Page:Buchan - The Thirty-Nine Steps (Grosset Dunlap, 1915).djvu/160

 bed in five days, it took, me some time to get my legs again.

He went out each morning, leaving me milk for the day, and locking the door behind him; and came in in the evening 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 Portland 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 ecclesiastical spree, I gathered. One day he produced my belt from a lock-fast drawer. "There's a terrible heap o' siller in't," he said. "Ye'd better count it to see it's a' there."

He never even inquired my name. I asked him if anybody had been around making inquiries subsequent to my spell at the road-making. "Aye, there was a man in a motor-cawr. He