Page 97 - the-thirty-nine-steps

ning 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 Port-
land 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 ecclesias-
tical 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’. He was a wersh-lookin’ sowl, and I couldna under-
stand the half o’ his English tongue.’
I was getting restless those last days, and as soon as I felt
myself fit I decided to be off. That was not till the twelfth day
of June, and as luck would have it a drover went past that
morning taking some cattle to Moffat. He was a man named
Hislop, a friend of Turnbull’s, and he came in to his break-
fast with us and offered to take me with him.
I made Turnbull accept five pounds for my lodging, and
a hard job I had of it. There never was a more independent
being. He grew positively rude when I pressed him, and shy

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