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'.
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