Surely the woman was in
her dotage. Fool! Why did the feckless old idiot not know that the dog
_must_ have been mad? The man was drinking heavily now, goaded by grim
terror of that very thing, and sodden with drink. Body and soul the old
nurse was hers, she believed. Then, what so easy to make as a mistake in
her treatment of the wound--to dress it with an irritating salve instead
of with a healing one? what so easy as to inflame a mind already
stricken by fear and maddened by drink? _Must_ she speak more plainly
the thing that had arisen in her mind?
* * * * *
Day followed day, and soon rumour spread and grew to certainty that of a
surety the dog was mad that had bitten the master. From his room, they
said, came the sound of ravings and of shouts. Folk spoke below their
breath of how it was said he foamed at the mouth, and few dared venture
near.
At last there came a night when Elspeth's son crept stealthily by the
back stairs to aid his mother in holding down the sick man in the
paroxysms of his madness; and the guilty wife, cowering alone in her
room, stopped her ears lest awful sounds should reach them.
* * * * *
Summer was spent, and Tweed murmured seaward between banks ruddy and
golden with autumn's foliage.
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