“You should have been a poet yourself, Mr. Elginbrod.”

“Na, na; I ken naething aboot yer poetry.  I hae read auld John Milton ower an’ ower, though I dinna believe the half o’t; but, oh! weel I like some o’ the bonny bitties at the en’ o’t.”

“Il Penseroso, for instance?”

“Is that hoo ye ca’t?  I ken’t weel by the sicht, but hardly by the soun’.  I aye missed the name o’t, an’ took to the thing itsel’.  Eh, man!—­I beg yer pardon, sir—­but its wonnerfu’ bonny!”

“I’ll come in some evening, and we’ll have a chat about it,” replied Sutherland.  “I must go to my work now.”

“We’ll a’ be verra happy to see you, sir.  Good mornin’, sir.”

“Good morning.”

David went to the garden, where there was not much to be done in the way of education at this season of the year; and Sutherland to the school-room, where he was busy, all the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon, with Caesar and Virgil, Algebra and Euclid; food upon which intellectual babes are reared to the stature of college youths.

Sutherland was himself only a youth; for he had gone early to college, and had not yet quite completed the curriculum.  He was now filling up with teaching, the recess between his third and his fourth winter at one of the Aberdeen Universities.  He was the son of an officer, belonging to the younger branch of a family of some historic distinction and considerable wealth.  This officer, though not far removed from the estate and title as well, had nothing to live upon but his half-pay; for, to the disgust of his family, he had married a Welsh girl of ancient descent, in whose line the poverty must have been at least coeval with the history, to judge from the perfection of its development in the case of her father; and his relations made this the excuse for quarrelling with him; so relieving themselves from any obligations they might have been supposed to lie under, of rendering him assistance of some sort or other.  This, however, rather suited the temperament of Major Robert Sutherland, who was prouder in his poverty than they in their riches.  So he disowned them for ever, and accommodated himself, with the best grace in the world, to his yet more straitened circumstances.  He resolved, however, cost what it might in pinching and squeezing, to send his son to college before turning him out to shift for himself.  In this Mrs. Sutherland was ready to support him to the utmost; and so they had managed to keep their boy at college for three sessions; after the last of which, instead of returning home, as he had done on previous occasions, he had looked about him for a temporary engagement as tutor, and soon found the situation he now occupied in the family of William Glasford, Esq., of Turriepuffit, where he intended to remain no longer than the commencement of the session, which would be his fourth and last.  To what he should afterwards devote himself he had