Suffering and its Results.  
When the news that young Duncan had been shot was brought to Ben Nevis, the effect on his father was much more severe than might have been expected, considering their respective feelings towards each other.
 
It was late in the evening when the news came, and the old man was seated in what he styled his smoking-room, taking his evening glass of whisky and water.
 
“Elspie,” he said, in a subdued voice, on being told, “help me up to my bed.”
 
This was so very unusual a request that Elspie was somewhat alarmed by it, as well as surprised—all the more so that the old man left the room without finishing either his pipe or glass. Still, she did not suppose that anything serious would come of it. A night’s rest, she thought, would do away with the evils of the shock.
 
“Dear father,” she said, as she kissed him at parting, “do believe that God is waiting to be gracious: that He really means it when He says, ‘Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’ And, consider—we have no reason to suppose that dear Duncan’s wound is very dangerous.”
 
“Goot-night, Elspie,” was all the reply.
 
Next morning McKay did not make his appearance at the usual breakfast-hour, and, on going to his room, they found him lying speechless in his bed, suffering under a stroke of paralysis.
 
He soon recovered the power of speech, but not the use of his limbs, and it became evident ere long that the poor man had received a shock which would probably cripple him for life. Whatever may have been his secret thoughts, however, he carefully concealed them from every one, and always referred to his complaint as, “this nasty stiff feeling about the legs which iss a long time of goin’ away—whatever.”
 
In a few days, Fergus returned from the plains, bringing his brother in a cart, which had been made tolerably easy by means of a springy couch of pine-branches. They did not tell him at first of his father’s illness, lest it should interfere with his own recovery from the very critical condition in which he lay. At first he took no notice of his father’s non-appearance, attributing it to indifference; but when he began slowly to mend, he expressed some surprise. Then they told him.
 
Whatever may have been his thoughts on the subject, he gave no sign, but received the information—as, indeed, he received nearly all information at that time—in absolute silence.
 
Fortunately, the bullet which struck him had passed right through his side, so that he was spared the pain, as well as the danger, of its extraction. But, from his total loss of appetite and continued weakness, it was evident that he had received some very severe, if not fatal, internal injury. At last, very slowly, he began to grow a little stronger, but he was a very shadow or wreck of his former self. Nevertheless, the more sanguine members of the family began to entertain some faint hope of his recovery.
 
Of course, during these first days of his weakness his sister Elspie nursed him. She would, if permitted, have done so night and day, but in this matter she had to contend with one who was more than a match for her. This was Old Peg, the faithful domestic.
 
“No, no, dearie,” said that resolute old woman, when Elspie first promulgated to her the idea of sitting up all night with Duncan, “you will do nothin’ of the sort. Your sainted mother left your father an’ Fergus an’ yourself to my care, an’ I said I would never fail you, so I can’t break my promise by letting you break your health. I will sit up wi’ him, as I’ve done many a time when he was a bairn.”
 
It thus came to pass that Elspie nursed her brother by day, and Old Peg sat up with him at night. Of course the duties of the former were considerably lightened by the assistance rendered by various members of the family, as well as friends, who were ever ready to sit by the bedside of the wounded man and read to or chat with him. At such times he was moderately cheerful, but when the night watches came, and Old Peg took her place beside him, and memory had time to commence with him undisturbed, the deed of which he had had been guilty was forced upon him; Conscience was awakened, and self-condemnation was the result. Yet, so inconsistent is poor humanity that self-exculpation warred with self-condemnation in the same brain! The miserable man would have given all he possessed to have been able to persuade himself that his act was purely one of self-defence—as no doubt to some extent it was, for if he had not fired first Perrin’s action showed that he would certainly have been the man-slayer. But, then, young McKay could not shut his eyes to the fact that premeditation had, in the first instance, induced him to extend his hand towards his gun, and this first act it was which had caused all the rest.
 
Often during the wakeful hours of the night would the invalid glance at his nurse with a longing desire to unburden his soul to her, but whenever his eye rested on her calm, wrinkled old visage, and he thought of her deafness, and the difficulty of making her understand, he abandoned his half-formed intention with a sigh. He did not, indeed, doubt her sympathy, for many a time during his life, especially when a child, had he experienced the strength and tenderness of that.
 
