“I fear no,” replied Binny. “Ye maun just pray; but I have heard my father say that it came on him after he had been confined with an ill-working stomach to the house, and exercise drove it away. Ye’ve been sitting ower close. Take scouth for a day. Awa’ ower to Burntisland, and get payment from John Sprunt o’ the three pounds he owes for his last suit. Stay ower the night. I say nothing about the jolly boose ye’ll have thegither, but it may drive thae fumes and fancies out o’ your head. Come ower with the first boat in the morning, and I will have your breakfast ready for you.” The prudence of this advice David was not slow to see, though he had, maugre his simplicity, considerable misgivings about the affair of the letter; nor did he altogether feel the absolute conviction that he was under the influence of the foresaid mysterious power. But independently of the prudence of her counsel, he felt it as a command, and therefore behoved to obey. For we may as well admit that David might doubt of the eternal obligation of a certain decalogue by reason of its being abrogated; but as for the commands of Mrs Robina, they were subject to no abrogation, and certainly no denial whatever. So David went and dressed himself in his “second-best”--a particular mentioned here with an after-view--and having got from the hands of her, who was thus both wife and medical adviser, a drop of spirits to help him _on_, and the merrillygoes _off_, he set forth on his journey. Proceeding down Leith Wynd, he found himself in Leith Walk; but however active his limbs, thus relieved on so short a warning from “the board,” and however keen and far-sighted his eyes, as they scanned all the people he met, he could not shake off certain doubts whether the individuals he met were in reality creatures of flesh and blood, or mere visions. The sacred words of Mrs Robina were a kind of winged beliefs, which, by merely striking on the ear, performed for him what many a man has much trouble in doing for himself--that is, thinking; so that upon the whole the tendency of his thoughts was in a great degree favourable to sadness and terror. The sigh was heaved again and again; being sometimes for a longer period delayed, as the hope of a jolly boose with his friend Sprunt held a partial sway in his troubled mind. But by and by the activity required by his search for a boat, the getting on board, the novelty of the sail, the undulating movements, and all the interests which belong to a “traveller by sea and land,” drove away the cobwebs that hung about the brain; and by the time he got to Burntisland he was much as he used to be. But, alas, he little knew that this journey, propitious as it appeared, was not calculated to produce the wonderful effects expected from it.