he keeps erect on its peg, not by whipping it round,
but by running round it himself, unfailingly applying, at the very
spot and at the very moment, the precise measure of impact necessary
to counterbalance its perpetual tendency to fall in one direction or
another, so that the two have all the air of a single
invention--such an invention as one might meet with in an ancient
clock, contrived when men had time to mingle play with earnest--and
you will have in your mind's eye a real likeness of Sir George
attended, any midnight in the week, by his son Gilbert. Home the
big one staggered, reeled, gyrated, and tumbled; round and round him
went the little one, now behind, now before, now on this side, now
on that, his feet never more than touching the ground but dancing
about like those of a prize-fighter, his little arms up and his
hands well forward, like flying buttresses. And such indeed they
were--buttresses which flew and flew all about a universally leaning
tower. They propped it here, they propped it there; with wonderful
judgment and skill and graduation of force they applied themselves,
and with perfect success. Not once, for the last year and a half,
during which time wee Gibbie had been the nightly guide of Sir
George's homeward steps, had the self-disabled mass fallen prostrate
in the gutter, there to snore out the night.

The first special difficulty, that of turning the corner of Jink
Lane and the Widdiehill, successfully overcome, the twain went
reeling and revolving along the street, much like a whirlwind that
had half forgotten the laws of gyration, until at length it spun
into the court, and up to the foot of the outside stair over the
baronet's workshop. Then commenced the real struggle of the evening
for Gibbie--and for his father too, though the latter was aware of
it only in the momentary and evanescent flashes of such
enlightenment as made him just capable of yielding to the pushes and
pulls of the former. All up the outside and the two inside stairs,
his waking and sleeping were as the alternate tictac of a pendulum;
but Gibbie stuck to his business like a man, and his resolution and
perseverance were at length, as always, crowned with victory.

The house in which lords and ladies had often reposed was now filled
with very humble folk, who were all asleep when Gibbie and his
father entered; but the noise they made in ascending caused no great
disturbance of their rest; for, if any of them wer