“I can no!” he snapped. “Go to the hotel!”
There were freshly baked loaves plainly in sight in the next hovel where I stopped.
“Have you nothing to eat in the house?” I demanded.
“No, mon; I’m no runnin’ a shop.”
“But you can sell me a loaf of that bread?”
“No!” bellowed the Scot. “We hovna got any. Go to the hotel. Yon’s the place for tooreests.”
I tried at the other huts; but nobody would sell me any bread. So, though I had already tramped and climbed twenty-five miles, I struck off through the sea of mud that passed for a road, toward Aberfoyle, fifteen miles distant. The rain continued. There was another lake, and then the road stretched away across a dreary field. I became so weary that I forgot I was hungry—then so drowsy that I could hardly force my legs to carry me on. Dusk fell, then darkness. It was past eleven when I splashed into Aberfoyle, too late to find an open shop. I hunted until I found an inn, rang the bell until I awoke a servant, and went supperless to bed.
Late the next morning I hobbled out into the streets of Aberfoyle to the station, and took the train for Sterling. Two days later, in the early afternoon, I reached Edinburgh. Following the signs that pointed the way to the poor man’s section, I brought up in Haymarket Square, a place well known in history. Many places in Europe that were once the palaces of kings and queens are the slums of to-day. A crowd of careless-looking men, in groups and in pairs, sauntered back and forth at the foot of a statue in the center of the square. One of them, as ragged and uncombed as his hearers, was making a speech. Another, in his shirt sleeves, wandered from group to group, trying to sell his coat for the price of a night’s lodging.
A sorry-looking building in front of me bore the sign: “Edinburgh Castle Inn. Clean, capacious beds, 6 shillings.”
I went inside, and found the place so dirty that I was glad to escape again into the street. A big policeman marched up and down with an air of importance.