After attending to his wants, it was the habit of Old Peg to put on a pair of tortoise-shell spectacles and read. Her only book was the Bible. She read nothing else—to say truth, at that time there was little else to read in Red River. The first night of her watch she had asked the invalid if he would like her to read a few verses to him.
 
“You may if you like, Peg,” he had replied. “You know it iss little I care for releegion, for I don’t believe in it, but you may read if you like—it may amuse me, an’ will help to make the time pass—whatever.”
 
Thus the custom was established. It was plain that the old woman counted much on the influence of the simple Word of God, without comment, for every time she opened the Bible she shut her eyes and her lips moved in silent prayer before she began to read.
 
The invalid was greatly tickled with this little preliminary prayer, and would have laughed aloud if he had not been too weak to do so. As time went on, however, he became interested in the Gospel narratives in spite of himself, and he began to experience some sort of relish for the evening reading—chiefly because, as he carefully explained to Elspie, “the droning o’ the old wumman’s voice” sent him to sleep.
 
Meanwhile the other invalid—Duncan senior—progressed as slowly as did his son. The nursing of him was undertaken chiefly by Jessie Davidson—the sympathetic Jessie—who was established as an inmate of Ben Nevis pro tem, for that very purpose. She was ably seconded—during part of each day—by Billie Sinclair, between whom and the old Highlander there grew up at that time a strong friendship. For many weeks poor old McKay was confined to his bed, and then, when allowed to rise, he could only walk across his room with the aid of the strong arm of his stalwart son Fergus. To sit at his open window and look out at his garden was his principal amusement, and smoking a long clay pipe his chief solace. Like Duncan junior, old Duncan was quite willing to hear the Bible read to him now and then, by Jessie Davidson and more especially by Little Bill; but the idea of deriving any real comfort from that book never for a moment entered his head.
 
One day Elspie came to him and said:
 
“Daddy, Dan wants to see you to-day, if you feel well enough.”
 
“Surely, my tear. It iss not the first time he will be seein’ me since I got the stroke.”
 
“He has brought you a present—something that he has made—which he hopes will be useful to you.”
 
“What is it, Elspie?”
 
“You shall see. May I tell him to come in and bring it with him?”
 
“Surely, my tear. Let him come in. It iss always goot for sore eyes to see himself—whatever.”
 
Elspie went out. A few minutes later there was heard in the passage a strange rumbling sound.
 
“What in all the world iss that?” said the old man to Little Bill, who happened to be his companion at the time.
 
“It sounds like wheels, I think,” said Billie.
 
The door opened as he spoke, and Dan Davidson entered, pushing before him an invalid chair of a kind that is familiar enough in the civilised world, but which was utterly unknown at that time in those regions.
 
“Goot-mornin’, Tan; what hev you got there? Iss it a surprise you will be givin’ me?”
 
“It is a chair, sir, which will, I hope, add a good deal to your comfort,” said Dan. “I made it myself, from the memory-model of one which I once saw in the old country. See, I will show you how it acts. Push me along, Jessie.”
 
Dan sat down in the chair as he spoke, and his sister Jessie, who entered at the moment, pushed him all about the room with the greatest ease.
 
“Well, well!” said the amused invalid. “Ye are a clever man, Taniel. It iss a goot contrivance, an’ seems to me fery well made. Could Little Bill push it, think ye? Go an’ try, boy.”
 
Little Bill found that he could push Dan in the chair as easily as Jessie had done it.
 
“But that is not all,” said Dan. “See—now I will work the chair myself.”
 
So saying he laid his hands on the two large wheels at either side—which, with a little wheel behind, supported the machine—and moved it about the room, turned it round, and, in short, acted in a very independent manner as to self-locomotion.
 
“Well, now, that iss goot,” exclaimed the pleased invalid. “Let me try it, Tan.”
 
In his eagerness the poor man, forgetting for a moment his helpless condition, made an effort to rise, and would certainly have fallen off the chair on which he was seated if Elspie had not sprung to his assistance.
 
“Come, there’s life in you yet!” said Dan as he assisted the old man into the wheel-chair. “Put your hands—so. And when you want to turn............