ears ago, and since his daughter's marriage he lived alone.

For the better part of ten days he did all the rough nursing I needed.
I simply wanted to be left in peace while the fever took its course,
and when my skin was cool again I found that the bout had more or less
cured my shoulder. But it was a baddish go, and though I was out of
bed in five days, it took me some time to get my legs again.

He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day, and locking the
door behind him; and came in in the evening to sit silent in the
chimney corner. Not a soul came near the place. When I was getting
better, he never bothered me with a question. Several times he fetched
me a two days' old SCOTSMAN, and I noticed that the interest in the
Portland Place murder seemed to have died down. There was no mention
of it, and I could find very little about anything except a thing
called the General Assembly--some ecclesiastical spree, I gathered.

One day he produced my belt from a lockfast drawer. 'There's a
terrible heap o' siller in't,' he said. 'Ye'd better coont it to see
it's a' there.'

He never even sought my name. I asked him if anybody had been around
making inquiries subsequent to my spell at the road-making.

'Ay, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He speired whae had ta'en my
place that day, and I let on I thocht him daft. But he keepit on at
me, and syne I said he maun be thinkin' o' my gude-brither frae the
Cleuch that whiles lent me a haun'. He was a wersh-lookin' sowl, and I
couldna understand the half o' his English tongue.'

I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I felt myself
fit I decided to be off. That was not till the twelfth day of June,
and as luck would have it a drover went past that morning taking some
cattle to Moffat. He was a man named Hislop, a friend of Turnbull's,
and he came in to his breakfast with us and offered to take me with him.

I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging, and a hard job I had
of it. There never was a more independent being. He grew positively
rude when I pressed him, and shy and red, and took the money at last
without a thank you. When I told him how much I owed him, he grunted
something about 'ae guid turn deservin' anither'. You would have
thought from our leave-taking that we had parted in disgust.

Hislop was a cheery soul, who chattered all the way over the pass and
down the sunny vale of Annan. I talked of Galloway markets