“I do very well, I thank you,” said I, as cold as ice.

Alan flushed darkly.  “I’ll not offer it again,” he said.  “I’m not a patient man, David.”

“I never said you were,” said I, which was exactly the rude, silly speech of a boy of ten.

Alan made no answer at the time, but his conduct answered for him.  Henceforth, it is to be thought, he quite forgave himself for the affair at Cluny’s; cocked his hat again, walked jauntily, whistled airs, and looked at me upon one side with a provoking smile.

The third night we were to pass through the western end of the country of Balquhidder.  It came clear and cold, with a touch in the air like frost, and a northerly wind that blew the clouds away and made the stars bright.  The streams were full, of course, and still made a great noise among the hills; but I observed that Alan thought no more upon the Kelpie, and was in high good spirits.  As for me, the change of weather came too late; I had lain in the mire so long that (as the Bible has it) my very clothes “abhorred me.”  I was dead weary, deadly sick and full of pains and shiverings; the chill of the wind went through me, and the sound of it confused my ears.  In this poor state I had to bear from my companion something in the nature of a persecution.  He spoke a good deal, and never without a taunt.  “Whig” was the best name he had to give me.  “Here,” he would say, “here’s a dub for ye to jump, my Whiggie!  I ken you’re a fine jumper!” And so on; all the time with a gibing voice and face.

I knew it was my own doing, and no one else’s; but I was too miserable to repent.  I felt I could drag myself but little farther; pretty soon, I must lie down and die on these wet mountains like a sheep or a fox, and my bones must whiten there like the bones of a beast.  My head was light perhaps; but I began to love the prospect, I began to glory in the thought of such a death, alone in the desert, with the wild eagles besieging my last moments.  Alan would repent then, I thought; he would remember, when I was dead, how much he owed me, and the remembrance would be torture.  So I went like a sick, silly, and bad-hearted schoolboy, feeding my anger against a fellow-man, when I would have been better on my knees, crying on God for mercy.  And at each of Alan’s taunts, I hugged myself.  “Ah!” thinks I to myself, “I have a better taunt in readiness; when I lie down and die, you will feel it like a buffet in your face; ah, what a revenge! ah, how you will regret your ingratitude and cruelty!”

All the while, I was growing worse and worse.  Once I had fallen, my leg simply doubling under me, and this had struck Alan for the moment; but I was afoot so briskly, and set off again with such a natural manner, that he soon forgot the incident.  Flushes of heat went over me, and then spasms of shuddering.  The stitch in my side was hardly bearable.  At last I began to feel that I could trail myself no farther:  and with that, there came on me all at once the wish to have it out with Alan, let my anger blaze, and be done with my life in a more sudden manner.  He had just called me “Whig.”  I stopped.