As I have said, I never saw a more beautiful countenance or one more subdued to settled quiet.  “Ailie,” said James, “this is Maister John, the young doctor; Rab’s freend, ye ken.  We often speak aboot you, doctor.”  She smiled, and made a movement, but said nothing; and prepared to come down, putting her plaid aside and rising.  Had Solomon, in all his glory, been handing down the Queen of Sheba at his palace gate he could not have done it more daintily, more tenderly, more like a gentleman, than did James the Howgate carrier, when he lifted down Ailie his wife.  The contrast of his small, swarthy, weather-beaten, keen, worldly face to hers—­pale, subdued, and beautiful—­was something wonderful.  Rab looked on concerned and puzzled, but ready for anything that might turn up—­were it to strangle the nurse, the porter, or even me.  Ailie and he seemed great friends.

“As I was sayin’ she’s got a kind o’ trouble in her breest, doctor; wull ye tak’ a look at it?” We walked into the consulting-room, all four; Rab grim and comic, willing to be happy and confidential if cause could be shown, willing also to be the reverse, on the same terms.  Ailie sat down, undid her open gown and her lawn handkerchief round her neck, and without a word, showed me her right breast.  I looked at and examined it carefully—­she and James watching me, and Rab eyeing all three.  What could I say? there it was, that had once been so soft, so shapely, so white, so gracious and bountiful, so “full of all blessed conditions,”—­hard as a stone, a centre of horrid pain, making that pale face with its gray, lucid, reasonable eyes, and its sweet resolved mouth, express the full measure of suffering overcome.  Why was that gentle, modest, sweet woman, clean and lovable, condemned by God to bear such a burden?

I got her away to bed.  “May Rab and me bide?” said James. “You may; and Rab, if he will behave himself.”  “I’se warrant he’s do that, doctor;” and in slank the faithful beast.  I wish you could have seen him.  There are no such dogs now.  He belonged to a lost tribe.  As I have said, he was brindled and gray like Rubislaw granite; his hair short, hard, and close, like a lion’s; his body thick set like a little bull—­a sort of compressed Hercules of a dog.  He must have been ninety pounds’ weight, at the least; he had a large blunt head; his muzzle black as night, his mouth blacker than any night, a tooth or two—­being all he had—­gleaming out of his jaws of darkness.  His head was scarred with the records of old wounds, a sort of series of fields of battle all over it; one eye out, one ear cropped as close as was Archbishop Leighton’s father’s; the remaining eye had the power of two; and above it, and in constant communication with it, was a tattered rag of an ear, which was forever unfurling itself, like an old flag; and then that bud of a tail, about one inch long, if it could in any sense be said to be long, being as broad as long—­the mobility, the instantaneousness of that bud were very funny and surprising, and its expressive twinklings and winkings, the intercommunications between the eye, the ear, and it, were of the oddest and swiftest.