluff prosperous Joe Mitchell the mason, and with Peter Miles the tailor, as he sat on the low seat outside his door picking the last basting threads out of a new waistcoat.Doog's witticisms, on the other hand, were chiefly launched in the "Golden Lion," amid the uproarious laughter of Jake McMinn, the "cattle dealer frae Stranraer," Leein' Tam, the local horse-doctor (without diploma), and "Chuckie" Orchison, the village ne'er-do-weel and licensed sponger for drinks upon the neighbourhood.Yet there existed a curious and inexplicable liking between the two men. There was never a day that Nathan, the douce and respectable, did not leave his quiet white cottage at the head of the brae, where he dwelt all alone with his groceries, and step sedately down, stopping every twenty yards to gossip, or drop a word, flavoured with one of his kindly smiles, with every passer-by. He never seemed to be going anywhere in particular, yet he always visited Doog Carnochan's house before he returned. And many a night did Nathan, finding the husband not at home, pursue and recapture the truant, and bring him back to the tumble-down shanty, where the five ill-fed children and the one weary-faced woman furnished a tragic comment upon the far-renowned convivial humours of the husband and father.The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake. Once Dahlia Ogilvy had been a bright frolicsome girl, winding the young fellows of the parish round her fingers with arch mischief, granting a favour here and denying one there, with that pleasant and innocent abuse of power which comes so suddenly to a girl who, in any rank of life, awakes to find herself beautiful.There was nothing of the wilful beauty now about Dahlia Carnochan. A stronger woman might have mastered her fate, a weaker would have fled from it; but she only accepted the inevitable, and, like one who knows beforehand that her task is hopeless, she did what she could with silent resignation, waiting clear-eyed for that death which alone would bring her to the end of her pain.Yet at the time it had seemed natural enough that Dahlia should prefer the handsome debonair Douglas Carnochan, to quiet Nathan Monypenny, who had so little to say for himself, and so seldom said it. Besides, Dahlia had always known that she could with a word send Nathan to the ends of the earth, whilst there were certain wild ways about the other even then, which had, for a foolish ignorant maid, all the attraction of the unknown. She was a little afraid of Doog Carnochan, and there is no better subsoil whereon to grow love in a girl's heart, than just the desire of conquest mixed with a little fear.So it came to pass that, though Nathan had carried little Dahlia's school-bag and fought her battles ever since she could toddle across from one cottage to the other, it was not he who, in the fulness of time, when the blossom came to its brightest and most beautiful, gathered it and set it on his bosom. It ought to have been, but it was not.As a young man Doog Carnochan was bright and clever. Most people in the village prophesied a brilliant future for him—that is, those who knew not the "unstable as water" which was written like a legend across his character. He was the son of a small crofter in the neighbourhood, but he companied habitually with those above him in rank, with the sons of large farmers and rich stock-breeders. Some of these, his cronies and boon companions, would be sure to assist him, so every one said. They would set him up as a "dealer"—they would put him in charge of a "led" farm or two. Doog's fortune was as good as made.So, at least, injudicious flatterers assured him. So he himself believed. So he told the innocent, lily-like Dahlia Ogilvy at the time of year when the Sweet William gave forth his evening perfume, when the dew was on the latest wall-flowers, and the scarlet lightning spangled the dusky places beneath the hedgerows where the lovers were wont to sit. But the blue cowled bells of the poisonous monkshood in the cottage flower-beds they did not see, though with some premonition of fate, Dahlia shivered and nestled to her betrothed as the breeze swept over them chill and bitter from the east.And Nathan Monypenny, leaning on the gate-post that he might sigh out his soul towards the cottage of his beloved, by chance heard their words; and, therewith being stricken well-nigh to the death, softly withdrew, and left them alone.After that night Nathan sought the company of Doog Carnochan more than ever.Friends warned him that Doog was no fit companion for such as he. They insisted that he was neglecting his business. They said all those useful and convincing things which friends keep in stock for such occasions. Yet Nathan did not desist, till he had arranged the marriage of Dahlia Ogilvy and Douglas Carnochan beyond all possibility of retractation.He it was who accompanied the swain to put up the banns. He it was who paid the five-shilling fee that the pair should be thrice cried on one Sabbath day, and the wedding hastened by a whole fortnight.Perhaps he wished to shorten his own pain. Perhaps, he told himself, when once Dahlia was Douglas Carnochan's wife, he would think no more of her. At any rate, something strong and moving wrought in the reticent heart of the young tradesman. He approved the house which Doog took for his bride. He also guaranteed the rent. He lent the money for the furniture, and looked after Doog on the day of the marriage, that he might be brought soberly and worthily to the altar.It was a plain-song altar indeed, for, of course, the pair were married in the little white cottage next to Nathan's, where Dahlia had lived all her life. When he saw her in bridal white, Nathan remembered with a sudden gulp a certain little toddling thing in white pinafores, whom he used to lift over the hedge that he might feed her with the earliest ripe gooseberries.Every one said that they made a handsome pair as they stood up before the minister, who, with his back to the fire, did not know that he was singeing his Geneva gown. For, being yet young to these occasions, he wore that encumbrance because it gave him an opportunity of displaying the hood of his college degree.The young women smiled covertly at the contrast afforded by the bridegroom and his "best-man," as they stood up together. They did not wonder at Dahlia's preference. Any of them would have done the same thing, if she had had the chance."What a fine grey suit!—how well it fits!""Yes, and that pale blue tie, how it matches the flower in his coat!"Thus they gossiped, all unaware that it was the hard-earned money of the plain-favoured and shy "best-man" which had bought all that wedding raiment, paid for that sky-blue tie, and that even the flower in the bridegroom's button-hole had grown in Nathan Monypenny's garden, and had been plucked and affixed by his hands.Thus it was that the story began, and this was the reason why Nathan sought carefully day by day, if by any means he might yet withdraw his friend's erring feet out of fearful pit and miry clay.Never a morning dawned for Nathan, waking, as he had done all his life, with the hum of the ranged bee-hives under his window in his ear, or else listening to the pattering of the winter storms on his lattice, that he did not bethink himself: "It is I who am responsible. I must help him." Then he would add with a sigh: "And her."And so help he did, for the most part in ways hidden and secret. For he dared not give money to Doog. He knew all too well where that would have gone. Neither for very pride's sake, and in reverence for the secret of his heart, could he bring himself to give money to Dahlia. Nevertheless, as by some unseen hand, the tired heartsick woman found her burden in many directions marvellously eased.Sticks were stacked in the little wood-shed which Doog had set up in the first virtuous glow of husbandhood—and never been inside since. No hens laid like Dahlia's—and the strange thing was that they invariably laid in the night, sometimes a dozen at a time, all in one nest. Her children, playing in the hot dusk of her little garden, had more than once turned up a sovereign or a crownpiece wrapped in paper and run with it to their mother.From Nathan's shop, also, there came flitches of bacon which were never ordered by Dahlia Carnochan—flour and meal, too, in times of stress. And it nearly always was a time of stress with Doog.Twice a year Nathan, with much circumlocution, would extract a reluctant shilling or two from Doog on a flush pay-night, taking care that some of his cronies should hear the colloquy. Then in the morning he would send round the six months' account duly and completely receipted.But more often than not the crony would put it all round the village that Nathan Monypenny had been dunning poor Doog Carnochan the night before; and so, among the unthinking, Nathan got the reputation of being a hard man."He doesna do onything for nocht! Na, sune or syne, Nathan likes to see the colour o' his siller," was said of him behind his back. And Doog's generous kindness of heart was dwelt upon as a foil to his friend's niggardliness."He micht hae letten puir Doog owe him the bit shillin' or twa and never missed it!" represented the general sense of the community.But Doog himself, be his faults what they might, allowed none to speak ill of Nathan Monypenny.Did he not half choke the life out of Davie Hoatson for some hinted comment (it was never clearly understood what), till they had to be separated by kindly violence, Doog being yet unappeased? Furthermore, did he not seek the jester for three whole days, all the time breathing fire and fury, with intent to choke the other half of a worthless life out of him?This was the state of the case when Nathan Monypenny's life temptation came upon him. It was a grim and notable January night—the fourth day of the great thaw. The rain had gusted and blown and threshed and pelted upon those window-panes of Whinnyliggate which looked towards the west, till there was not a speck of dirt upon them anywhere, except on the inside. The snow had melted fast under the pitiless downpour, and the patient sheep stood about behind dyke-backs, or with the courage of despair pushed through holes in bedraggled hedges, to take a furtive nibble at the brown stubble of last year's cornfields.It was half-past nine when Nathan went to his door to look out. Nathan Monypenny had built himself a lobby, and so was thought to be "upsetting." At that time for a man to wear a white collar on weekdays, or to walk with his hands out of his pockets, for a woman to be "dressed" in the forenoon, or to wear gloves except when actually entering the kirk door, for a householder to whitewash his premises oftener than once in five years, or to erect a porch to his dwelling, was held to be "upsetting"—that is, he (or she) was evidently setting up to be better than their neighbours—an iniquity as unpopular in Whinnyliggate as elsewhere in the world.From this "upsetting" porch, then, Nathan looked out. A dash of rain, solid as if the little house had