sity, in the case of such an attempt, of bringing
the whole of his face into contact with the food, there was not room
in the dish for the two to feed together after the same fashion, so
that he was driven to the sole other possible expedient, that of
making a spoon of his hand. The dog neither growled nor pushed away
the spoon, but instantly began to gobble twice as fast as before,
and presently was licking the bottom of the dish. Gibbie's hand,
therefore, made but few journeys to his mouth, but what it carried
him was good food--better than any he had had that day. When all
was gone he crept again into the kennel; the dog followed, and soon
they were both fast asleep in each other's arms and legs.

Gibbie woke at sunrise and went out. His host came after him, and
stood wagging his tail and looking wistfully up in his face. Gibbie
understood him, and, as the sole return he could make for his
hospitality, undid his collar. Instantly he rushed off, his back
going like a serpent, cleared the gate at a bound, and scouring
madly across a field, vanished from his sight; whereupon Gibbie too
set out to continue his journey up Daurside.

This day was warmer; the spring had come a step nearer; the dog had
been a comforter to him, and the horror had begun to assuage; he
began to grow aware of the things about him, and to open his eyes to
them. Once he saw a primrose in a little dell, and left the road to
look at it. But as he went, he set his foot in the water of a
chalybeate spring, which was trickling through the grass, and dyeing
the ground red about it: filled with horror he fled, and for some
time dared never go near a primrose. And still upon his right hand
was the great river, flowing down towards the home he had left; now
through low meadows, now through upshouldered fields of wheat and
oats, now through rocky heights covered with the graceful
silver-barked birch, the mountain ash, and the fir. Every time
Gibbie, having lost sight of it by some turn of the road or some
interposing eminence, caught its gleam afresh, his first feeling was
that it was hurrying to the city, where the dead man lay, to tell
where Gibbie was. Why he, who had from infancy done just as he
pleased, should now have begun to dread interference with his
liberty, he could not himself have told. Perhaps the fear was but
the shadow of his new-born aversion to the place where he had seen
those best-loved countenances change so suddenly and