I had neat little scales, which would do better; and that his attention
to every thing which falls in his way, and his uncommon desire to be
always in the right, would make him weigh, if he knew of the
particulars: it was right therefore for me to weigh them, and let him
have them only in effect. I however continued to ride by him, finding he
wished I should do so.

As we passed the barracks at Bernera, I looked at them wishfully, as
soldiers have always every thing in the best order: but there was only a
serjeant and a few men there. We came on to the inn at Glenelg. There
was no provender for our horses; so they were sent to grass, with a man
to watch them. A maid shewed us up stairs into a room damp and dirty,
with bare walls, a variety of bad smells, a coarse black greasy fir
table, and forms of the same kind; and out of a wretched bed started a
fellow from his sleep, like Edgar in _King Lear_[444], '_Poor Tom's a
cold_[445].' This inn was furnished with not a single article that we
could either eat or drink[446]; but Mr. Murchison, factor to the Laird
of Macleod in Glenelg, sent us a bottle of rum and some sugar, with a
polite message, to acquaint us, that he was very sorry that he did not
hear of us till we had passed his house, otherwise he should have
insisted on our sleeping there that night; and that, if he were not
obliged to set out for Inverness early next morning, he would have
waited upon us. Such extraordinary attention from this gentleman, to
entire strangers, deserves the most honourable commemoration.

Our bad accommodation here made me uneasy, and almost fretful. Dr.
Johnson was calm. I said, he was so from vanity. JOHNSON. 'No, Sir, it
is from philosophy.' It pleased me to see that the _Rambler_ could
practise so well his own lessons.

I resumed the subject of my leaving him on the road, and endeavoured to
defend it better. He was still violent upon that head, and said, 'Sir,
had you gone on, I was thinking that I should have returned with you to
Edinburgh, and then have parted from you, and never spoken to you more.'

I sent for fresh hay, with which we made beds for ourselves, each in a
room equally miserable. Like Wolfe, we had a 'choice of
difficulties[447]'. Dr. Johnson made things easier by comparison. At
M'Queen's, last night, he observed that few were so well lodged in a
ship. To-night he said, we were better than if we had been upon the
hill. He lay down buttoned up in his great coat.