shipped a sea in a perilous ocean passage, took Nathan about the ankles and rebuked him in a very practical fashion for coming to the door, as is Galloway custom, in his "stocking-feet." It had blown in from a broken "roan" pipe, which Nathan had been intending to mend as soon as the snow went off the root.Nathan shut the door and went within. He had seen little through the blackness save the bright lights of the "Golden Lion," and heard nothing above the long-drawnwhooof the storm save the noisy chorus of the drinking song which Doog Carnochan was singing. Nathan knew it was Doog's voice. About this he could make no mistake. Had he not listened to it long ago, when Doog sang in the village choir, knowing all the while, full well, that he was singing his Dahlia's heart out of her bosom? Nathan Monypenny sighed and thought of that desolate house down at the other end of the street where that same Dahlia would even then be putting her children to bed. He knew just the faintly wearied look there would be on the face from which the youthful roses had long since faded. He would have given all he possessed in the world to sit and watch her thus, to comfort her in her loneliness; but, resolutely putting the temptation aside, he drew the great Bible that had been his father's off its shelf and laid it on the table.Then he brought a new candle from the shop and lighted it. But, so great was the storm without that even in that comfortable inner room the draught blew the flame about and the words seemed to dance on the printed page.Again and again during his reading Nathan lifted his head and listened. The "wag-at-the-wa'" clock struck ten with enormous birr and clatter, beginning with a buzz of anticipation five minutes too soon, and continuing to emit applausive "curmurrings" of internal satisfaction for full five minutes after the actual stroke of the hour had died on the ear.Nathan paused in his reading to listen for the sound of the roysterers' feet going homeward from the "Golden Lion." Doog would be one of those, most likely the drunkest and the noisiest. He must be half-way down the street by now, stumbling along with trippings and foul, irresponsible words. Now Dahlia would be opening the door to him—Nathan knew the look on her face. When he shut his eyes he could see it even more clearly. In the middle dark of the night, when he lay sleepless, staring at the ceiling, he could see it most clearly of all.For this reason he was in no hurry to finish and put out the light; but it had to be done at last. And then with his head on the pillow Nathan Monypenny bethought himself with small satisfaction of his wasted life. Of what use was his house, his money in the bank, his eldership, the praise of men, the satisfactory state of his ledger? After all, he was a lonely man, and out there in the rain, dank and dripping, leafless and forlorn, shivered the hedge over which in golden weather he had lifted Dahlia Ogilvy. At the rose-bush in the corner she had once let him kiss her. Ah! but he must not think of that. She was Dahlia Carnochan, and her drunken husband had just reeled home to her. Yet as he sat and stared at the red peats on the hearth Nathan Monypenny could think of nothing else, and how her hair had had a flower-like scent as he drew her to him that night when (for once in his grey and barren life) the roses bloomed red and smelled sweet.But there was something else which kept Nathan's nerves on the stretch, something that was not summed up in his thoughts of Dahlia—an apprehension of impending disaster. Even after he had gone to bed he lifted his head more than once from the pillow, for his heart, stounding and rushing in his ears, shut out all other noises. Then he sat up and listened. He seemed to hear a cry above the roar and swelter of the storm—a man's cry for help in mortal need.Nathan rose and drew on his clothes hurriedly, yet buttoning with his accustomed carefulness an overcoat closely about him. Then, leaving a lighted candle on the table, he opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. The wind met him like a wall. The rain assailed his cheeks and stunned his ears like a volley of bullets. For a full minute he stood exposed to the broad fury of the tempest, slashed by the driving sleet, beaten and deafened into bewilderment by a turmoil of buffeting gusts. Then, recovering himself a little, he turned aside the lee of the gable of his cottage, which looked towards the north-east. Here he was more sheltered, and though the winds still sang stridently overhead, and the swirls of lashing rain occasionally beat upon him like "hale water," he could listen with some composure for a repetition of the sound which had disturbed him.There—there it was again! A hoarse cry, ending in a curious gasp and gurgle of extinction. Nathan almost thought that he could distinguish his own name.He put his hands to his mouth funnel-wise, to form a sort of rough-speaking trumpet. "Haloo!" he shouted. "Where are you?"But it was an appreciable interval before any voice replied, and then it seemed more like a dying man's moan of anguish than any human tones."It's somebody in the water!" Nathan cried, and rushed down the little strip of garden which separated his cottage from the Whinnyliggate Burn. This was ordinarily a clear little rivulet, running lucidly brown and pleasantly at prattle over a pebbly bed. Boys fished for "bairdies" in its three-foot-deep pools. Iris and water-lily fringed the swamps where it expanded into broad sedgy ponds. But in spite of its apparent innocence, Whinnyliggate Lane was a stream of a dangerous reputation. Its ultimate source was a deep mountain lake high among the bosoming hills of Girthon, and when the rains descended and the floods came, it sometimes chanced that the inhabitants of the village awoke to find that their prattling babe had become a giant, and that the burn, which the night before had scarce covered the pebbles in its bed, was now roaring wide and strong, thirty feet from bank to bank, crumbling their garden walls, and even threatening with destruction the sacred Midtoon Brig itself, from time immemorial the Palladium of the liberties and the Parliament House of the gossip of the village.The part of the bank down which Nathan ran was used by the village smith for the important work of "hooping wheels," or shrinking the iron "shods" on the wheels of the red farm carts. There were always a few rusty spare "hoops" of solid iron scattered about, while a generaldébrisof blacksmithery, outcast and decrepit, cumbered the burnside.Before Nathan had gone far he found himself splashing in the rising water."Loch Girthon has broken its dam!" he murmured; "God help the puir soul that fa's intil Whinnyliggate Lane this nicht!"It was nearly pitch dark, and Nathan Monypenny, standing up to his knees in the swirl of the flood, called aloud, but got no reply from any human voice. The forward hurl of the storm whooping overhead, the roar of the icy torrent fighting with the caving banks beneath, were the only sounds he could distinguish.He was indeed on the point of leaving the water edge and regaining his comfortable cottage, when, wading through a shallow extension of the stream near the bridge, his foot struck something soft, which carried with it a curiously human suggestion. He stopped and laid his hand on the rough cloth and sodden sock which covered a man's ankle.Though not great of stature, Nathan Monypenny was both strong and brave. He stooped and endeavoured to disentangle the boot from the iron hoop in which it was caught. Succeeding in this, he next endeavoured to pull the drowning man out of the water. But the head and upper part of the body hung over the bank, and were drawn down by the whole force of the torrent.Again and again Nathan strove with all his might, but the water wrenched and wrestled till the body was almost snatched from his grasp. More than once, indeed, Nathan came very near going over the verge himself and sharing the fate of the unfortunate whom he was endeavouring to rescue.At last, however, by dint of exertions almost superhuman, he succeeded in getting the man to the edge of the water, and immediately sank exhausted on the sodden grass. By-and-bye, however, he staggered up, and without ever thinking of going to seek for help, he succeeded in balancing the unconscious burden upon his shoulders and carrying it staggeringly to his own door.The candle he had lighted was still burning, though it seemed to Nathan that he must have been a very long time away. He let the body fall upon the settle bed, and then, catching sight of the pale features, dripping ghastly under the flicker of the farthing dip, he sank dismayed on a chair.It was Doog Carnochan—Dahlia Carnochan's husband. The story was plain enough. Stumbling homeward from the "Golden Lion," he had missed his drunken way, and wandered down by the "hooping" place to the water's edge.Nathan stared open-mouthed. What should he do?—go for assistance? That perhaps had been wisest—yet, to leave a man in whom there might be some faint spark of life! He rose and stretched Doog's arms out over his head and back again time after time, as he had once seen a doctor do on the ice after a curling accident.But there was no drawing of breath, nor could he distinguish the least beating of the heart. He took down the little hand-mirror, which had satisfied the frugal demands of his toilet all these years, and put it close to the drowned man's lips.Yes—no—it could not be, yet it was just possible that there might be a faint dimming of the surface of the mirror.Then a hot wondrous thought leaped up in Nathan Monypenny's heart—the devil in the garb of an angel of light.What if he were simply to hold his hand—the man was as good as dead already.And what then? There rose up before Nathan Monypenny a vision of the woman whom he had loved more than life, of a pale and weary face upon which he would rejoice to bring out the roses as in the days of old. Happiness would do it, he knew. And, like all true lovers, he believed that he alone could make that one woman happy. Douglas Carnochan? What was he but a drunkard who had blighted two lives? If a hand were stirred to help him now, he would simply go on and finish the fell work of the years. His Dahlia's face would grow yet more weary, her shoulders more bent, and her eyes would less seldom be raised from the ground till on a thrice-welcome day the grave should be opened before her. Nathan knew it all by heart.And this man—why did he deserve to live? Had not he (Nathan) afforded him every chance? Had he not obtained situation after situation for him? Had he not, in fact, kept Doog Carnochan and his family for years? Surely God did not require from him this great final sacrifice. It was certainly a chance to do lasting good—a happy woman, a happy man, a happy home! Better, too, (so Nathan told himself) for Douglas Carnochan's children. He would be a father to them—that which this their own father had never been. He would train, instruct, place them in the world.But—he would be a murderer!
