The words were scarcely out of his mouth when the inn bell rang, and the landlord was called away, and, being otherwise occupied, did not return. After waiting for him a considerable time, Skirving became impatient, and, making another effort to shake off his fears, applied the whip to his horses, and proceeded on his journey. For a time his mind was so much confused that he could not contemplate the whole import of the extraordinary coincidence he had just witnessed; but as he proceeded and came to a quieter part of the road, his thoughts reverted to the statements of James Cowie--who, he was now satisfied, had been quite sober--to the looks and extraordinary question of John Sharpe, and to the intention of his wife in providing him with the cordial. As he pondered on this strange accumulation of according facts, he again felt his pulse, which had again risen to the height it had attained during the prior paroxysm. The affair had now assumed a new aspect. It was impossible that this concurrence of circumstances could be fortuitous. He was now much afraid that he was ill--very ill indeed; perhaps under the incipient symptoms of typhus or brain fever, or small-pox, or some other dreadful disease. As these thoughts rose in his mind, he grew faint, and would have sat down; but he felt a reluctance to stop his carts, and a feeling of shame struggled against his conviction, and kept him walking. This state of nervous excitement remained, in spite of many efforts he made to throw off his fears. Yet he was bound to admit that he felt no symptoms of pain or sickness. By and by the feeling of alarm began again to decay, and by the time he got eight or ten miles farther on his road, he had conjured up a good many sustaining ideas and arguments, whereby he at least contrived to increase the quantum of _doubt_ of his being really ill. He rallied a little again; but the temporary elevation was destined to be succeeded by another depression, which, in its turn, gave place to another accession of relief; and thus he was kept in a painful alternation of changing fancies, until he was within a mile and a half of the next place of call--a little house at some distance from the Plasterers' Inn. He had hitherto been progressing at a very slow rate, and was in the act of raising his hand to apply the whip to his horses, when he saw before him Archibald Willison, a sort of itinerant cloth merchant, a native of Dundee, with whom he was on terms of intimacy. They had met often on the road, and had gossiped together over a little refreshment at the inns where the carrier stopped. At this particular time, George Skirving would rather have avoided his old friend; for he was under a depression of spirits, and felt also a disinclination or fear, he could not account for, to submit his face and appearance to the lynx eye of the travelling merchant. He had, however, no choice.