Davies, 'You, my dear, are
the cause of this.'
He had another particularity, of which none of his friends ever ventured
to ask an explanation. It appeared to me some superstitious habit, which
he had contracted early, and from which he had never called upon his
reason to disentangle him. This was his anxious care to go out or in at
a door or passage by a certain number of steps from a certain point, or
at least so as that either his right or his left foot, (I am not certain
which,) should constantly make the first actual movement when he came
close to the door or passage. Thus I conjecture: for I have, upon
innumerable occasions, observed him suddenly stop, and then seem to
count his steps with a deep earnestness; and when he had neglected or
gone wrong in this sort of magical movement, I have seen him go back
again, put himself in a proper posture to begin the ceremony, and,
having gone through it, break from his abstraction, walk briskly on, and
join his companion. A strange instance of something of this nature, even
when on horseback, happened when he was in the isle of Sky.
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