* * * * *
Nevertheless, the agitation for a change of ministry continued to increase rather than to diminish. It took the form of a petition to the Rev. Hugh Peebles to consider the spiritual needs of the congregation and forthwith to remove himself to another sphere of labour.
Now, John McWhan's Zion was not one of the greater and richer denominations into which Presbytery in Scotland is unhappily divided. It was but a small and poor "body" of the faithful, and such changes of ministry as that proposed were frequent enough. The operative cause might be inability to pay the minister's "steepend" if it happened to be a bad year. Or, otherwise, and more frequently, a "split"—a psalm tune misplaced, an overplus of fervour in prayer for the Royal Family (a very deadly sin), or a laxity in dealing with a case of discipline—and, lo! the minister trudged down the glen with his goods before him in a red cart, to fight his battle over again in another glen, and among a people every whit as difficult and touchy. But one day there was an intimation read out in the Machermore Kirk of the Marrow to the following effect: "The Annual Sermon of the Stewartry Branch of the British and Foreign Bible Society will be preached in the Townhill Kirk at Cairn Edward, on Sabbath next, at 6 p.m., by the Rev. Hugh Peebles of the Marrow Kirk, Machermore."
Mr. Peebles read this through falteringly, as if it concerned some one else, and then added a doubtful conclusion: "In consequence of this honour which has been done me, I know not why, there will be no service here on the evening of next Lord's Day!"
It was observed by the acute that Mrs. Peebles put her face into her hands very quickly as her husband finished reading the intimations.
"Praying for him, was she?" said the Marrow folk, grimly, as they went homeward; "aye, an' she had muckle need!"
To say that the congregation of Machermore was dumfounded is wholly to underestimate the state of their feelings. They were aghast. For the occasion was a most notable one.
All the wale of the half-dozen central Galloway parishes, which were canvassed as one district by the agents of the Bible Society, would be there—the professional sermon-tasters of twenty congregations. At least a dozen ministers of all denominations (except the Episcopalian) would be seated in an awe-inspiring quadrilateral about the square elders' pew. The Townhill Kirk, the largest in Galloway, would be packed from floor to ceiling, and the sermon, published at length in the local paper, would be discussed in all its bearings at kirk-door and market-ring for at least a month to come.
And all these things must be faced by their "reed shaken with the wind," their feckless shadow of a minister, weak in doctrine, ineffective in application, utterly futile in reproof. Hughie Peebles, and he alone, must represent the high ancient liberties of the Marrow Kirk before Free Kirk Pharisee and Erastian Sadducee.
Considering these things, Machermore hung its head, and the wailing of its eldership was heard afar. Only John McWhan, as he had promised, kept his counsel, and went about with a shrewd twinkle in his eye. He continued to bring in the soup at Barlochan—indeed, he now waited all through dinner, and, though there was nothing said that he could definitely take hold upon, John had a shrewd suspicion that it was not for nothing that the young minister had been closeted with his master for two or three hours, six days a week, for the last month. But though it went sorely to his heart that he could not even bid Machermore and the folk thereof—"Wait till next Sabbath at six o'clock, an' ye'll maybes hear something!" he loyally refrained himself.
* * * * *
At last the hour came and the man. Mr. Erskine, having ordered a carriage from the town, drove the minister and his wife down to Cairn Edward in style. John McWhan held the reins, the urban "coachman" sitting, a silent and indignant hireling, on the lower place by his side.
On the front seat within sat Mr. Peebles, very pale, and with his hands gripping each other nervously. But when he looked across at the calm face of Mr. Erskine, a sigh of relief broke from him. The Townhill Kirk was densely crowded. There was that kind of breathing hush over all, which one only hears in a country kirk on a very solemn occasion. Places had been kept for young Mrs. Peebles and Mr. Erskine in the pew of honour near the elders' seat, but the ex-minister of State, after accompanying Mrs. Peebles to her destination, went and sat immediately in front of the pulpit.
"Wondrous weel the laddie looks," said one of the judges as Hugh Peebles came in, boyish in his plain black coat, "though they say he is but a puir craitur for a' that!"
"Appearances are deceitful—beauty is vain!" agreed her neighbour, in the same unimpassioned whisper.
There was nothing remarkable about the "preliminaries," as the service of praise and prayer was somewhat slightingly denominated by these impatient sermon-lovers.
"Sap, but nae fushion!" summed up Mistress Elspeth Milligan, the chief of these, after the first prayer.
The preliminaries being out of the way, the great congregation luxuriously settled itself down to listen to the sermon. Machermore, which had hidden itself bodily in a remote corner of one of the galleries, began to perspire with sheer fright.
"They'll throw the psalm-buiks at him, I wadna wunner—siccan grand preachers as they hae doon here in Cairn Edward!" whispered the ruling elder to a friend. He had sneaked in after all the others, and was now sitting on one of the steps of the laft. It was John McWhan who occupied the corner seat beside him.
"Maybe aye, an' maybe no!" returned John, drily, keeping his eye on the pulpit. The hush deepened as Hugh Peebles gave out his text.
"And he built Tadmor in the Wilderness."
Whereupon ensued a mighty rustling of turned leaves, as the folk in the "airy" and the three "galleries" pursued the strange text to its lair in the second book of Chronicles. It sounded like the blowing of a sudden gust of wind through the entire kirk.
Then came the final stir of settling to attention point, and the first words of Hugh Peebles' sermon. Machermore, elder and kirk-member, adherent and communicant, young and old, bond and free, crouched deeper in their recesses. Some of the more bashful pulled up the collars of their coats and searched their Bibles as if they had not yet found the text. The seniors put on their glasses and stared hard at the minister as if they had never seen him before. They did not wish it to appear that he belonged to them.
But when the first notes of the preacher's voice fell on their astonished ears, it is recorded that some of the more impulsive stood up on their feet.
That was never their despised minister, Hughie Peebles. The strong yet restrained diction, the firmness of speech, the resonance of voice in the deeper notes—all were strange, yet somehow curiously familiar. They had heard them all before, but never without that terrible alloy of weakness, and the addition of a falsetto something that made the preacher's words empty and valueless.
And the sermon—well, there never had been anything like it heard in the Ten Parishes before. There was, first of all, that great passage where the preacher pictured the Wise King sending out his builders and carpenters, his architects and cunning workmen—those very men who had caused the Temple to rise on Moriah and set up the mysterious twin pillars thereof—to build in that great and terrible wilderness a city like to none the world had ever seen. There was his gradual opening up of the text, and applying it to the sending of the Word of God to the heathen who dwelt afar off—without God and without hope in the world.
Then came the searching personal appeal, which showed to each clearly that in his own heart there were wilderness tracts—as barren, as deadly, as apparently hopeless as the ground whereon Solomon set up his wonder-city—Tadmor, Palmyra, the city of temples and palaces and palm-trees.
And above all, the preacher's application was long remembered, his gradual uprising from the picture of the earthly king, "golden-robed in that abyss of blue," to the Great King of all the worlds—"He who can make the wilderness, whether that of the heathen in distant lands and far isles of the sea, or that other more difficult, the wilderness in our own breasts, to blossom as the rose!" These things will never be forgotten by any in that congregation.
Once only Hugh Peebles faltered. It was but for a moment. He gasped and glanced down to the first seat in the front of the church. Then in another moment he had gripped himself and resumed his argument. Some there were who said that he did this for effect, to show emotion, but there were two men in that congregation who knew better—the preacher and Mr. Erskine.
All Machermore went home treading on the viewless air. They hardly talked to each other for sheer joy and astonishment. "Dinna look as if we were surprised, lads! Let on that we get the like o' that every day in oor kirk!"
That was John McWhan's word, which passed from lip to lip. And Machermore and the Marrow Kirk thereof became almost insufferably puffed up.
"I'll no say a word mair," said the ruling elder, "gin he never preaches anither decent word till the day o' his death."
This was, indeed, the general sense of the congregation. But Hugh Peebles, though perhaps he never reached the same pinnacle of fame, certainly preached much better than of old. With his wonderful success, too, he had gained a certain confidence in himself; added to which he was almost as often at Barlochan as before the missionary sermon.
