It was as well, for the weather changed before midday to a thick drizzle of rain. I found shelter below an overhanging rock in the crook of a burn, where a drift of dead brackens made a tolerable bed. There I managed to sleep till nightfall, waking very cramped and wretched, with my shoulder gnawing like a toothache. I ate the oatcake and cheese the old wife had given me and set out again just before the darkening.
I pass over the miseries of that night among the wet hills. There were no stars to steer by, and I had to do the best I could from my memory of the map. Twice I lost my way, and I had some nasty falls into peat-bogs. I had only about ten miles to go as the crow flies, but my mistakes made it nearer twenty. The last bit was completed with set teeth and a very light and dizzy head. But I managed it, and in the early dawn I was knocking at Mr Turnbull’s door. The mist lay close and thick, and from the cottage I could not see the highroad.
Mr Turnbull himself opened to me—sober and something more than sober. He was primly dressed in an ancient but well-tended suit of black; he had been shaved not later than the night before; he wore a linen collar; and in his left hand he carried a pocket Bible. At first he did not recognize me.
“Whae are ye that comes stravaigin’ here on the Sabbath mornin’?” he asked.
I had lost all count of the days. So the Sabbath was the reason for this strange decorum.
My head was swimming so wildly that I could not frame a coherent answer. But he recognized me, and he saw that I was ill.
“Hae ye got my specs?” he asked.
I fetched them out of my trouser pocket and gave him them.
“Ye’ll hae come for your jaicket and westcoat,” he said. “Come in-bye. Losh, man, ye’re terrible dune i’ the legs. Haud up till I get ye to a chair.”
I perceived I was in for a bout of malaria. I had a good deal of fever in my bones, and the wet night had brought it out, while my shoulder and the effects of the fumes combined to make me feel pretty bad. Before I knew, Mr Turnbull was helping me off with my clothes, and putting me to bed in one of the two cupboards that lined the kitchen walls.