Part 21 (1/2)

”For the doctor.”

All at once David Hautville gave a great start. ”Why, you're talking!” he cried out. ”You couldn't speak.”

Lot nodded vaguely.

”You're better, then?” cried the other, with a sharp look at him.

Lot nodded again.

”When did she come here?”

”Just now.”

”Same d.a.m.ned nonsense, I suppose. She's gone mad. If the law don't finish that fellow, I will!”

Lot motioned towards a chair. ”Sit down,” he whispered.

”She coming back with the doctor?”

”Yes,” Lot coughed.

David Hautville settled into a chair with a surly grunt. He watched Lot cough, holding to his straining chest, and thought that he must be worse, else he would not have sent for the doctor. He resolved to wait and take his daughter home with him, by force if necessary, but with no more disturbance of this man, who might be sick unto death.

Seeing Lot cast his eyes about as if looking for something, and make a motion towards the table at his side, he rose up quickly and got him a spoonful of the cough mixture in a bottle thereon, and administered it to him gently.

”Don't you touch my wet coat,” said David Hautville, ”or yo'll get a chill,” and he held himself carefully away from the sick man.

When Lot lay back, panting, he returned to his chair and did not speak again. The two remained in silence until there came the jingle of bells, the tramp of horses' feet, and the voice of men out in the yard.

Lot lay still, with his eyes closed. David Hautville raised his head and looked at the window, thick with frost. Presently the door was opened softly, and the doctor came in, with Parson Fair and Jonas Hapgood. Madelon, in her snow-powdered red cloak, came last. David started up fiercely when he saw her; then he stood back and waited.

The doctor bent over Lot and began counting his pulse. He eyed him sharply.

”The pendulum still swings,” said Lot.

The doctor started. ”You can speak, then!” he cried out, brusquely.

Lot smiled.

The doctor was old, and his long struggle with birth and death had begun to tell upon him. He had already visited Lot that morning, after a hard night with a patient, back in the hills. His face was haggard under its sharp gray bristle of beard; his eyes fierce, like an old dog's, with fatigue and hunger. He had just reached home and sat down to his breakfast when this new call came. He had thought Lot was dying from Madelon's imperative summons, and she had not undeceived him. She was growing cunning in her desperate efforts to save Burr Gordon.

”What in thunder did ye send for me again for?” he snapped. This old country doctor was never chary of plain speaking, and his brusqueness had increased his popularity. Many of his patients were simple countrywomen, who had greater belief in that which they feared. They repeated his half-savage speeches to each other, and added, ”He's a good doctor, if he does speak out.”

Lot only smiled that covert smile of his, which seemed to imply some wisdom of humor beyond the ken of others. ”I ought to be dying,” he said, with grim apology. ”I ought not--to have disturbed you all for a less reason than to witness my final exit, but I want you to witness something else.” Lot Gordon spoke quite strongly and connectedly.

”What?” asked the doctor, irritably.

”I want to make a statement,” said Lot Gordon.

There was a pause. Jonas Hapgood, with his look of heavy facetiousness, slightly tempered now with curiosity, stood lounging into his great snowy boots at the foot of the bed. Parson Fair, the consolation for the dying which he had thought to administer still in his mind, which could not swerve easily, his slender height in his black surtout inclined towards the sick man with gentle courtesy, waited. Margaret Bean peered around the bed-curtain. Madelon stood near the doctor, her face white as if she were dead, and a look of awful listening upon it. In the background David Hautville, wrathful and wondering, towered over them all.