His wife came with him sometimes in the evenings to dinner, and then Mr. Erskine's eyes would dwell on her with a kind of gladness. For now she had a colour in her cheek and a proud look on her face, which had not been there on the day when he had first heard her pray: "O God, help my Hughie!" in the square manse pew.
God had indeed helped Hughie—as He mostly does, through human agency. And Mr. Erskine was happier too. He had found an object in life, and, on the whole, his pupil did him great credit.
He also inserted a clause in his will, which ensures that Hugh and his wife shall not be dependent in their old age upon the goodwill of a faithful but scanty flock.
And as for Hugh Peebles, probable plagiarist, he writes his own sermons now, though he always submits them before preaching to his wise friend up at Barlochan. But it is for his first success that he is always asked when he goes from home. There is a never-failing postscript to any invitation from a clerical brother upon a sacramental occasion: "The congregation will be dreadfully disappointed if you do not give us 'Tadmor in the Wilderness.'"
And Hugh Peebles never disappoints them.
PETERSON'S PATIENT
When I go out on the round of a morning I generally take John with me. John is my "man," and of course it is etiquette that he should drive me to my patients' houses. But sometimes I tell him to put in old Black Bess for a long round-about journey, and then, in that case, I can drive myself.
For Black Bess is a real country doctor's horse. She will stand at a loaning foot with the reins hitched over a post—that is, if you give her a yard or so of head liberty, so that she may solace herself with the grass and clover tufts on the bank. Even without any grass at all, she will stand by a peat-stack in as profound a meditation as if she were responsible for the diagnosis of the case within. I honestly believe Bess is more than half a cow, and chews the cud on the sly. So whenever I feel a trifle lazy, I take the outer round and Black Bess, leaving the town and what the ambitious might call its "suburbs" to Dr. Peterson, my assistant. Not that this helps me much in the long run, because I have to keep track of what is going on in Peterson's head and revise his treatment. For, though his zeal and knowledge are always to be counted on, Peterson is apt to be lacking in a certain tact which the young practitioner only acquires by experience.
For instance, to take the important matter of diagnosis, Peterson used to think nothing of standing silent five or ten minutes making up his mind what was the matter with a patient. I once told him about this.
"Why," he replied, with, I must say, some slight disrespect for his senior, "you often do that yourself. You said this very morning that it took you twenty minutes to make up your mind whether to treat Job Sampson's wife for scarlet fever or for diphtheria!"
"Yes," I retorted, "I told you so, but I didn't stand agape all the time I was thinking it out. I took the temperature of the woman's armpits, and the back of her neck, and between her toes. I asked her about her breakfast, and her dinner, and her supper of the day before. Then I took a turn at her sleeping powers, and whether she had been eating too many vegetables lately. I inquired if she had had the measles, and the whooping-cough, and how often she had been vaccinated. I was just going to begin on her father, mother, and collateral relatives in order to trace hereditary tendencies, when I made up my mind that it would be safest to treat the woman for scarlet fever."
"Yes," said Peterson, drily, "Job was praising you up to the skies this very day. 'There never was sic a careful doctor,' he swears; 'there wasna a blessed thing that he didna speer into, even unto the third and fourth generation.'"
"There, you hear, Peterson," I said, with sober triumph, "that is the first step in your profession. You must create confidence. Never let them think for a moment you don't know everything. Why, old Ned Harper sent for me to-day—said you didn't understand the case, because you declined to prescribe."
"He is malingering," cried Peterson, hotly; "he only wants to draw full pay out of his two benefit societies. The man is a fraud, open and patent. I wouldn't have anything to do with him."
"Now, Peterson," I said, very seriously, "once for all, this is my practice, 'not yours. You are my salaried assistant. That is what you have to attend to. You are not revising auditor of the local benefit societies. If you do as you did with old Harper a time or two, you will lose me my appointment as Society's doctor, and not that one appointment alone. They all follow each other like a flock of sheep jumping through a slap in a dyke. Besides, the Benefit Society officials don't thank you, not a bit! They expect Harper to do as much for them the next time they feel like taking a holiday between the sheets!"
"What would you do then?" cried this furious young apostle of righteousness. "You surely would not have me become art and part in a swindle."
I patted him on the shoulder.
"Temper your zeal with discretion, my friend," I said. "I have found a rising blister between the shoulder-blades very efficacious in such cases."
Yet my immaculate assistant, had he only known it, was to go further and fare worse.
* * * * *
Meanwhile to pass the time I told him the story of old Maxwell Bone. Peterson was clearly getting restive, and it is not good for young men of the medical profession to think that they know everything at five-and-twenty. Maxwell was an aged hedger-and-ditcher, who lived in a tumble-down cottage at the upper end of Whinnyliggate. Of that parish I was (and still am) parish doctor, and Maxwell being in receipt of half-a-crown a week as parochial supplement to his scanty earnings, I was,ipso facto, responsible for Maxwell's state of health, and compelled in terms of my contract to obey any reasonable summons I might receive from him.
Upon several occasions I had prescribed for the old ruffian, chiefly for rheumatism and the various internal pains and weaknesses affected by ancient paupers. When I was going away on one occasion Maxwell asked me for an order on the Inspector of Poor for a bottle of brandy "for outward application only." I refused him promptly, telling him with truth that he was far better without it.
"Weel, doctor," he said, shaking his head, "dootless ye ken best. But there's nocht like brandy when thae stammack pains come on me. It micht save ye a lang journey some cauld snawy nicht. The guard o' the late train will tak' doon ony message frae the junction, and if I dinna get the brandy to hae at hand to rub my legs wi' ye micht hae a lang road to travel! But gin ye let me hae it, doctor, it micht save ye a heap o' trouble——"
"The old wretch!" cried Peterson. "Of course you did not let him have it?"
"Peterson," I replied, sententiously, "I decline to answer you. Wait till you have been a winter here and know what a thirty-mile drive in a raging snowstorm to the head-end of the parish of Whinnyliggate means. Then you will not have much doubt whether Maxwell got his brandy or not."
Now Peterson was really a very excellent fellow, and when he had run his head against the requisite number of stone walls, and learned to bite hard on his tongue when tempted to over-hasty speech, he made a capital assistant. I shall be sorry to lose him when the time comes.
For one thing Nance is fond of him, especially since he fell in love, and that goes for a great deal in our house. Peterson performed the latter feat quite suddenly and unexpectedly, as he did everything. It happened thuswise.
I had had a hard winter, and Nance was needing a change, so, about Easter, I took her south, for a few weeks in the mild and recuperative air of the Regent Street bonnet shops. I have noted more than once that in Nance's case the jewellers' windows along Bond Street possess tonic qualities, quite unconnected with going inside to buy anything, as also the dark windows of certain merchant tailors in which the patient can see her new dress and hat reflected as in a mirror. As for me, I enjoyed the British Medical Club and the Scientific Museums—which, of course, was what I came for.
But when we went back home we found that Peterson's daily report of cases had not conveyed all the truth. Peterson himself was changed. So far as I could gather, he seemed to have done his work very well and to have given complete satisfaction. He had even added the names of several new patients to my list. One of these was that of a somewhat large proprietor in a neighbouring parish, who was said to be exceedingly eccentric, but of whom I knew nothing save by the vaguest report.
"How did you get hold of old Bliss Bulliston?" I asked my assistant, as I glanced over the list he handed me. We were sitting smoking in the study while Nance was unpacking upstairs and spreading her new things on the bed, amid the rapturous sighs and devotionally clasped hands of Betty Sim, our housemaid.
Peterson turned away towards the mantelpiece for another spill. He appeared to have a difficulty with his pipe.
"Well, I don't exactly know," he said at last, when the problem was solved; "it just came about somehow. You know how these things happen."
"They generally happen in our profession by the patient sending for the physician," I remarked, drily. "I hope you have not been poaching on anyone else's preserves, Peterson. Did Bulliston send for you?"
Peterson stooped for a coal to light his pipe. It had gone out again. Perhaps it was the exertion that reddened his handsome face.
"No," he said, slowly, "he did not send for me. I went of my own accord."
I started from my seat.
"Why, man," I cried, "you'll get me struck off the register, not to speak of yourself. You don't mean to say that you went to the house touting for custom?"
"Now don't get excited," he said, smoking calmly, "and I'll tell you all about it."
I became at once violently calm. Nevertheless, in spite of this, it took some time to get him under way.
"Well," he said at last, "Bulliston has got a daughter."
"Oh," said I, "so you were called in to attend on Mrs. Bulliston."
"When I say he has a daughter, I mean a grown-up daughter, not an infant!"
Peterson seemed quite unaccountably ruffled by my innocent remark. I thought of pointing out to him the advantages of habitual clearness of speech, but, on the whole, decided to let him tell his story, for I was really very anxious about Bulliston.
