had submitted
to be dum, and her rightful dam was henceforth and for ever debarred.

He rose, rushed out of the house, down through the garden, across two
fields and a wide road, across the links, and so to the moaning lip of
the sea--for it was moaning that night. From the last bulwark of the
sandhills he dropped upon the wet sands, and there he paced up and
down--how long, God only, who was watching him, knew--with the low
limitless form of the murmuring lip lying out and out into the sinking
sky like the life that lay low and hopeless before him, for the want at
most of twenty pounds a year (that was the highest bursary then) to lift
him into a region of possible well-being. Suddenly a strange phenomenon
appeared within him. The subject hitherto became the object to a new
birth of consciousness. He began to look at himself. 'There's a sair bit
in there,' he said, as if his own bosom had been that of another mortal.
'What's to be dune wi' 't? I doobt it maun bide it. Weel, the crater had
better bide it quaietly, and no cry oot. Lie doon, an' hand yer tongue.
Soror tua haud meretrix est, ye brute!' He burst out laughing, after a
doubtful and ululant fashion, I dare say; but he went home, took up
his auld wife, and played 'Tullochgorum' some fifty times over, with
extemporized variations.

The next day he had to translate a passage from Tacitus; after executing
which somewhat heartlessly, he did not open a Latin book for a whole
week. The very sight of one was disgusting to him. He wandered about the
New Town, along Union Street, and up and down the stairs that led to the
lower parts, haunted the quay, watched the vessels, learned their forms,
their parts and capacities, made friends with a certain Dutch captain
whom he heard playing the violin in his cabin, and on the whole,
notwithstanding the wretched prospect before him, contrived to spend
the week with considerable enjoyment. Nor does an occasional episode of
lounging hurt a life with any true claims to the epic form.

The day of decision at length arrived. Again the black-robed powers
assembled, and again the hoping, fearing lads--some of them not lads,
men, and mere boys--gathered to hear their fate. Name after name was
called out;--a twenty pound bursary to the first, one of seventeen to
the next, three or four of fifteen and fourteen, and so on, for about
twenty, and still no Robert Falconer. At last, lagging wearily in
the rear, he heard his name, went up li