But no comfort was found in Elspeth—­no help.  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.

In a house in Edinburgh, not far removed from Holyrood, clad in deep black, there lingered restlessly a Border woman, for whom the months had dragged with halting foot since a certain spring night near Norham.

“Will he come?” to herself she whispered for the hundredth time.  “Surely he must come.”

And as she waited, a flush leapt to her cheek at the sound of a step nearing her door.  A man entered, grave, almost stern, of face, and she sprang to her feet with a cry, and with outstretched arms, that sank slowly to her side, as her eyes questioned those of her visitor.

“You have come,” she said unsteadily; “you have come.  And you know ... my husband ... is dead?”

“Rumours had reached me,” he answered coldly.  “When did he die?”

“It was in the spring, five months since.  He was bitten by a dog, and he died ... raving mad.”

“Bitten by a dog?” he queried.

“Do you not remember?  The dog you brought with you bit him.  He never recovered.  And ... and he died mad.”

“It was my dog that bit him?  And he died mad in consequence of that bite?  I do not understand.  My dog is alive and well; he was never mad.”

Her eyes fell.  What need to plead further!  She knew now too well that his love for her was indeed dead and buried.  Had a spark of it yet lived in his heart, suspicion could have found no place.  Gone now was all pride, all control; at his feet she threw herself, clasping her knees.

“Have you no pity—­no pity?  He is dead, I tell you.  I always cared only for you.”