"Well," I said soothingly, "did Miss Bulliston call you in?"
"It might be looked at that way," he said.
"What was the case?"
"A nest of peregrine's eggs near the top of Carslaw Craig."
"Peterson!" I exclaimed, somewhat sternly, "don't forget that I am talking to you seriously!"
But he continued smoking.
"I am perfectly serious," he said, and stopped. After he had thought a while he continued: "It happened at the end of the first week you were away. I had left John at home. I had old Black Bess with me—you know she will stand anywhere. I took the long round, and was coming home a little tired. As I drove past the end of Carslaw Hill, happening to look up I saw something sticking to the sheer face of the cliff like a fly on a wall. At first I could not believe my eyes, for when I came nearer I saw it was a girl. She seemed to be calling for help. So of course I jumped down and tied old Bess to a post by the roadside. Then I began to climb up towards her, but I soon saw that I could not help the girl that way—to do her any good, that is. So I shouted to her to hold on and I would get at her over the top.
"I ran up an easier place, where the hill slopes away to the left, and came down opposite where the girl was. She had got to within ten feet of the top, but could not get a bit higher to save her life. It looked almost impossible, but luckily, right on top there was a hazel-bush, and I caught hold of the lower boughs—three or four of them—and lowered my legs down over the edge.
"'Catch hold of my ankles,' I shouted, 'and I'll pull you up.'
"'Can't; they're too thick!' the girl cried; and from that I judged she must be a pretty cool one.
"'Then catch hold of one of them in both hands!' I shouted.
"'Right!' she said, and gripped.
"And it was as well that she did not take my first offer, for, as it turned out, I had all I could do to get her up, jamming the toe of my other boot in the crevices and barking my knee against the hazel roots. Still, I managed it finally."
"Whereupon she promptly fainted away in your arms," I interjected, "and you recovered her with some smelling-salts and sal volatile you happened to have brought in your tail-coat pockets in view of such emergencies."
"Not at all," said Peterson, quite unabashed; "she didn't faint—never thought of such a thing. Instead, she got behind the hazel-bush I had been hanging on to.
"'Stop where you are a moment,' she spluttered; 'till I get rid of these horrid eggs. Then I'll talk to you.'"
"Tears of beauty!" I cried; "emotion hidden behind a hazel-bush. 'Alfred, you have saved my life—accept my hand.' That was what she really said to you—you know it was, Peterson."
"Not much," said Peterson. "She was back again in a trice, and, if you'll believe me, started in to give it me hot and strong for smashing her blissful birds' eggs.
"'Here I've been watching this peregrine for weeks, and I'd got two beauties, and just because I got stuck a bit on the cliff you must come along and jolt me so that I have broken both of them—one was in my mouth, and the other I had tied up in a handkerchief.
"But I told the girl that I knew where I could get her another pair and also a rough-legged buzzard's nest, and that did a lot to comfort her. She was a pretty girl, though I don't believe she had ever given it a thought; and she was dead on to getting enough birds' eggs to beat her brother, who had said that a girl could never get as good a collection as a boy, because of her petticoats!"
"And where are you going to get those eggs?" I said to Paterson. "If you think that hunting falcons' eggs for roving schoolgirls comes within your duties as my assistant—well, I shall have to explicate your responsibilities to you, that's all, young man!"
Peterson laid his finger lightly on his cheek, not far from the bridge of his nose.
"You know old Davie Slimmon, the keeper up at the lodge? You remember I doctored his foot when he got it bitten with an adder. Well, anyway, he would do anything for me. I've had Davie on the egg-hunt ever since."
"And the girl thinks you are getting them all yourself," I said, with some severity. "Peterson, this is both unbecoming and unscientific. More than that, you are a blackguard."
"Oh," said Peterson, lightly, "it's all right. I go regularly to see the old boy. He is a patient properly on the books, and when all is over, you can charge him a swingeing fee. Well, to begin at the beginning, each time I saw the girl I took her all the eggs I could pick up in the interval. I got them properly blown and labelled—particulars, habitat, how many in the clutch, whether the nest was oriented due east and west, whether made of sticks or weeds or curl-papers, the size of the shell in fractions of a millimetre——"
"Peterson," I said, sternly, "I don't believe you have the remotest idea what a millimetre is!"
"No more I have," answered Peterson, stoutly, not in the least put out; "but then, no more has she. And it looks well—thundering well!" he added, after a ruminant consideration of the visionary labelled egg. "You've no idea what a finish these tickets give to the collection."
"So this was Miss Bulliston," I said, to bring him back to the point in which I was most immediately interested. "That's all very well, but what was the matter with old Bliss, her father?"
Peterson looked as if he would have winked if he had dared, but the sternness in my eye checked him.
"Something nervous," he said, gazing at me blankly. "Truda kept stirring him up till the poor old boy nearly fretted himself into a fever, and so had me sent for. Oh, I was properly enough called in. You needn't look like that, McQuhirr. You've no gratitude for my getting you a good paying patient. I tell you the old man was so frightened that Truda——"
"It had got to 'Truda,' had it?" I interjected, bitterly. But Peterson took no notice, going composedly on with his story.
"... Truda ran all the way to the lodge gates, where I was waiting with two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier, unblown, but all done up in cotton wool."
"What!" I cried, "the birds?"
"No, the eggs, of course," said Peterson; "and she said: 'What have you got there?' So I told her two kestrels' and a marsh-harrier. Then she said: 'Is that all? I thought you would have got that kite's you promised me by this time. But come along and cure my father of the cholera, and the measles, and the distemper, and the spavin! He's got them all this morning, besides several other things I've forgot the names of. Come quick! Cousin Jem from London is with him. He'll frighten him worse than anybody. I'll take you up through the shrubbery. Give me your hand!'
"So she took my hand, and we ran up together to the house."
"Peterson," I said, "you and I have a monthly engagement. On this day month I shall have no further occasion for your services. Suppose anyone had seen you! What would they have thought of Dr. McQuhirr's assistant?"
"I never gave it a thought," he said, waving the interruption away; "and anyway, if all tales are true, you did a good deal of light skirmishing up about Nether Neuk in your own day!"
Now this was a most uncalled-for remark, and I answered: "That may be true or not, as the case may be. But, at all events, I was no one'slocum tenensat that time."
"Oh," he said, "it's no use making a fuss now, McQuhirr. Nobody saw us, and as soon as we got to the open part near the house, Truda said: 'Now I'm going to get these eggs fixed into their cases. So you trot round and physic up the old man. And mind and ask to see his collection of dog-whips. It is the finest in the world. We all collect something here. Pa is crazy about dog-whips. And if you can't find anything else wrong with him, tell him that his corns want cutting. They always do!'
"'But I haven't a knife with me,' I objected.
"'I'll lend you a ripper.' (Truda had an answer ready every time.) 'I keep it edged like a razor. It is a cobbler's leather knife. It will make the shavings fly off dad's old corns, I tell you!'
"'But I never pared a corn in my life,' I said.
"'Then you've jolly well got to now, my friend,' she said, 'for I've yarned it to him that his life may depend on it, and that only a trained surgeon can operate on his sort. So don't you give me away, or he may let you have the contents of a shot-gun as you go out through the front window. And what will happen to me, I don't know. Now go on!'
"And with that she vanished in the direction of the stables."
"A most lively young lady!" I cried, with enthusiasm.
"Um-m," grunted Peterson (I have often had cause to remark Peterson's gruffness). "Lively, you think? Well, she nearly got me into a pretty mess with her liveliness. The butler put me into a waiting-room out of the hall. It was all sparred round with fishing-rods, and had crossed trophies of dog-whips festooned about the walls. I waited here for a quarter of an hour, listening to the rumbling bark of an angry voice in the distance, and wondering what the mischief Truda had let me in for.
"Presently the girl came round to the open window, and as the sill was a bit high she gave a sort of sidelong jump and sat perched on the ledge outside.
"'You are a great donkey,' she said, looking in at me; 'both the kestrels' are set as hard as a rock—here, take them!'
"And with that she threw the eggs in at me one after another through the open sash of the window. One took me right on the pin of my tie and dripped on to my waistcoat. Smell? Well, rather! Just then the old butler came in, looking like a field-marshal and archbishop rolled in one, and there was I rubbing the abominable yolk from my waistcoat. Truda had dropped off the window-sill like a bird, and the old fellow looked round the room very suspiciously. I think he thought I must have been pocketing the spoons or something.
"'Mr. Bliss Bulliston waits!' he said, as if he were taking me into the presence-chamber of royalty. And so he was, by George! I was shown into a large library-looking room where two men were sitting. One was a little Skye-terrier of a man, with bristly grey hair that stood out everyway about his head. He was lying in a long chair, half reclining, a rug over his knees though the day was warm. The other man sat apart in the window, a quiet fellow to all appearance, bald-headed, and rather tired-looking.
