“If I had not tried to be honest it would never have come to this,” he reflected. “Because my clothes are shabby and my boots in holes they judge me. Well, it’s what the poor always have to put up with!”
He dragged himself to his feet, and, noticing for the first time some steps in the wall and a path leading down to the river, thought he would hide his misery and escape from further comments. He was parched with thirst, too, but to reach the water proved hopeless. Though the river was swollen with the recent storm, it went surging and foaming below him among the rocks in a way which made him feel sick and giddy. He just staggered on by the narrow, rocky track and the wooden gallery till he reached the smoother path beyond, which led into a little wood, and here once more his powers deserted him, and he again lost consciousness.
When he came to himself he was lying uneasily across the path, his head on the mossy bank and his feet hanging perilously over the water. It just crossed his mind that he might easily enough have lost his life had he fallen in the opposite direction, and he wondered dreamily whether it would not have simplified matters, yet, wretched as he was, he felt somehow glad to be alive. Away in the distance he could see Ben Ledi rising in its tranquil beauty beyond the foaming river. There was a rocky islet, too, in the centre of the flood, with a tall, stately fir-tree growing upon it, the dark foliage strongly contrasting with the white foam and the vivid green of the trees on the further bank. To his fancy, the rushing river seemed to ring out the tune of
“I to the hills will lift mine eyes,”
as he had heard it sung on the previous day at Fortingall Kirk.
All sorts of half-misty memories thronged his fevered brain. He thought he was walking again with Angus Linklater as he carried the ugly little black lamb; or he was out boating with his father; or he was at rehearsal, and Mrs. Skoot was wrathfully haranguing him. Through all these feverish fancies, there remained the ever-present consciousness of physical misery, and the rankling recollection of the words he had heard from the two men who had passed him on the road. Presently, yet another fancy took possession of him. He was sitting with Evereld in a theatre, and could distinctly hear the actual words of Shylock’s part:
“What, what, what? ill luck, ill luck?”
“I thank God, I thank God. Is’t true, is’t true?”
“I thank thee good Tubal; good news! good news! ha,
ha, where? In Genoa?”