The sun
gaed doun amang unco-lookin' clouds; it fell as mirk as the pit; no a
star, no a breath o' wund; ye couldnae see your han' afore your face,
and even the auld folk cuist the covers frae their beds and lay pechin'
for their breath. Wi' a' that he had upon his mind, it was gey and
unlikely Mr. Soulis wad get muckle sleep. He lay an' he tummled; the
gude, caller bed that he got into brunt his very banes; whiles he slept,
and whiles he waukened; whiles he heard the time o' nicht, and whiles a
tike yowlin' up the muir, as if somebody was deid; whiles he thocht he
heard bogles claverin' in his lug, an' whiles he saw spunkies in the
room. He behooved, he judged, to be sick; an' sick he was--little he
jaloosed the sickness.
At the hinder end, he got a clearness in his mind, sat up in his sark on
the bedside, and fell thinkin' ance mair o' the black man an' Janet.
He couldnae weel tell how,--maybe it was the cauld to his feet,--but it
cam' in upon him wi' a spate that there was some connection between
thir twa, an' that either or baith o' them were bogles. And just at that
moment, in Janet's room, which was neist to his, there cam' a stamp o'
feet as if men were wars'lin', an' then a loud bang; an' then a wund
gaed reishling round the fower quarters of the house; an' then a' was
ance mair as seelent as the grave.
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