I felt an
over-mastering desire to set forth and visit him. This was surprising,
as hitherto I had rather avoided and hated him. Now something drew me to
the Manse. At first I resisted my inclination, but a chance word led me
to yield to it impulsively. Since my illness I had not once attended
church. Moved by a violent distaste for the religious service, that was
novel in me, I had frankly avowed my intention of keeping away. But, as
I did not go to the kirk, I missed seeing Dr Wedderburn; and I wanted to
see him. One day, leaning by chance against a stone dyke in the Glen of
Ogilvy, smoking a pipe and enjoying the soft air of Spring as it blew
over the rolling moorland, I heard two ploughmen exchange a fragment of
gossip that made excitement start up quick within me.

One said:--

"The doctor's failin'. Man, he was fairly haverin' last Sabbath, on and
on, wi'out logic or argeyment or sense."

The other answered:--

"Ay; he's greatly changed. He's no the man he was. It fairly beats me; I
canna mak' it out. Ye've heard that--" And here he lowered his voice and
I could not catch his words.

I turned away from the wall, and walking swiftly, set out for the Manse
with a busy mind. The afternoon was already late, and when I gained a
view of the Manse, a cold grey house standing a little apart in a grove
of weary-looking sycamores, one or two lights smiled on me from the
small windows that stared upon the narrow and muddy road. The minister's
study was on the right of the hall door; and, as I pulled the bell, I
observed the shadow of his head to dance upon the drawn white blind, a
thought fantastically, or with a palsied motion, I fancied. The
yellow-headed maidservant admitted me with a shrunken grin, that
suggested wild humour stifled by achieved respect, and I was soon in the
minister's study. Then I saw that Doctor Wedderburn was moving up and
down the room, and that his head was going this way and that, as he
communed in a loud voice with himself. My entrance checked him as soon
as he observed me, which was not instantly, as, at first, his back was
set towards me and the mood-swept maid. When he turned about, his
discomposure was evident. His gaze was troubled, and his manner, as he
shook hands with me, had in it something of the tremulous, and was
backward in geniality. We sat down on either side of the fire, the tea
service and the hot cakes, loved of the doctor, between us. At first we
talked warily of such thi