The autumn passed, and the winter was at hand--a terrible time to the
old and ailing even in tracts nearer the sun--to the young and healthy
a merry time even in the snows and bitter frosts of eastern Scotland.
Davie looked chiefly to the skating, and in particular to the pleasure
he was going to have in teaching Mr. Grant, who had never done any
sliding except on the soles of his nailed shoes: when the time came, he
acquired the art the more rapidly that he never minded what blunders he
made in learning a thing. The dread of blundering is a great bar to
success.

He visited the Comins often, and found continual comfort and help in
their friendship. The letters he received from home, especially those
of his friend sir Gibbie, who not unfrequently wrote also for Donal's
father and mother, were a great nourishment to him.

As the cold and the nights grew, the water-level rose in Donal's well,
and the poetry began to flow. When we have no summer without, we must
supply it from within. Those must have comfort in themselves who are
sent to help others. Up in his aerie, like an eagle above the low
affairs of the earth, he led a keener life, breathed the breath of a
more genuine existence than the rest of the house. No doubt the old
cobbler, seated at his last over a mouldy shoe, breathed a yet higher
air than Donal weaving his verse, or reading grand old Greek, in his
tower; but Donal was on the same path, the only path with an infinite
end--the divine destiny.

He had often thought of trying the old man with some of the best poetry
he knew, desirous of knowing what receptivity he might have for it; but
always when with him had hitherto forgot his proposed inquiry, and
thought of it again only after he had left him: the original flow of
the cobbler's life put the thought of testing it out of his mind.

One afternoon, when the last of the leaves had fallen, and the country
was bare as the heart of an old man who has lived to himself, Donal,
seated before a great fire of coal and boat-logs, fell a thinking of
the old garden, vanished with the summer, but living in the memory of
its delight. All that was left of it at the foot of the hill was its
corpse, but its soul was in the heaven of Donal's spirit, and there
this night gathered to itself a new form. It grew and grew in him, till
it filled with its thoughts the mind of the poet. He turned to his
table, and began to write: with many emendations afterwards, the r