I must sometimes have spoken or cried out, for I remember I was now and then amazed at being answered; yet I was conscious of no particular nightmare, only of a general, black, abiding horror--a horror of the place I was in, and the bed I lay in, and the plaids on the wall, and the voices, and the fire, and myself.
The barber-gillie, who was a doctor too, was called in to prescribe for me; but as he spoke in the Gaelic, I understood not a word of his opinion, and was too sick even to ask for a translation.

I knew well enough I was ill, and that was all I cared about.
I paid little heed while I lay in this poor pass.

But Alan and Cluny were most of the time at the cards, and I am clear that Alan must have begun by winning; for I remember sitting up, and seeing them hard at it, and a great glittering pile of as much as sixty or a hundred guineas on the table.

It looked strange enough, to see all this wealth in a nest upon a cliff-side, wattled about growing trees.

And even then, I thought it seemed deep water for Alan to be riding, who had no better battle-horse than a green purse and a matter of five pounds.
The luck, it seems, changed on the second day.