gine, then, the
moon that arose on the boy when, having pulled a ragged and thumb-worn
book from among those of James Hewson the cottar, he, for the first
time, found himself in the midst of The Arabian Nights. I shrink from
all attempt to set forth in words the rainbow-coloured delight that
coruscated in his brain. When Jessie Hewson returned, she found him
seated where she had left him, so buried in his volume that he did not
lift his head when she entered.

'Ye hae gotten a buik,' she said.

'Ay have I,' answered Robert, decisively.

'It's a fine buik, that. Did ye ever see 't afore?'

'Na, never.'

'There's three wolums o' 't about, here and there,' said Jessie; and
with the child on one arm, she proceeded with the other hand to search
for them in the crap o' the wa', that is, on the top of the wall where
the rafters rest.

There she found two or three books, which, after examining them, she
placed on the dresser beside Robert.

'There's nane o' them there,' she said; 'but maybe ye wad like to luik
at that anes.'

Robert thanked her, but was too busy to feel the least curiosity about
any book in the world but the one he was reading. He read on, heart and
soul and mind absorbed in the marvels of the eastern skald; the stories
told in the streets of Cairo, amidst gorgeous costumes, and camels, and
white-veiled women, vibrating here in the heart of a Scotch boy, in the
darkest corner of a mud cottage, at the foot of a hill of cold-loving
pines, with a barefooted girl and a baby for his companions.

But the pleasure he had been having was of a sort rather to expedite
than to delay the subjective arrival of dinner-time. There was, however,
happily no occasion to go home in order to appease his hunger; he had
but to join the men and women in the barley-field: there was sure to be
enough, for Miss Lammie was at the head of the commissariat.

When he had had as much milk-porridge as he could eat, and a good slice
of swack (elastic) cheese, with a cap (wooden bowl) of ale, all of
which he consumed as if the good of them lay in the haste of their
appropriation, he hurried back to the cottage, and sat there reading The
Arabian Nights, till the sun went down in the orange-hued west, and
the gloamin' came, and with it the reapers, John and Elspet Hewson, and
their son George, to their supper and early bed.

John was a cheerful, rough, Roman-nosed, black-eyed man, who took snuff
largely, and was not careful to remov