David Elginbrod | Page 5

his fourth and last. To what he should afterwards
devote himself he had by no means made up his mind, except that it
must of necessity be hard work of some kind or other. So he had at
least the virtue of desiring to be independent. His other goods and bads
must come out in the course of the story. His pupils were rather stupid
and rather good-natured; so that their temperament operated to confirm
their intellectual condition, and to render the labour of teaching them
considerably irksome. But he did his work tolerably well, and was not
so much interested in the result as to be pained at the moderate degree
of his success. At the time of which I write, however, the probability as
to his success was scarcely ascertained, for he had been only a fortnight
at the task.
It was the middle of the month of April, in a rather backward season.
The weather had been stormy, with frequent showers of sleet and snow.
Old winter was doing his best to hold young Spring back by the skirts
of her garment, and very few of the wild flowers had yet ventured to
look out of their warm beds in the mould. Sutherland, therefore, had
made but few discoveries in the neighbourhood. Not that the weather
would have kept him to the house, had he had any particular desire to
go out; but, like many other students, he had no predilection for
objectless exertion, and preferred the choice of his own weather indoors,
namely, from books and his own imaginings, to an encounter with the
keen blasts of the North, charged as they often were with sharp bullets
of hail. When the sun did shine out between the showers, his cold
glitter upon the pools of rain or melted snow, and on the wet evergreens
and gravel walks, always drove him back from the window with a
shiver. The house, which was of very moderate size and comfort, stood
in the midst of plantations, principally of Scotch firs and larches, some
of the former old and of great growth, so that they had arrived at the
true condition of the tree, which seems to require old age for the
perfection of its idea. There was very little to be seen from the windows
except this wood, which, somewhat gloomy at almost any season, was
at the present cheerless enough; and Sutherland found it very dreary

indeed, as exchanged for the wide view from his own home on the side
of an open hill in the Highlands.
In the midst of circumstances so uninteresting, it is not to be wondered
at, that the glimpse of a pretty maiden should, one morning, occasion
him some welcome excitement. Passing downstairs to breakfast, he
observed the drawing-room door ajar, and looked in to see what sort of
a room it was; for so seldom was it used that he had never yet entered it.
There stood a young girl, peeping, with mingled curiosity and
reverence, into a small gilt-leaved volume, which she had lifted from
the table by which she stood. He watched her for a moment with some
interest; when she, seeming to become mesmerically aware that she
was not alone, looked up, blushed deeply, put down the book in
confusion, and proceeded to dust some of the furniture. It was his first
sight of Margaret. Some of the neighbours were expected to dinner, and
her aid was in requisition to get the grand room of the house prepared
for the occasion. He supposed her to belong to the household, till, one
day, feeling compelled to go out for a stroll, he caught sight of her so
occupied at the door of her father's cottage, that he perceived at once
that must be her home: she was, in fact, seated upon a stool, paring
potatoes. She saw him as well, and, apparently ashamed at the
recollection of having been discovered idling in the drawing-room, rose
and went in. He had met David once or twice about the house, and,
attracted by his appearance, had had some conversation with him; but
he did not know where he lived, nor that he was the father of the girl
whom he had seen.

CHAPTER III
.
THE DAISY AND THE PRIMROSE.
Dear secret Greenness, nursed below Tempests and winds and winter
nights! Vex not that but one sees thee grow; That One made all these
lesser lights.
HENRY VAUGHAN.
It was, of course, quite by accident that Sutherland had met Margaret in
the fir-wood. The wind had changed during the night, and swept all the
clouds from the face of the sky; and when he looked out in the morning,

he saw the fir-tops waving in the sunlight, and heard the sound of a