18 RODERICK, THE FAIR-HAIRET). 



joy were equalled only by the fervour of his benisons and extrava- 

 gance of his praise (approaching to the worship of divinity), when 

 with three huge strides he stalked along the corridor towards his 

 kennel, as great in his own estimation as any " dominie" who ever 

 "broke Priscian's head" in the University and King's College > 

 Aberdeen. Going up towards Bauldy, the pony, he discovered the 

 poor brute in a brown-study, with his mane in disorder, as though 

 he had been luxuriating himself in his master's absence by scraping 

 acquaintance with the door-post, a trick at times imputed to many of 

 Bauldy's Celtic betters. Roderick forthwith mounted his beast with 

 a determination again to tempt that nucleus of every terror, the old 

 bridge before mentioned, in search of shelter for himself, Bauldy, 

 and poor Tom, when the little hostel of Duncan the Gentleman, in- 

 vited his attention. This Duncan had owed his honourable soubriquet 

 not to the common origin whence the " great men" of Starvitout for 

 they are all great men in Starvitout derive the patent of their 

 honours, namely, to self-esteem, and steadily adhering to the pru- 

 dential maxim of " Caw me, caw thee," but to a circumstance the 

 relation of which the indulgent reader may not deem a breach of the 

 ordinary unities of " a true and faithful history." A bachelor of 

 sixty, and weary of the reputed comforts of " single blessedness," 

 Duncan became of a sudden mightily taken with the attractions in 

 purse and beauty of a buxom widow, residing in his neighbourhood, 

 and possessing the additional recommendation of being of kin to 

 Andrew Mac Diddleton, the influential lawyer, and chief proprietor of 

 fe burgage tenement," in^Starvitout, a personage as useful in his voca- 

 tions in a town where continual appeal to legal remedy is as indispen- 

 sible to one's security and comfort, as its whisky-punch to dissipate 

 the gloom and vapours engendered by its miserable clime, and on 

 whose good offices in the way of business Duncan had calculated to 

 the value of their last groat. It however happened that the widow 

 had set her cap at higher game in Dominie Doall, already mentioned, 

 whose attachment to the attenuated purse and person of the antiqua- 

 ted Miss Helen Mac Sillergrip seemed the only bar to their mutual 

 cleaving; and having besides but little relish for the business of 

 Duncan's trade, " to chronicle small beer," her rejection of his suit 

 was the more readily determined. Rejection to a man of Duncan's 

 sensitive and fiery qualities, and " one whose instincts did the work 

 of reason," was more than pride could bear, and, tossing over his 

 shoulder his spick-and-span new tartan mantle, he rushed from his 

 domicile with the furor of one prepared for a rash event, like Ajet, 

 when he went forth never to return. A struggling in the stream 

 which skirted Mac Sillergrip's mansion, commingled with the cries 

 of the repentant Duncan, aroused the household to his assistance, 

 who, with the aid of pitch-forks, tongs, and mop-sticks, succeeded in 

 fishing the poor fellow into shoal water, and afterwards spreading 

 him out in the sun-shine to dry! His identity being discovered by 

 means of a cotton stripe, in imitation of scarlet, interwoven in the 

 texture of his tartan mantle, which Granny Mac Sillergrip had spun, 

 and alone could dye, Duncan was trundled homewards like a dripping 

 Triton, vociferating all the way he ' ' should die like a gentleman I" 



