f the same form as what is now called an
Inverness cape, a blue dress-coat, with plain gilt buttons, which shone
even now in the all but darkness, and several other garments, amongst
them a kilt, and heaped them over Shargar as he lay on the mattress. He
then handed him the twopenny and the penny loaves, which were all his
stock had reached to the purchase of, and left him, saying,--

'I maun awa' to my tay, Shargar. I'll fess ye a cauld tawtie het again,
gin Betty has ony. Lie still, and whatever ye do, dinna come oot o'
that.'

The last injunction was entirely unnecessary.

'Eh, Bob, I'm jist in haven!' said the poor creature, for his skin began
to feel the precious possibility of reviving warmth in the distance.

Now that he had gained a new burrow, the human animal soon recovered
from his fears as well. It seemed to him, in the novelty of the place,
that he had made so many doublings to reach it, that there could be no
danger of even the mistress of the house finding him out, for she could
hardly be supposed to look after such a remote corner of her dominions.
And then he was boxed in with the bed, and covered with no end of warm
garments, while the friendly darkness closed him and his shelter all
round. Except the faintest blue gleam from one of the panes in the roof,
there was soon no hint of light anywhere; and this was only sufficient
to make the darkness visible, and thus add artistic effect to the
operation of it upon Shargar's imagination--a faculty certainly
uneducated in Shargar, but far, very far from being therefore
non-existent. It was, indeed, actively operative, although, like that
of many a fine lady and gentleman, only in relation to such primary
questions as: 'What shall we eat? And what shall we drink? And
wherewithal shall we be clothed?' But as he lay and devoured the
new 'white breid,' his satisfaction--the bare delight of his animal
existence--reached a pitch such as even this imagination, stinted with
poverty, and frost-bitten with maternal oppression, had never conceived
possible. The power of enjoying the present without anticipation of the
future or regard of the past, is the especial privilege of the animal
nature, and of the human nature in proportion as it has not been
developed beyond the animal. Herein lies the happiness of cab horses and
of tramps: to them the gift of forgetfulness is of worth inestimable.
Shargar's heaven was for the present gained.

CHAPTER V. THE SYMPOSI