other -- for the agony, the helplessness, the degradation, the
nightmare struggle, the wrongs and cruelties committed, the duties
neglected, the sickening ruin of mind and heart. So often, too, the
drunkard is originally a style of man immeasurably nobler than the
money-maker! Compare a Coleridge, Samuel Taylor or Hartley,
with -- no; that man has not yet passed to his account. God has in
his universe furnaces for the refining of gold, as well as for the
burning of chaff and tares and fruitless branches; and, however they
may have offended, it is the elder brother who is the judge of all
the younger ones.

Gibbie slept some time. When he woke, it was pitch dark, and he was
not lying on his father's bosom, He felt about with his hands till
he found his father's head. Then he got up and tried to rouse him,
and failing to get him on to the bed. But in that too he was sadly
unsuccessful: what with the darkness and the weight of him, the
result of the boy's best endeavour was, that Sir George half
slipped, half rolled down upon the box, and from that to the floor.
Assured then of his own helplessness, wee Gibbie dragged the
miserable bolster from the bed, and got it under his father's head;
then covered him with the plaid, and creeping under it, laid himself
on his father's bosom, where soon he slept again.

He woke very cold, and getting up, turned heels-over-head several
times to warm himself, but quietly, for his father was still asleep.
The room was no longer dark, for the moon was shining through the
skylight. When he had got himself a little warmer, he turned to
have a look at his father. The pale light shone full upon his face,
and it was that, Gibbie thought, which made him look so strange. He
darted to him, and stared aghast: he had never seen him look like