eld!" he remarked inwardly, stepped on one side to let
him pass--and perceived it was himself reflected from head to foot
in a large mirror, which had been placed while he was out the night
before. The courage with which he persisted, after such a painful
enlightenment, in going into company in those same garments, was
right admirable and enviable; but no one knew of it until its
exercise was long over.

The little pocket-money Mr. Sclater allowed Gibbie, was chiefly
spent at the shop of a certain secondhand bookseller, nearly
opposite Mistress Murkison's. The books they bought were carried to
Donal's room, there to be considered by Gibbie Donal's, and by Donal
Gibbie's. Among the rest was a reprint of Marlow's Faust, the
daring in the one grand passage of which both awed and delighted
them; there were also some of the Ettrick Shepherd's eerie stories,
alone in their kind; and above all there was a miniature copy of
Shelley, whose verse did much for the music of Donal's, while yet he
could not quite appreciate the truth for the iridescence of it: he
said it seemed to him to have been all composed in a balloon. I
have mentioned only works of imagination, but it must not be
supposed they had not a relish for stronger food: the books more
severe came afterwards, when they had liberty to choose their own
labours; now they had plenty of the harder work provided for them.

Somewhere about this time Fergus Duff received his license to
preach, and set himself to acquire what his soul thirsted after--a
reputation, namely, for eloquence. This was all the flood-mark that
remained of the waters of verse with which he had at one time so
plentifully inundated his soul. He was the same as man he had been
as youth--handsome, plausible, occupied with himself, determined to
succeed, not determined to labour. Praise was the very necessity of
his existence, but he had the instinct not to display his beggarly
hunger--which reached even to the approbation of such to whom he
held himself vastly superior. He seemed generous, and was
niggardly, by turns; cultivated suavity; indulged in floridity both
of manners and speech; and signed his name so as nobody could read
it, though his handwriting was plain enough.

In the spring, summer, and autumn, Donal laboured all day with his
body, and in the evening as much as he could with his mind. Lover
of Nature as he was, however, more alive indeed than before to the
delights of the count