80 The Naturalist of Cumbrae. 



few days longer. After two or three days' interval, 

 one morning he dressed himself ready for leaving. 

 When the doctor came round and saw his intention, 

 a colloquy ensued, which Robertson had good reason 

 to remember, and which he records as follows : 



"The doctor said, ' If you go now,you will most likely 

 be back again.' 



" I answered that if I were once home, I would not 

 be back again, come what would. 



" He wished to know if I had any complaint of 

 not being properly attended to. 



" I said that I had none, but the reverse ; that I 

 had been very kindly treated, and every attention 

 had been paid me, but that I had taken a longing to 

 be at home, and to go out into the green fields which 

 were close to my mother's door. 



" ' Well,' he said, ' you must take care.' " 



Accordingly David left the Royal Infirmary and 

 made his way home in a coach to Merns, the village 

 in which his mother had been living for some years 

 past, at a distance of about six miles from Glasgow, 

 on the road to Kilmarnock. It proved to be a case 

 of most haste, worst speed, as the experience of the 

 physician had foreseen. Although on reaching home 

 David felt tired and nothing more, after he had got 

 to bed an unpleasant pain began to make itself felt 

 in his neck at the back of his head. By the morning 

 the pain was much worse and extending upon his 

 head. A doctor was called in, and he at once pro- 

 nounced it to be erysipelas of a bad kind, as it turned 

 out in fact to be. It crept up over his head, causing 

 great pain, down over his brow and face, shutting his 