"'You are the doctor from Cairn Edward my daughter has been pestering me to see,' snapped the elder man. 'My case is a very difficult and complicated one, and quite beyond the reach of an average local practitioner, but I understand from my daughter that you have very special qualifications.' Whereupon I bowed, and said that I was your assistant."
"Good heavens!" I cried. "Peterson, had you no sense? Why on earth did you bring my name into the affair? I shall never get over it!"
"Oh," he answered, lightly; "wait a bit. I cleared you sufficiently in the end. Just listen.
"I was in a tight place, you will admit, but I thought it was best to put on my most impressive manner, and after a look or two at the old fellow, I resolved to treat him for nervous exhaustion. It was a dead fluke, but I had been reading Webb-Playfair's article on Neurasthenia just before I went out, and though men don't often have it, I thought it would do as well for old Bulliston as anything else.
"So I yarned away to him about his condition and symptoms, emaciated physical state, and so forth. Well, when I was getting pretty well warmed up I saw the young man with the hair thin-sown on top rise and go quietly over to another window. I put this down to modesty on his part. He wished to leave me alone with my patient. So I became more and more confidential to old Bulliston."
("Peterson," I moaned, "all is over between us from this moment!")
"But the old ruffian would not allow Mr. Baldhead to remove himself quietly," said Peterson, continuing his tale calmly.
"'James,' he cried, sharply, 'stop where you are. All this should be very interesting to you.'
"'So it is,' said the young man, smiling in the rummest way, 'very interesting indeed!'
"So, somewhat elated, I went on prescribing rest, massage, the double-feeding dodge, and, above all, no intercourse with his own family. When I got through my rigmarole, the old fellow cocked his head to the side like a blessed dicky-bird, and remarked: 'It shows what wonderful similarity there is between the minds of you men of science. Talk of the transference of ideas! Why, that is just what my nephew was saying before you came in—almost in the same words. Let me introduce you to my nephew, Dr. Webb-Playfair, of Harley Street.'
"You could have knocked me down with a straw. I could hardly return the fellow's very chilly nod. I heartily confounded that little bird-nesting minx who had got me into such a scrape. But I had an idea.
"'Perhaps, sir,' I said, 'if you would allow me to consult Dr. Webb-Playfair we might be able to assist one another.'
"'Certainly,' cried the little old man, speaking as sharply as a Skye-terrier yelps; 'be off into the library. Jem, you know the way!'
"I tell you what, McQuhirr, I did not feel particularly chirpy as I followed that fellow's shiny crown into the next room. He sat down on a table, swinging one leg and looking at me without speaking. For a moment I could not find words to begin, but his eyes were on me with a kind of twinkle in them.
"'Well?' he said, as if he had a right to demand an explanation. That decided me. I would make a clean breast of it.
"So I told him the whole story—how I had first met Truda, of our bird-nesting, and how Truda wanted me to be able to come often to the house—because of the eggs.
"The bald young man began to laugh as I went on with my narrative, though it was no laughing matter to me, I can tell you. And especially when I confessed that I did not think there was anything the matter with his uncle, and that Neurasthenia was the first thing that came into my head, because I had been reading his own article in theLancetbefore I came out. He thought that was the cream of the joke. He was all of a good fellow, and no mistake.
"'So,' he said, 'to speak plainly, you are in love with my cousin, and you plotted to keep the father in bed in order that you might make love to the daughter! That is the most remarkable recent application of medical science I have heard of!'
"'Oh no,' I cried, 'I assure you it was Truda who——!
"'Ah,' he said, quietly, 'it was Truda, was it? I can well believe that.'
"Then he thought a long while, and at last he said, 'Well, it will do the old man a great deal of good to stay in bed and not worry his own family and the whole neighbourhood with his whimsies. Moreover, milk diet is a very soothing thing. We will let it go at that. You can settle your own affairs with my cousin Gertrude, Dr. Peterson; I have nothing to do with that. Indeed, I would not meddle with that volcanic young person's private concerns for all the wealth of the Indies! Let us go back to my uncle.'
"So," concluded Peterson, knocking the ashes out of his pipe on the bars of the grate, "the old fellow has been in bed ever since and has drunk his own weight in good cow's milk several times over. He is putting on flesh every day, and his temper is distinctly improving. He can be trusted with a candlestick beside him on the stand now, without the certainty of his throwing it at his nurse."
"And Truda?" I suggested, "what did she say?"
"Well, of course I told her how her cousin had said that I had ordered the father to bed, in order that I might make love to the daughter. She and I were in the waterside glade beyond the pond at the time. You know the place. We were looking for dippers' nests. She stopped and said:
"'Jem Playfair said that, did he?'
"'Yes, these were his very words,' I said, with a due sense of their heinousness.
"'He said you sent my father to bed that you might make love to me?'
"'Yes.'
"She looked all about the glade, and then up at me.
"'Well, did you?' she said."
* * * * *
This is Peterson's story exactly as he told it to me on my return. That is some time ago now, but there is little to add. Mr. Bliss Bulliston is now much better both in health and in temper, and there is every reason to believe that I shall lose my assistant some of these days. The young couple are talking of going out to British Columbia. No complete collection of the eggs of that Colony has ever been made, and Peterson says that the climate is so healthy there, that for some years there will be nothing for him to do but to help Truda with her collecting.
This is all very well now, in the first months of an engagement, but as a family man myself, I have my doubts as to the permanence of such an arrangement.
TWO HUMOURISTS
Our gentle humourist is Nathan Monypenny. No man ever heard him laugh aloud, yet as few had ever seen him without a gleam of something akin to kindly humour in his eye. Even now, when the bitterness of life and its ultimate loneliness are upon him, it is a pleasure to be next Nathan, even at a funeral. During that dreadful ten minutes when the black-coated, crinkle-trousered company waits outside for the "service" to be over, his company is universally considered "as good as a penny bap and a warm drink." In former days, within the memory of my father, he had a friend and fellow-humourist in the village, one "Doog" (that is, Douglas) Carnochan.
The contrast between the two companions was remarkable. They both lived in the same street of our little country hamlet. Indeed, necessarily so, for Whinnyliggate has but one street, strictly so called. The few cottages along the "Well-road," and the more pretentious cluster of upstarts which keeps the Free Kirk in countenance on the braeface, have never arrogated to themselves the name of a street.
So at one end of the Piccadilly-cum-Regent-street of Whinnyliggate—the upper end—lived Nathan Monypenny, and at the other end dwelt his rival, Doog, also, though less worthily, denominated "humourist." They were thus separated by something considerably less than a quarter of a mile of honest unpavemented king's highway. But, though they were personally friends, green oceans and trackless continents lay between their several characters and dispositions.
Nathan, at the upper end, was a bachelor, hale, fresh, and hearty as when he had finished his 'prenticeship. Doog at forty possessed several children, all that remained of a poor, over-worked, downtrodden wife, and a countenance so marled and purpled with drink, that he looked an old man before his time. Nathan's shop was his own, and he was understood to have already a "weel-filled stocking-fit up the lum," or, in the modern interpretation, a comfortable balance down at Cairn Edward Bank, and a quiet old age assured to him by a life of industrious self-denial.
Doog never had a penny to bless himself with, later in the week than Tuesday; and, indeed, often enough very few to bless his wife withal even on Saturday nights, when, as was his custom, he staggered homewards with the poor remnants of his week's wage in his pocket.
Nathan's wit was of the kind which goes best with the sedate tapping of a snuffmull, or the tinkling of brass weights into counter-scales—Doog's rang loudest to the jingling of toddy tumblers. Nathan loved to gossip doucely at the door of even-tide with the other tradesmen of the village, with Bob Carter the joiner, his apron twisted about his scarred hands, with bluff prosperous Joe Mitchell the mason, and with Peter Miles the tailor, as he sat on the low seat outside his door picking the last basting threads out of a new waistcoat.
Doog's witticisms, on the other hand, were chiefly launched in the "Golden Lion," amid the uproarious laughter of Jake McMinn, the "cattle dealer frae Stranraer," Leein' Tam, the local horse-doctor (without diploma), and "Chuckie" Orchison, the village ne'er-do-weel and licensed sponger for drinks upon the neighbourhood.
Yet there existed a curious and inexplicable liking between the two men. There was never a day that Nathan, the douce and respectable, did not leave his quiet white cottage at the head of the brae, where he dwelt all alone with his groceries, and step sedately down, stopping every twenty yards to gossip, or drop a word, flavoured with one of his kindly smiles, with every passer-by. He never seemed to be going anywhere in particular, yet he always visited Doog Carnochan's house before he returned. And many a night did Nathan, finding the husband not at home, pursue and recapture the truant, and bring him back to the tumble-down shanty, where the five ill-fed children and the one weary-faced woman furnished a tragic comment upon the far-renowned convivial humours of the husband and father.
