“Is there any sort of thing I could have to put a little grip into me, doctor?” he asked, and was ordered beef-tea, various patent foods and eggs, all things very difficult to come by on the stern hillside.

“It seems to me, Janet, if I could have some of these foods and drugs they advertise so much I might get some strength to bear it,” he said.  So she got him half a dozen of the different well-advertised things to try.  He had them arrayed on a table by his bed, and took immense pleasure in reminding her or Marcella when it was time for them.  The doctor, who guessed that money was scarce, suggested that Aunt Janet should sell some of the old oak furniture, and to her surprise a man from London thought it worth while, from her description, to come all the way to Lashnagar to look at it.  She loved it because it enshrined the family story; the scratches on the refectory table showed where heavy-clad feet had been planted as Lashcairns of old had pledged each other in fiery bowls.  The heavy oak chairs had each a name and a history, but until the man from London came Aunt Janet had not realized their value.  So they went away, taken quietly and stealthily out of the house for fear Andrew should know.  In the book-room only a few books were left to keep the dusty pennant a melancholy companionship.

But the patent foods and drugs did no good; they reminded Marcella irresistibly of the soil and water she had laid hopefully round the bursting apple tree.  As he lay once, with all the wheels of life running at half rate after a sedative, he said to Marcella, who had been reading to him: 

“I feel as if I’m not in my body, Marcella.  Oh, Marcella, help me to get a grip on my body!  I can’t make it do what I’m tellin’ it to do!  Look!” and he held up one gaunt arm feebly, to let it drop a minute later.  “Look!  Marcella—­once I could break men with my hands!”

She stared at him, choking.  There was nothing she could think to say.  In her mother’s weakness her lips had overflowed with tendernesses; for her father she could only feel a terrified, inarticulate pity.  It was not sympathy.  She could not understand enough to sympathize.  It was the same sort of hungry, brooding pity she used to feel for the hungry beasts on the farm.

“Marcella, do you think if I were to eat a lot of meat I’d be stronger?” he asked hopefully.  “Oh, make me stronger!—­give me something,” and suddenly raising himself in bed, he threw his arms about her and, with his grey head on her shoulder, sobbed desolately.  She held him, stroking his head, aching to find words, but utterly dumb with terror.  And when, later, they got him the food he craved, he could not eat it.  Turning from it in disgust, he prayed: 

“There is nothing left, but only Thou, O Lord.  No longer art Thou my shield and buckler, for no longer can I fight.  Thou hast laid me very low, O Lord.  Thou hast made me too weak to fight longer; Thou hast bruised me so that I cannot live save in pain; Thou hast laid me very low.”