It was dark before they reached home, at least as dark as it ever is at this season of the year in the north.  They found David looking out with some slight anxiety for his daughter’s return, for she was seldom out so late as this.  In nothing could the true relation between them have been more evident than in the entire absence from her manner of any embarrassment when she met her father.  She went up to him and told him all about finding Mr. Sutherland asleep on the hill, and waiting beside him till he woke, that she might walk home with him.  Her father seemed perfectly content with an explanation which he had not sought, and, turning to Hugh, said, smiling: 

“Weel, no to be troublesome, Mr. Sutherlan’, ye maun gie the auld man a turn as weel as the young lass.  We didna expec ye the nicht, but I’m sair puzzled wi’ a sma’ eneuch matter on my sklet in there.  Will you no come in and gie me a lift?”

“With all my heart,” said Sutherland.  So there were five lessons in that week.

When Hugh entered the cottage he had a fine sprig of heather in his hand, which he laid on the table.

He had the weakness of being proud of small discoveries—­the tinier the better; and was always sharpening his senses, as well as his intellect, to a fine point, in order to make them.  I fear that by these means he shut out some great ones, which could not enter during such a concentration of the faculties.  He would stand listening to the sound of goose-feet upon the road, and watch how those webs laid hold of the earth like a hand.  He would struggle to enter into their feelings in folding their wings properly on their backs.  He would calculate, on chemical and arithmetical grounds, whether one might not hear the nocturnal growth of plants in the tropics.  He was quite elated by the discovery, as he considered it,

that Shakspeare named his two officers of the watch, Dogberry and Verjuice; the poisonous Dogberry, and the acid liquor of green fruits, affording suitable names for the stupidly innocuous constables, in a play the very essence of which is Much Ado About Nothing.  Another of his discoveries he had, during their last lesson, unfolded to David, who had certainly contemplated it with interest.  It was, that the original forms of the Arabic numerals were these: 

     1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9. {original text has a picture}

the number for which each figure stands being indicated by the number of straight lines employed in forming that numeral.  I fear the comparative anatomy of figures gives no countenance to the discovery which Hugh flattered himself he had made.

After he had helped David out of his difficulty, he took up the heather, and stripping off the bells, shook them in his hand at Margaret’s ear.  A half smile, like the moonlight of laughter, dawned on her face; and she listened with something of the same expression with which a child listens to the message from the sea, inclosed in a twisted shell.  He did the same at David’s ear next.