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"Up with it, and we will talk about that afterwards." Letting go the steering oar, I hastened to Sim's assistance, while the raft whirled in the current as she went down the mighty river. We hoisted the sail, hauled in the braces, and I took my place on the platform again. After no little labor at the steering oar, I succeeded in putting the raft before the wind, thus heading her up the river.
"Well, doctor," said the major, "what do you think of your patient? I hope you are better, Sim?" "Thanky kindly, sir," said Private Sim, screwing up a terrible face. "I was thinking which I ought to prescribe," said the doctor, very seriously. "Sim's is a peculiar case. There's pressure on the brain, and also congestion of the vascular system of the spinal column." "Indeed!" said the major.
Gordon stood rigidly; his eyes were bright points of wrath, his arm rose, with a finger indicating the world without. The former slowly opened the door, stepped out upon the porch; he stayed a moment more, then closed himself from sight. The stir and heat of Sim's presence died quickly away; the house was without a sound; General Jackson lay like an effigy in ravelled black and buff wool.
What with excitement, meat and ale, and the dregs of a great fatigue, Sim's mind was hazy, and his cheerfulness returned. He thought only on his exploits. He had done great things he, Sim o' the Cleuch and every man in the Forest would hear of them and praise his courage.
Sim's distress was, if possible, even greater than before. It seemed as if the gloomy forebodings of the villagers were actually about to be realized, and Sim's mind was really giving way.
But Sim lacked virile strength. The disease of melancholy had long kept its seat at his heart, and that any shadow of doubt could rest on Rotha as a result of a misdeed, or supposed misdeed, of his had never yet occurred to Sim's mind. And truly Rotha was above the blight of withering doubt.
About the middle of the forenoon, while our raft party were all gathered in the parlor with the housekeeper, he was shown into the room. Not a word had been said to him as to the nature of the business upon which he was called, and his eyes opened almost as wide as Sim's when he saw Flora and me. "My dear little Flora!" exclaimed Clarence, as he glanced from me to her, after he entered the room.
That night I paid my rent with your father's money, and then I went home." "It was my father's money, then not Wilson's?" said Ralph. "It was as I say," Sim answered, as though hurt by the implication. Ralph put his hand on Sim's shoulder. Self-condemned, this poor man's conscience was already a whirlpool that drew everything to itself.
Hurrah!" shouted he. "Silence, Sim," I added. I threw myself on my knees, dripping with water as I was. "O Lord God, I thank thee for saving my life, and for saving Sim's life. In my heart I thank thee, O Lord. May it be a good lesson to him and me. May we both try to be better boys, and obey thy holy law as we have never done before."
Ailie Sim's public was on the road-side about a mile before him, but there would be a parcel of young fellows there on the Saturday night, and that was a bar to civil conversation. Other "gudemen and gudewives," as the farmers and their dames are termed in Scotland, successively presented themselves to his imagination.
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