The Gleam in the North. D. K. Broster

“so yon gentleman has already been treating the bairn—and the measures ye have taken were of his suggesting? Pray, why did ye no’ tell me that, madam?”

      Ewen plunged to the rescue. He had been longing for Archie to leave the room, but supposed the latter thought that flight might arouse suspicion. “My friend, Mr. John Sinclair from Caithness, who is paying us a visit, having a certain knowledge of medicine, was good enough . . . Let me make you known to each other—Doctor Kincaid, Mr. Sinclair.”

      ‘Mr. Sinclair from Caithness’—Ewen had placed his domicile as far away as possible—turned and bowed; there was a twinkle in his eye. But not in Doctor Kincaid’s.

      “Humph! it seems I wasna sae mickle needed, seeing ye hae gotten a leech to the bairn already! But the young man wi’ the dunt on his heid begged me sae sair to come that I listened to him, though I micht hae spared ma pains!”

      Alison and Ewen hastened in chorus to express their appreciation of his coming, and Ewen, with an appealing glance at his kinsman, began to move towards the door. One or other of the rival practitioners must certainly be got out of the room. And Archie himself now seemed to be of the same opinion.

      “A leech? no, sir, the merest amateur, who, now that the real physician has come, will take himself off,” he said pleasantly.

      “Nay, I’m through,” said Doctor Kincaid. “Ye’ve left me nae mair tae do.” And, as he seemed to be going to leave the room in ‘Mr. Sinclair’s’ company, Alison hastily appealed for more information about a detail of treatment, so that he had to stay behind. Doctor Cameron, followed by Donald, all eyes, slipped out. Ardroy and his wife, most desirous not to invite or answer any questions about their medically skilled guest, now became remarkably voluble on other subjects; and, as they went downstairs with Doctor Kincaid, pressed him to stay to a meal, hoping fervently that he would refuse—which, luckily, the doctor did.

      But outside, as he put a foot into the stirrup, he said, pretty sourly, to Ewen, “I’m glad the wean’s better, Ardroy, but I’d hae been obleeged tae ye if ye hadna garred me come all these miles when ye already had a medical man in the hoose. There was nae need o’ me, and I’m a gey busy man.”

      “I am very sorry indeed, Doctor,” said Ewen, and could not but feel that the reproach was merited. “The fact is that——” He was just on the point of exonerating himself by saying that Mr. Sinclair had not yet arrived on Tuesday, nor did they know of his impending visit, but, thinking that plea possibly imprudent, said instead, “I had no knowledge that Mr. Sinclair was so skilled. We . . . have not met recently.”

      “Humph,” remarked Doctor Kincaid, now astride his horse. “A peety that he doesna practise; but maybe he does—in Caithness. At ony rate, he’ll be able tae exercise his skill on your brither-in-law—if ye mean tae do ony mair for that young man. For ye’ll pardon me if I say that ye havena done much as yet!”

      Ewen’s colour rose. To have left Hector in that state on a lonely road at nightfall—even despite the measures he had taken for his removal—did indeed show him in a strange and unpleasant light. But it was impossible to explain what had obliged him to do it, and the more than willingness of Hector to be so left. “Can I have him brought hither from Inverlair without risk to himself?” he asked.

      “Ay,” said Kincaid, “that I think ye micht do if ye send some sort of conveyance—the morn, say, then ye’ll hae him here Saturday. He’ll no’ walk this distance, naturally—nor ride it. And indeed if ye send for him he’ll be better off here under the care of yer friend Sinclair, than lying in a farm sae mony miles fra Maryburgh; I havena been able to get to him syne. Forbye, Ardroy,” added the doctor, looking at him in a rather disturbing manner, “the callant talked a wheen gibberish yon nicht—and not Erse gibberish, neither!”

      French, of course; Ewen had already witnessed that propensity! And he groaned inwardly, for what had Hector been saying in that tongue when lightheaded? It was to be hoped, if he had forsaken ‘Malbrouck’ for more dangerous themes, that Doctor Kincaid was no French scholar; from the epithet which he had just applied to the language it sounded as though he were not. However, the physician then took a curt farewell, and he and his steed jogged away down the avenue, Ewen standing looking after him in perplexity. He did not like to leave Hector at Inverlair; yet if he fetched him here he might be drawing down pursuit upon Archie—supposing that suspicion were to fall upon Hector himself by reason of his abstracted papers.

      However, by the time he came in again Ewen had arrived at a compromise. Archie should leave the house at once, which might be more prudent in any case. (For though Doctor Kincaid would hardly go and lay information against him at Fort William . . . what indeed had he to lay information about? . . . he might easily get talking if he happened to be summoned there professionally.) So, as it wanted yet five days to Archie’s rendezvous with Lochdornie, and he must dispose himself somewhere, he should transfer himself to the cottage of Angus MacMartin, Ewen’s young piper, up at Slochd nan Eun, on the farther side of the loch, whence, if necessary, it would be an easy matter to disappear into the mountains.

      Doctor Cameron raised no objections to this plan, his small patient being now out of danger; he thought the change would be wise, too, on Ewen’s own account. He stipulated only that he should not go until next morning, in case Keithie should take a turn for the worse. But the little boy passed an excellent night, so next morning early Ewen took his guest up the brae, and gave him over to the care of the little colony of MacMartins in the crofts at Slochd nan Eun, where he himself had once been a foster-child.

      (2)

      The day after, which was Saturday, Ewen’s plan of exchanging one compromising visitor for another should have completed itself, but in the early afternoon, to his dismay, the cart which he had sent the previous day to Inverlair to fetch his damaged brother-in-law returned without him. Mr. Grant was no longer at the farm; not, reported Angus MacMartin, who had been sent in charge of it, that he had wandered away lightheaded, as Ewen immediately feared; no, the farmer had said that the gentleman was fully in his right mind, and had left a message that his friends were not to be concerned on his behalf, and that they would see him again before long.

      A good deal perturbed, however, on Alison’s account as well, Ewen went up to Slochd nan Eun to tell Doctor Cameron the news. He found his kinsman sitting over the peat fire with a book in his hand, though indeed the illumination of the low little dwelling had not been designed in the interests of study. Doctor Cameron thought it quite likely, though surprising, that Hector really had fully recovered, and added some medical details about certain blows on the head and how the disturbance which they caused was often merely temporary.

      “Nevertheless,” he concluded, “one would like to know what notion the boy’s got now into that same hot pate of his. You young men——”

      “Don’t talk like a grandfather, Archie! You are only twelve years older than I!”

      “I feel more your senior than that, lad!—How’s the bairn?”

      “He is leaving his bed this afternoon—since both you and your colleague from Maryburgh allowed it.”

      Doctor Cameron laughed. Then he bit his lip, stooped forward to throw a peat on the fire, and, under cover of the movement, pressed his other hand surreptitiously to his side. But Ewen saw him do it.

      “What’s wrong with you, Archie—are you not well to-day?”

      “Quite well,” answered his cousin, leaning his elbows on his knees. “But my old companion is troublesome this afternoon—the ball I got at Falkirk, you’ll remember.”

      “You’ll not tell me that you are still carrying that in your body!” cried Ewen in tones of reprobation.

      Archie was pale, even in the peat glow. “How about the gash you took at Culloden Moor?” he retorted. “You were limping from it that morning in Glen Mallie; I saw it, but I don’t make it a matter for reproach, Eoghain! ’Tis impossible to have the bullet extracted, it’s too awkwardly lodged,