It was past eight in the evening ere Edinburgh was reached, and, anxious to be housed as soon as possible, she left her box at the coach office and made her way giddily to her old lodgings where the landlady had agreed to keep her belongings until her return from her holiday. They were up a common stair that echoed and re-echoed to the slam of the street door and her own wavering steps. The rooms were high up and more than once Marrion had to pause for breath, and when at last she rang she had to lean against the door, to recover herself. There was no answer. She rang again and waited--waited an interminable time, until someone coming down the common stair said briefly-- "Ye're wastin' yer time, mum. Mistress McGillivray's deid." "Dead!" she echoed feebly. "Aye, last week, and the polis hae lockit up the place till the heirs be known," replied the man, as he passed on, rousing the echoes again. Marrion followed him, realising that she must seek another lodging. Easy in a way, yet difficult, since in that quarter of the old town many of the houses were not over-respectable. Still it was only for a night, and bed she must have as soon as possible. So she closed with an exorbitant offer in cash of a fairly clean attic made by a loose-lipped lady who smelt rather of whisky, and five minutes later, having locked herself in, threw herself, still half-dressed, on the truckle bed. There the landlady next morning, having placidly unlocked the door with a master key, found her, flushed, breathless and delirious--briefly, down with a sharp attack of pneumonia. Infirmaries and district nurses being not as yet, Mother Gilchrist, as her _clientèle_ called her, coolly took possession of her lodger's purse, sent for an apothecary doctor from round the corner, and thereinafter treated the patient with a certain amount of rough kindness, sending some of her other lodgers, girls with haggard faces and loose hair, to sit with her, and going up occasionally with water-gruel and still more watery beef-tea. But Marrion Paul was strong, and so, after a fortnight's struggle in the valley, she came out of it wan and emaciated, and lay looking at a bit of torn paper on the wall, that all through her fever dreams had flapped like a sail in a boat in which she and Duke were drifting out to sea, and wondering how much of what she remembered was true and how much dreams. "I must get up," she said suddenly, when Mother Gilchrist appeared in company with water-gruel. "And will you give me my purse, please? I put it under my pillow, I think, but it isn't there." Mother Gilchrist laughed a loose-lipped laugh and produced the purse from her pocket. "Yon's the purse, my dearie; but there's naethin' in it the now. What wi' rent an' doctors an' physic, forby nursin', what else is to be expectit?" Marmie stared aghast. "But there was nigh ten pun' in till't," she protested.