"Ye are great friends now, are ye not?" I asked.
"He is the nearest friend I have in all the world," he answered. "We are both rhymesters," he added with a smile. "But this letter is a business one, for I have advices from France for which he is waiting, and they must be sent in cipher because of the trouble brewing in that country. If I do not get the letter off to-night he may not receive it for a fortnight, as he accompanies his Majesty to the country on Friday."
"Why not send it by special carrier?" I asked.
"It's not important enough for that," he answered lightly, as he crossed to Nancy's writing-room, which had been given to his use as an office during her absence at Allan-lough.
Left with the evening on my hands, I set out for Creech's with no weightier purpose than to divert myself and have some merry talk over a bowl of punch; but, as I entered, Blake, who was throwing dice with Dundas at the other end of the room, called to me to ask if I had heard whether Mr. Pitcairn was better.
"Is he ill?" I asked in surprise, as it was but the morning before he was at Stair.
"He was carried from the court this afternoon," he answered, and at the words I took up my coat and started for Pitcairn's house to see if there was some help that I could offer. I found him wrapped in flannels in front of a great fire in his own chamber, in as vile a frame of mind as I have ever seen any human being, bearing his indisposition as unphilosophically as I might have done myself, and I spent a highly uncomfortable, dry, and sober evening with him, escaping from his society somewhere at the back of the midnight with a feeling of relief and the intention of getting something to drink. Going down, unattended, I pulled the house-door hard after me to close it for the night, when Pitcairn called me from the window above to ask that I stop by the chemist's and hurry along a draught for which he was waiting.
A light and tricksey snow had begun to fall while I was in the house; snow which blew in gusts, now from one side, now from another; snow which came crosswise, to be caught by the high wind and carried up to the tops of the houses; and over all and around all the fog of the sea and beaten bells sounding far away, as of ships in trouble or as warnings from the shore.
I pulled my hat over my eyes, turned the collar of my great-coat around my ears, and took to the middle of the road, looking round warily from side to side to make sure that I was followed by none, for the town had been greatly excited during this winter by statements in the public prints of mysterious disappearances. Folks had been suddenly missed from their own doorways, of whom no subsequent traces could be found; visitors entering the city were lost sight of; Irish haymakers on their road to the agricultural districts of the lowlands had disappeared from their companions as if by magic, and suspicions of a dreadful nature were abroad.[9 ]
It was a uncanny night, black as chaos; and with my mind excited by these horrid tales, I hurried along to the chemist's, whose man was outside putting up the shutters. I stated my errand to the doctor, who said he would carry the medicine himself, as Mr. Pitcairn's house lay on the road to another patient with whom he had promised to pass the night. This occurrence seems of small moment, and I but set it down to show how slight a thing may turn many lives, for it was this very dose of rhubarb and jalap which brought about much of the trouble toward which we were drawing.