led Gibbie as he approached, and he replied to them all with
the light of his countenance.

When they arrived at the door, they found a difficulty waiting them:
the water was now so high that Snowball's head rose above the
lintel; and, though all animals can swim, they do not all know how
to dive. A tumult of suggestions immediately broke out. But Donal
had already thrown himself from a window with a rope, and swum to
Gibbie's assistance; the two understood each other, and heeding
nothing the rest were saying, held their own communications. In a
minute the rope was fastened round Snow-ball's body, and the end of
it drawn between his fore-legs and through the ring of his
head-stall, when Donal swam with it to his mother who stood on the
stair, with the request that, as soon as she saw Snowball's head
under the water, she would pull with all her might, and draw him in
at the door. Donal then swam back, and threw his arms round
Snowball's neck from below, while the same moment Gibbie cast his
whole weight of it from above: the horse was over head and ears in
an instant, and through the door in another. With snorting nostrils
and blazing eyes his head rose in the passage, and in terror he
struck out for the stair. As he scrambled heavily up from the
water, his master and Robert seized him, and with much petting and
patting and gentling, though there was little enough difficulty in
managing him now, conducted him into the bedroom to the rest of the
horses. There he was welcomed by his companions, and immediately
began devouring the hay upon his master's bedstead. Gibbie came
close behind him, was seized by Janet at the top of the stair,
embraced like one come alive from the grave, and led, all dripping
as he was, into the room where the women were. The farmer followed
soon after with the whisky, the universal medicine in those parts,
of which he offered a glass to Gibbie, but the innocent turned from
it with a curious look of mingled disgust and gratefulness: his
father's life had not been all a failure; he had done what parents
so rarely effect--handed the general results of his experience to
his son. The sight and smell of whisky were to Gibbie a loathing
flavoured with horror.

The farmer looked back from the door as he was leaving the room:
Gibbie was performing a wild circular dance of which Janet was the
centre, throwing his limbs about like the toy the children call a
jumping Jack, which ended suddenly