The tale of Nathan and Doog is one which wants not examples in all ages of the earth's history. It is the story of a woman's mistake. Once Dahlia Ogilvy had been a bright frolicsome girl, winding the young fellows of the parish round her fingers with arch mischief, granting a favour here and denying one there, with that pleasant and innocent abuse of power which comes so suddenly to a girl who, in any rank of life, awakes to find herself beautiful.
There was nothing of the wilful beauty now about Dahlia Carnochan. A stronger woman might have mastered her fate, a weaker would have fled from it; but she only accepted the inevitable, and, like one who knows beforehand that her task is hopeless, she did what she could with silent resignation, waiting clear-eyed for that death which alone would bring her to the end of her pain.
Yet at the time it had seemed natural enough that Dahlia should prefer the handsome debonair Douglas Carnochan, to quiet Nathan Monypenny, who had so little to say for himself, and so seldom said it. Besides, Dahlia had always known that she could with a word send Nathan to the ends of the earth, whilst there were certain wild ways about the other even then, which had, for a foolish ignorant maid, all the attraction of the unknown. She was a little afraid of Doog Carnochan, and there is no better subsoil whereon to grow love in a girl's heart, than just the desire of conquest mixed with a little fear.
So it came to pass that, though Nathan had carried little Dahlia's school-bag and fought her battles ever since she could toddle across from one cottage to the other, it was not he who, in the fulness of time, when the blossom came to its brightest and most beautiful, gathered it and set it on his bosom. It ought to have been, but it was not.
As a young man Doog Carnochan was bright and clever. Most people in the village prophesied a brilliant future for him—that is, those who knew not the "unstable as water" which was written like a legend across his character. He was the son of a small crofter in the neighbourhood, but he companied habitually with those above him in rank, with the sons of large farmers and rich stock-breeders. Some of these, his cronies and boon companions, would be sure to assist him, so every one said. They would set him up as a "dealer"—they would put him in charge of a "led" farm or two. Doog's fortune was as good as made.
So, at least, injudicious flatterers assured him. So he himself believed. So he told the innocent, lily-like Dahlia Ogilvy at the time of year when the Sweet William gave forth his evening perfume, when the dew was on the latest wall-flowers, and the scarlet lightning spangled the dusky places beneath the hedgerows where the lovers were wont to sit. But the blue cowled bells of the poisonous monkshood in the cottage flower-beds they did not see, though with some premonition of fate, Dahlia shivered and nestled to her betrothed as the breeze swept over them chill and bitter from the east.
And Nathan Monypenny, leaning on the gate-post that he might sigh out his soul towards the cottage of his beloved, by chance heard their words; and, therewith being stricken well-nigh to the death, softly withdrew, and left them alone.
After that night Nathan sought the company of Doog Carnochan more than ever.
Friends warned him that Doog was no fit companion for such as he. They insisted that he was neglecting his business. They said all those useful and convincing things which friends keep in stock for such occasions. Yet Nathan did not desist, till he had arranged the marriage of Dahlia Ogilvy and Douglas Carnochan beyond all possibility of retractation.
He it was who accompanied the swain to put up the banns. He it was who paid the five-shilling fee that the pair should be thrice cried on one Sabbath day, and the wedding hastened by a whole fortnight.
Perhaps he wished to shorten his own pain. Perhaps, he told himself, when once Dahlia was Douglas Carnochan's wife, he would think no more of her. At any rate, something strong and moving wrought in the reticent heart of the young tradesman. He approved the house which Doog took for his bride. He also guaranteed the rent. He lent the money for the furniture, and looked after Doog on the day of the marriage, that he might be brought soberly and worthily to the altar.
It was a plain-song altar indeed, for, of course, the pair were married in the little white cottage next to Nathan's, where Dahlia had lived all her life. When he saw her in bridal white, Nathan remembered with a sudden gulp a certain little toddling thing in white pinafores, whom he used to lift over the hedge that he might feed her with the earliest ripe gooseberries.
Every one said that they made a handsome pair as they stood up before the minister, who, with his back to the fire, did not know that he was singeing his Geneva gown. For, being yet young to these occasions, he wore that encumbrance because it gave him an opportunity of displaying the hood of his college degree.
The young women smiled covertly at the contrast afforded by the bridegroom and his "best-man," as they stood up together. They did not wonder at Dahlia's preference. Any of them would have done the same thing, if she had had the chance.
"What a fine grey suit!—how well it fits!"
"Yes, and that pale blue tie, how it matches the flower in his coat!"
Thus they gossiped, all unaware that it was the hard-earned money of the plain-favoured and shy "best-man" which had bought all that wedding raiment, paid for that sky-blue tie, and that even the flower in the bridegroom's button-hole had grown in Nathan Monypenny's garden, and had been plucked and affixed by his hands.
Thus it was that the story began, and this was the reason why Nathan sought carefully day by day, if by any means he might yet withdraw his friend's erring feet out of fearful pit and miry clay.
Never a morning dawned for Nathan, waking, as he had done all his life, with the hum of the ranged bee-hives under his window in his ear, or else listening to the pattering of the winter storms on his lattice, that he did not bethink himself: "It is I who am responsible. I must help him." Then he would add with a sigh: "And her."
And so help he did, for the most part in ways hidden and secret. For he dared not give money to Doog. He knew all too well where that would have gone. Neither for very pride's sake, and in reverence for the secret of his heart, could he bring himself to give money to Dahlia. Nevertheless, as by some unseen hand, the tired heartsick woman found her burden in many directions marvellously eased.
Sticks were stacked in the little wood-shed which Doog had set up in the first virtuous glow of husbandhood—and never been inside since. No hens laid like Dahlia's—and the strange thing was that they invariably laid in the night, sometimes a dozen at a time, all in one nest. Her children, playing in the hot dusk of her little garden, had more than once turned up a sovereign or a crownpiece wrapped in paper and run with it to their mother.
From Nathan's shop, also, there came flitches of bacon which were never ordered by Dahlia Carnochan—flour and meal, too, in times of stress. And it nearly always was a time of stress with Doog.
Twice a year Nathan, with much circumlocution, would extract a reluctant shilling or two from Doog on a flush pay-night, taking care that some of his cronies should hear the colloquy. Then in the morning he would send round the six months' account duly and completely receipted.
But more often than not the crony would put it all round the village that Nathan Monypenny had been dunning poor Doog Carnochan the night before; and so, among the unthinking, Nathan got the reputation of being a hard man.
"He doesna do onything for nocht! Na, sune or syne, Nathan likes to see the colour o' his siller," was said of him behind his back. And Doog's generous kindness of heart was dwelt upon as a foil to his friend's niggardliness.
"He micht hae letten puir Doog owe him the bit shillin' or twa and never missed it!" represented the general sense of the community.
But Doog himself, be his faults what they might, allowed none to speak ill of Nathan Monypenny.
Did he not half choke the life out of Davie Hoatson for some hinted comment (it was never clearly understood what), till they had to be separated by kindly violence, Doog being yet unappeased? Furthermore, did he not seek the jester for three whole days, all the time breathing fire and fury, with intent to choke the other half of a worthless life out of him?
This was the state of the case when Nathan Monypenny's life temptation came upon him. It was a grim and notable January night—the fourth day of the great thaw. The rain had gusted and blown and threshed and pelted upon those window-panes of Whinnyliggate which looked towards the west, till there was not a speck of dirt upon them anywhere, except on the inside. The snow had melted fast under the pitiless downpour, and the patient sheep stood about behind dyke-backs, or with the courage of despair pushed through holes in bedraggled hedges, to take a furtive nibble at the brown stubble of last year's cornfields.
It was half-past nine when Nathan went to his door to look out. Nathan Monypenny had built himself a lobby, and so was thought to be "upsetting." At that time for a man to wear a white collar on weekdays, or to walk with his hands out of his pockets, for a woman to be "dressed" in the forenoon, or to wear gloves except when actually entering the kirk door, for a householder to whitewash his premises oftener than once in five years, or to erect a porch to his dwelling, was held to be "upsetting"—that is, he (or she) was evidently setting up to be better than their neighbours—an iniquity as unpopular in Whinnyliggate as elsewhere in the world.
From this "upsetting" porch, then, Nathan looked out. A dash of rain, solid as if the little house had shipped a sea in a perilous ocean passage, took Nathan about the ankles and rebuked him in a very practical fashion for coming to the door, as is Galloway custom, in his "stocking-feet." It had blown in from a broken "roan" pipe, which Nathan had been intending to mend as soon as the snow went off the root.
