t attempt, he
became totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse, gasped,
grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregation thought them
flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the pulpit-stairs,
trampling upon the old women who generally take their station there, and
was ever after designated as a 'stickit minister.' And thus he wandered
back to his own country, with blighted hopes and prospects, to share the
poverty of his parents. As he had neither friend nor confidant, hardly
even an acquaintance, no one had the means of observing closely how
Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which supplied the whole town with
a week's sport. It would be endless even to mention the numerous jokes to
which it gave birth, from a ballad called 'Sampson's Riddle,' written
upon the subject by a smart young student of humanity, to the sly hope of
the Principal that the fugitive had not, in imitation of his mighty
namesake, taken the college gates along with him in his retreat.

To all appearance, the equanimity of Sampson was unshaken. He sought to
assist his parents by teaching a school, and soon had plenty of scholars,
but very few fees. In fact, he taught the sons of farmers for what they
chose to give him, and the poor for nothing; and, to the shame of the
former be it spoken, the pedagogue's gains never equalled those of a
skilful ploughman. He wrote, however, a good hand, and added something to
his pittance by copying accounts and writing letters for Ellangowan. By
degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from general society, became
partial to that of Dominie Sampson. Conversation, it is true, was out of
the question, but the Dominie was a good listener, and stirred the fire
with some address. He attempted even to snuff the candles, but was
unsuccessful, and relinquished that ambitious post of courtesy after
having twice reduced the parlour to total darkness. So his civilities,
thereafter, were confined to taking off his glass of ale in exactly the
same time and measure with the Laird, and in uttering certain indistinct
murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusion of the long and winding stories
of Ellangowan.

On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to Mannering
his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit of
black, with a coloured handkerchief, not over clean, about his sinewy,
scraggy neck, and his nether person arrayed in grey breeches, dark-blue
s