erything looked! how miserable and heartless now
Donal was gone, and would never regard those things any more! When
he had ended his letter, almost for the first time in his life, he
sat thinking what he should do next. It was as if he were suddenly
becalmed on the high seas; one wind had ceased to blow, and another
had not begun. It troubled him a little that he must now return to
Mr. Sclater, and once more feel the pressure of a nature not
homogeneous with his own. But it would not be for long.

Mr. Sclater had thought of making a movement towards gaining an
extension of his tutelage beyond the ordinary legal period, on the
ground of unfitness in his ward for the management of his property;
but Gibbie's character and scholarship, and the opinion of the world
which would follow failure, had deterred him from the attempt. In
the month of May, therefore, when, according to the registry of his
birth in the parish book, he would be of age, he would also be, as
he expected, his own master, so far as other mortals were concerned.
As to what he would then do, he had thought much, and had plans,
but no one knew anything of them except Donal--who had forsaken him.

He was in no haste to return to Daur-street. He packed Donal's
things, with all the books they had bought together, and committed
the chest to Mistress Murkison. He then told her he would rather
not give up his room just yet, but would like to keep it on for a
while, and come and go as he pleased; to which the old woman
replied,

"As ye wull, Sir Gibbie. Come an' gang as free as the win'. Mak o'
my hoose as gien it war yer ain."

He told her he would sleep there that night, and she got him his
dinner as usual; after which, putting a Greek book in his pocket, he
went out, thinking to go to the end of the pier and sit there a
while. He would gladly have gone to Ginevra, but she had prevented
him when she was at school, and had never asked him since she left
it. But Gibbie was not _ennuye_: the pleasure of his life came from
the very roots of his being, and would therefore run into any
channel of his consciousness; neither was he greatly troubled;
nothing could "put rancours in the vessel of" his "peace;" he was
only very hungry after the real presence of the human; and scarcely
had he set his foot on the pavement, when he resolved to go and see
Mistress Croale. The sun, still bright, was sinking towards the
west, and a cold wind was blowing. He walke