Nathan shut the door and went within. He had seen little through the blackness save the bright lights of the "Golden Lion," and heard nothing above the long-drawnwhooof the storm save the noisy chorus of the drinking song which Doog Carnochan was singing. Nathan knew it was Doog's voice. About this he could make no mistake. Had he not listened to it long ago, when Doog sang in the village choir, knowing all the while, full well, that he was singing his Dahlia's heart out of her bosom? Nathan Monypenny sighed and thought of that desolate house down at the other end of the street where that same Dahlia would even then be putting her children to bed. He knew just the faintly wearied look there would be on the face from which the youthful roses had long since faded. He would have given all he possessed in the world to sit and watch her thus, to comfort her in her loneliness; but, resolutely putting the temptation aside, he drew the great Bible that had been his father's off its shelf and laid it on the table.
Then he brought a new candle from the shop and lighted it. But, so great was the storm without that even in that comfortable inner room the draught blew the flame about and the words seemed to dance on the printed page.
Again and again during his reading Nathan lifted his head and listened. The "wag-at-the-wa'" clock struck ten with enormous birr and clatter, beginning with a buzz of anticipation five minutes too soon, and continuing to emit applausive "curmurrings" of internal satisfaction for full five minutes after the actual stroke of the hour had died on the ear.
Nathan paused in his reading to listen for the sound of the roysterers' feet going homeward from the "Golden Lion." Doog would be one of those, most likely the drunkest and the noisiest. He must be half-way down the street by now, stumbling along with trippings and foul, irresponsible words. Now Dahlia would be opening the door to him—Nathan knew the look on her face. When he shut his eyes he could see it even more clearly. In the middle dark of the night, when he lay sleepless, staring at the ceiling, he could see it most clearly of all.
For this reason he was in no hurry to finish and put out the light; but it had to be done at last. And then with his head on the pillow Nathan Monypenny bethought himself with small satisfaction of his wasted life. Of what use was his house, his money in the bank, his eldership, the praise of men, the satisfactory state of his ledger? After all, he was a lonely man, and out there in the rain, dank and dripping, leafless and forlorn, shivered the hedge over which in golden weather he had lifted Dahlia Ogilvy. At the rose-bush in the corner she had once let him kiss her. Ah! but he must not think of that. She was Dahlia Carnochan, and her drunken husband had just reeled home to her. Yet as he sat and stared at the red peats on the hearth Nathan Monypenny could think of nothing else, and how her hair had had a flower-like scent as he drew her to him that night when (for once in his grey and barren life) the roses bloomed red and smelled sweet.
But there was something else which kept Nathan's nerves on the stretch, something that was not summed up in his thoughts of Dahlia—an apprehension of impending disaster. Even after he had gone to bed he lifted his head more than once from the pillow, for his heart, stounding and rushing in his ears, shut out all other noises. Then he sat up and listened. He seemed to hear a cry above the roar and swelter of the storm—a man's cry for help in mortal need.
Nathan rose and drew on his clothes hurriedly, yet buttoning with his accustomed carefulness an overcoat closely about him. Then, leaving a lighted candle on the table, he opened the door and stepped out into the darkness. The wind met him like a wall. The rain assailed his cheeks and stunned his ears like a volley of bullets. For a full minute he stood exposed to the broad fury of the tempest, slashed by the driving sleet, beaten and deafened into bewilderment by a turmoil of buffeting gusts. Then, recovering himself a little, he turned aside the lee of the gable of his cottage, which looked towards the north-east. Here he was more sheltered, and though the winds still sang stridently overhead, and the swirls of lashing rain occasionally beat upon him like "hale water," he could listen with some composure for a repetition of the sound which had disturbed him.
There—there it was again! A hoarse cry, ending in a curious gasp and gurgle of extinction. Nathan almost thought that he could distinguish his own name.
He put his hands to his mouth funnel-wise, to form a sort of rough-speaking trumpet. "Haloo!" he shouted. "Where are you?"
But it was an appreciable interval before any voice replied, and then it seemed more like a dying man's moan of anguish than any human tones.
"It's somebody in the water!" Nathan cried, and rushed down the little strip of garden which separated his cottage from the Whinnyliggate Burn. This was ordinarily a clear little rivulet, running lucidly brown and pleasantly at prattle over a pebbly bed. Boys fished for "bairdies" in its three-foot-deep pools. Iris and water-lily fringed the swamps where it expanded into broad sedgy ponds. But in spite of its apparent innocence, Whinnyliggate Lane was a stream of a dangerous reputation. Its ultimate source was a deep mountain lake high among the bosoming hills of Girthon, and when the rains descended and the floods came, it sometimes chanced that the inhabitants of the village awoke to find that their prattling babe had become a giant, and that the burn, which the night before had scarce covered the pebbles in its bed, was now roaring wide and strong, thirty feet from bank to bank, crumbling their garden walls, and even threatening with destruction the sacred Midtoon Brig itself, from time immemorial the Palladium of the liberties and the Parliament House of the gossip of the village.
The part of the bank down which Nathan ran was used by the village smith for the important work of "hooping wheels," or shrinking the iron "shods" on the wheels of the red farm carts. There were always a few rusty spare "hoops" of solid iron scattered about, while a generaldébrisof blacksmithery, outcast and decrepit, cumbered the burnside.
Before Nathan had gone far he found himself splashing in the rising water.
"Loch Girthon has broken its dam!" he murmured; "God help the puir soul that fa's intil Whinnyliggate Lane this nicht!"
It was nearly pitch dark, and Nathan Monypenny, standing up to his knees in the swirl of the flood, called aloud, but got no reply from any human voice. The forward hurl of the storm whooping overhead, the roar of the icy torrent fighting with the caving banks beneath, were the only sounds he could distinguish.
He was indeed on the point of leaving the water edge and regaining his comfortable cottage, when, wading through a shallow extension of the stream near the bridge, his foot struck something soft, which carried with it a curiously human suggestion. He stopped and laid his hand on the rough cloth and sodden sock which covered a man's ankle.
Though not great of stature, Nathan Monypenny was both strong and brave. He stooped and endeavoured to disentangle the boot from the iron hoop in which it was caught. Succeeding in this, he next endeavoured to pull the drowning man out of the water. But the head and upper part of the body hung over the bank, and were drawn down by the whole force of the torrent.
Again and again Nathan strove with all his might, but the water wrenched and wrestled till the body was almost snatched from his grasp. More than once, indeed, Nathan came very near going over the verge himself and sharing the fate of the unfortunate whom he was endeavouring to rescue.
At last, however, by dint of exertions almost superhuman, he succeeded in getting the man to the edge of the water, and immediately sank exhausted on the sodden grass. By-and-bye, however, he staggered up, and without ever thinking of going to seek for help, he succeeded in balancing the unconscious burden upon his shoulders and carrying it staggeringly to his own door.
The candle he had lighted was still burning, though it seemed to Nathan that he must have been a very long time away. He let the body fall upon the settle bed, and then, catching sight of the pale features, dripping ghastly under the flicker of the farthing dip, he sank dismayed on a chair.
It was Doog Carnochan—Dahlia Carnochan's husband. The story was plain enough. Stumbling homeward from the "Golden Lion," he had missed his drunken way, and wandered down by the "hooping" place to the water's edge.
Nathan stared open-mouthed. What should he do?—go for assistance? That perhaps had been wisest—yet, to leave a man in whom there might be some faint spark of life! He rose and stretched Doog's arms out over his head and back again time after time, as he had once seen a doctor do on the ice after a curling accident.
But there was no drawing of breath, nor could he distinguish the least beating of the heart. He took down the little hand-mirror, which had satisfied the frugal demands of his toilet all these years, and put it close to the drowned man's lips.
Yes—no—it could not be, yet it was just possible that there might be a faint dimming of the surface of the mirror.
Then a hot wondrous thought leaped up in Nathan Monypenny's heart—the devil in the garb of an angel of light.
What if he were simply to hold his hand—the man was as good as dead already.
And what then? There rose up before Nathan Monypenny a vision of the woman whom he had loved more than life, of a pale and weary face upon which he would rejoice to bring out the roses as in the days of old. Happiness would do it, he knew. And, like all true lovers, he believed that he alone could make that one woman happy. Douglas Carnochan? What was he but a drunkard who had blighted two lives? If a hand were stirred to help him now, he would simply go on and finish the fell work of the years. His Dahlia's face would grow yet more weary, her shoulders more bent, and her eyes would less seldom be raised from the ground till on a thrice-welcome day the grave should be opened before her. Nathan knew it all by heart.
And this man—why did he deserve to live? Had not he (Nathan) afforded him every chance? Had he not obtained situation after situation for him? Had he not, in fact, kept Doog Carnochan and his family for years? Surely God did not require from him this great final sacrifice. It was certainly a chance to do lasting good—a happy woman, a happy man, a happy home! Better, too, (so Nathan told himself) for Douglas Carnochan's children. He would be a father to them—that which this their own father had never been. He would train, instruct, place them in the world.But—he would be a murderer!