"'Tis the eve of the eighth day of September," he said, moistening his plump thumb to turn over the leaf that he might not be mistaken in the month. "Thank God, I have yet two days!" cried Wat, and fell forward upon the shoulder of the curate. CHAPTER XLIX THE CURATE OF DALRY Peter McCaskill received the weight deftly, as though he had been accustomed all his life to be charged down upon without a moment's notice by unconscious men. "Easy does it, my lord," he said; "ye will soon be better. He's been owertaken, ye see--a wee drappie does it on an empty stomach," he explained to Jean Gordon. "Often hae I warned my folk--aye, even frae the pulpit, the very horns o' the altar, as it were--no' to tak' drink on an empty stomach!" "Empty fiddlestick! Lay the laddie here!" cried Jean Gordon; "do ye no' see that the lad is deein' on his feet? He hasna seen drink for weeks, I'll wager--no, nor Christian meat either, by a' appearances." She stopped to take off his boots. The soaked remnants of the sole came away in her hand. "Mercy!" she cried, "the poor lad maun hae been in sore want. Tak' haud o' him soothly and tentily, Peter." And so the kindly old lady, peering closely with her dim, short-sighted eyes, and the burly, red-gilled curate undressed Wat Gordon gently, and laid him in the bed on which his mother had died--the flanking pillars of which were hacked with the swords of the troopers from Carsphairn who had come to seek him after the sentence of outlawry. "Peety me!" said Jean Gordon, "what will we do wi' the puir laddie? I'll get him some broth gin he can tak' them." So, in a trice, Wat, having come a little to himself, was sitting up and taking "guid broth o' the very best, wi' a beef-bane boiled to ribbons intil't," as Jean Gordon nominated the savory stew, while she sat on the bed and fed him in mouthfuls with the only silver spoon Grier of Lag had left in the once well-plenished house of Lochinvar. Wat sat fingering his gold heart and looking about him. He seemed like a man who has risen to the surface and finds himself unexpectedly in a boat after a nightmare experience of death in perilous deeps of the sea. "Is there a horse about the house?" queried Wat, presently, looking at Jean Gordon out of his hollow, purple-rimmed eyes. She thought that he still dreamed or doted. "A horse, my laddie!" she cried. "How should there be a horse aboot the house of Lochinvar? The stables were never so extensive that I heard o'; and, troth, Rob Grier o' Lag, deil's lick-pot that he is, has no' left mony aboot the estates. There's a plough-horse ower by Gordiestoun, if that's what ye want." And in her heart she said, "It's a lee, Guid forgie me. But onything to pacify the lad and get him asleep."