Except these two, I had, during those five years of wandering, made no new friend. My appalling ugliness, mitigated as it was by time, had, together with the reserve it taught me, to a great degree isolated me. But perfect independence has its pleasures, and I was not an unhappy man. Until the end of the fourth year I had not even a servant, and I avoided all women; at that point, however, I yielded to the fatal human weakness of attaching to one's self some fellow-creature, and engaged as my personal attendant a cosmopolitan individual, whose qualifications for the post consisted in the fact that he had been a lawyer's clerk in England, a cow-boy in Mexico, had had charge of a lunatic at Naples, and was a deserter from the Austrian army. Plain to begin with, deeply marked with smallpox, and disfigured by a sabre-cut across the nose, he was even uglier than I, a fact which seemed, from the frequency with which he alluded to it, to gratify him as much as it did me. His name was John Ferguson, but it did not occur to me to connect his name with his origin until the time came to prepare for my fifth annual visit to Scotland. 'I should have thought one plain countenance about you was enough, sir, without your wanting to see them at every turn,' he said ill-temperedly, when told to pack up. 'I suppose you come from Auld Reekie yourself, then, since you're so reluctant to go back to it?' 'Well, sir, and where's the harm of being born there, provided you get away from it as early as you can, and never go back to it till you can help!' 'Why, Ferguson, that's spoken like a true patriot.' 'Indeed, sir, I hope I am wise enough not to hold a place the better for having produced such a poor creature as myself,' said John, who could always give a good account of himself in an argument. But once established at Larkhall, Ferguson found himself so comfortable that, at the end of the fortnight's visit of my friends, he again made objection to packing up, which I was in the mood to listen to indulgently. 'It seems a pity like to leave the place till the shooting season's over, don't it, sir?' he hazarded one morning. 'Yes, Ferguson, perhaps it does.' 'The Continent wouldn't run away if it was left to look after itself a few weeks longer, would it, sir?' he went on. 'No, Ferguson, perhaps it wouldn't,' said I. 'Shall I leave the packing till to-morrow, sir?' he then asked. 'Well, yes, I think you may.' From which it is clear that Ferguson had already been shrewd enough to assume a proper authority over his nominal master.