Witch Wood by John Buchan

Author:John Buchan [Buchan, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical Fiction
Publisher: epubBooks Classics
Published: 2015-07-26T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter XII

The Man With the Squint

The sermon which was to indict by name the sinners was not preached in the kirk of Woodilee the next Sabbath.

For the day after his return from Kirk Aller a post reached the manse from the Pleasance of Edinburgh which in an hour set David on his horse riding hard for the capital. There was plague in the city, and his father was sick of it. It was the plague in a new form, for death did not come quickly; the patient lay for days in a high fever, afflicted with violent headaches and shiverings, and a contraction of muscles and nerves, and then, in nine cases out of ten, passed into a rigor which meant death. There was no eruption on the bodies, and the physicians were at a loss in the matter of treatment. But it was scarcely less deadly than the older visitations, and the dead–bell rang hourly, and the dead–cart rumbled day and night on the cobbles.

David found the old man conscious, but very clear that he was near his end. The family doctor had bled him copiously, applied leeches to his head, and brought a horrid regiment of drugs and vomitories. The son pled with his father to receive them patiently. "God works by means," he told him, "as Christ cured the blind man with clay and spittle, and what remedy could be more rude than these?"

"Aye, but it was the Lord that laid them on, Davie," said the patient, "and no an auld wife like McGlashan." So he sent the physician packing, and engaged a new one, a certain young Crosbie from the Monk's Vennel, who had studied in France and had at least the merit of letting a sick man die in peace. Instead of smothering the patient under bedclothes, he kept him lightly covered, ordered the window to be open day and night, and let him drench his system with small ale. It is likely that under any treatment the old man would have died, for he was in his seventy– fourth year and had long been ailing, and the plague only speeded the decay of age. But under the new regimen his last days were less of a martyrdom. His head remained clear and he could speak with his son—chiefly of his mother and his childhood.

David lodged not in the city, but in the village of Liberton, and walked in daily to his father's bedside. He read the Scriptures to him and prayed with him, as his duty demanded, but he felt a certain shyness at inquiring into his father's state towards God. Nor was the old man communicative. "I've made my peace lang syne," he said, "and I read my title clear, so there's no need of death– bed wark for me." But he was full of anxiety for his son. "You've chosen a holy calling, Davie lad, and I'm blithe to think you've got a downsetting in our calf–country. Man, there were Sempills in the mill o' the Roodfoot since the days of Robert Bruce.

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