Explore "John Burnet of Barns" by John Buchan on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The next period in my life lies still in my mind like a dream. I have a remembrance of awaking and an impression of light, and strange faces, and then all was dark again. Of those days my memory is a blank; there is nothing but a medley of sickness and weariness, light and blackness, and the wild phantoms of a sick man's visions.
When I first awoke to clear consciousness, it was towards evening in a wild glen just below the Devil's Beef Tub at the head of the Annan. I had no knowledge where I was. All that I saw was a crowd of men and women around me, a fire burning and a great pot hissing thereon. All that I heard was a babel of every noise, from the discordant cries of men to the yelping of a pack of curs. I was lying on a very soft couch made of skins and cloaks in the shade of a little roughly-made tent. Beyond I could see the bare hillsides rising shoulder on shoulder, and the sting of air on my cheek told me that it was freezing hard. But I was not cold, for the roaring fire made the place warm as a baker's oven.