aved well, never moving, showing us how meek and gentle he could
be, and occasionally, in his sleep, letting us know that he was
demolishing some adversary. He took a walk with me every day, generally
to the Candlemaker Row; but he was sombre and mild; declined doing
battle, though some fit cases offered, and indeed submitted to sundry
indignities; and was always very ready to turn and came faster back, and
trotted up the stair with much lightness, and went straight to that
door.

Jess, the mare, had been sent, with her weather-worn cart, to Howgate,
and had doubtless her own dim and placid meditations and confusions, on
the absence of her master and Rab, and her unnatural freedom from the
road and her cart.

For some days Ailie did well. The wound healed "by the first intention;"
for as James said, "Our Ailie's skin's ower clean to beil." The students
came in quiet and anxious, and surrounded her bed. She said she liked to
see their young, honest faces. The surgeon dressed her, and spoke to her
in his own short, kind way, pitying her through his eyes, Rab and James
outside the circle--Rab being now reconciled, and even cordial, and
having made up his mind that as yet nobody required worrying, but as you
may suppose _semper paratus_.[111-3]

So far well; but four days after the operation my patient had a sudden
and long shivering, a "groosin'," as she called it. I saw her soon
after; her eyes were too bright, her cheek colored; she was restless,
and ashamed of being so; the balance was lost; mischief had begun.

On looking at the wound, a blush of red told the secret; her pulse was
rapid, her breathing anxious and quick, she wasn't herself, as she said,
and was vexed at her restlessness. We tried what we could, James did
everything, was everywhere; never in the way, never out of it. Rab
subsided under the table into a dark place, and was motionless, all but
his eye, which followed every one. Ailie got worse; began to wander in
her mind, gently; was more demonstrative in her ways to James, rapid in
her questions, and sharp at times. He was vexed, and said, "She was
never that way afore; no, never."

For a time she knew her head was wrong, and was always asking our
pardon--the dear, gentle old woman; then delirium set in strong, without
pause. Her brain gave way, and then came that terrible spectacle,

"The intellectual power, through words and things,
Went sounding on its dim and perilous way;"

she sang