Sir Gibbie for so long.

CHAPTER XLIX.

THE HOUSELESS.

The minister kept Gibbie hard at work, and by the time Donal's last
winter came, Gibbie was ready for college also. To please Mr.
Sclater he competed for a bursary, and gained a tolerably good one,
but declined accepting it. His guardian was annoyed, he could not
see why he should refuse what he had "earned." Gibbie asked him
whether it was the design of the founder of those bursaries that
rich boys should have them. Were they not for the like of Donal?
Whereupon Mr. Sclater could not help remembering what a difference
it would have made to him in his early struggles, if some rich
bursar above him had yielded a place--and held his peace.

Daur-street being too far from Elphinstone College for a student to
live there, Mr. Sclater consented to Gibbie's lodging with Donal,
but would have insisted on their taking rooms in some part of the
town--more suitable to the young baronet's position, he said; but as
there was another room to be had at Mistress Murkison's, Gibbie
insisted that one who had shown them so much kindness must not be
forsaken; and by this time he seldom found difficulty in having his
way with his guardian. Both he and his wife had come to understand
him better, and nobody could understand Gibbie better without also
understanding better all that was good and true and right: although
they hardly knew the fact themselves, the standard of both of them
had been heightened by not a few degrees since Gibbie came to them;
and although he soon ceased to take direct notice of what in their
conduct distressed him, I cannot help thinking it was not amiss that
he uttered himself as he did at the first; knowing a little his ways
of thinking they came to feel his judgment unexpressed. For Mrs.
Sclater, when she bethought herself that she had said or done
something he must count worldly, the very silence of the dumb boy
was a reproof to her.

One night the youths had been out for a long walk and came back to
the city late, after the shops were shut. Only here and there a
light glimmered in some low-browed little place, probably used in
part by the family. Not a soul was visible in the dingy region
through which they now approached their lodging, when round a
corner, moving like a shadow, came, soft-pacing, a ghostly woman in
rags, with a white, worn face, and the largest black eyes, it seemed
to the youths that they had ever seen--an apparition o