She had been carried every step of the way home, Cecilia and Fullarton riding one on either side, and, while someone had gone to Kaims for a doctor, another had pushed his tired horse forward to Morphie to get a carriage. But, when it met them a few miles from the end of their march, it had been found impossible to transfer her to it, for consciousness was returning and each moment was agony. The men had expressed their willingness to go on, and Robert, though stiff from his fall, had taken his turn manfully. A mattress had been spread on the large dining-room table and on it they had laid the hurdle with its load. Another doctor had been brought from the town to assist his partner in the examination he thought fit to make before risking the difficult transport upstairs. Fullarton, when it was over, had taken one of the men apart. It might be hours, it might even be a couple of days, he was told. It was likely that there would be suffering, but there would be no pain at the end, he thought. The spine, as well as other organs, was injured. And so, at last, they had carried her up to her own room. Cecilia was anxious to have one on the ground-floor made ready, but she had prayed to be taken to the familiar place, and the doctors, knowing that nothing could avail now, one way or the other, had let her have her will. She had never had any doubts about her own condition. Before Cecilia nerved herself to tell her the verdict that had been passed, she had spoken. ‘Cecilia, my little girl,’ she had said, ‘what will become of you? What will you do? If it were not for you, child, God knows I should not mind going. But I can do nothing for you.’ ‘If I could only go with you,’ whispered Cecilia, laying her face down on the sheet. ‘Perhaps I was wrong,’ continued Lady Eliza, ‘perhaps I have done harm. I knew how little I could leave you; there were others who would have taken you. And you were such a nice little girl, Cecilia, but so thin and shy ... and I shall not see you for a long time ... we went to see the horses ... look, child!... tell James to come here. Can’t you see that the mare’s head-collar is coming off?... Run, Cecilia, I tell you!’ In the intervals between the pain and delirium which tortured her for the first few nights and days, her one cry was about Cecilia--what would become of Cecilia? Through the dark hours the girl sat soothing her and holding the feverish hand as she listened to the rambling talk. Now she was with the horses, now back in the old days when her brother was alive, now talking to Fullarton, now straying among the events of the past months; but always returning again to what weighed on her mind, Cecilia’s future. Occasionally she would speak to her as though she were Fullarton, or Fordyce, or even James the groom. Worst of all were the times when her pain was almost more than she could bear.