Scotland/Scots > Wilson's tales of the Borders and of Scotland > Volume 3

o6
TALES OP THE BORDERS.
son, whom I understood afterwards to be another nephew
of the wounded man, of the name of Walter T (the son
of a brother, while my companion, the messenger, was the
son of a sister)—bending over him, and endeavouring to
stop a wound, made by a pistol bullet, near the region of
the heart. The work of the assassin was not entirely
finished: there was still a fluttering uncertain life in the
body, which shewed itself rather by its struggles against
the overpowering energies of death, than by any proper
living action; a hemorrhage in the lungs, paralysing their
vitality, and filling up the air cells, fought, inch by inch,
the province of the breath, which forced, at intervals, its
way, by a horrid crepitation, through the aperture in
the side, while, as the wound was producing fresh sup¬
plies, it was not difficult to see how the contest would
terminate. In the pangs of choking, the wretched man
heaved himself about, and lifted his hands to his mouth
in the vain effort to force an entry to that element so sig¬
nally the food of life. The peculiar, and to us doctors,
well-known barking noise of the cynanche trachialis, (or as
the name implies, the strangling of a dog,) a few torsels of
the body, and shivers extending from head to foot, preceded
a sigh as deep as the relentless following blood in the lungs
would permit; and, in a few moments, he expired.
Leaving the body to the charge of the housekeeper, I
called Walter T to accompany me to where the indi¬
viduals stood with the lights, with the view of tracing the
foot-prints in the snow to the hiding place of the cool-
murdercr, who had committed apparently so gratuitous a
crime. When we arrived at the spot, several other people
had tr fleeted, among whom were some sheriff officers oil
their way to the scene of the murder, but who stopped to
join in., or rather superintend this investigation. The foot;,
prints r-.'ound the spot where the people had collected were
too m ;\.h mixed and confused to be capable of being traced