portentous. For the rest, he was dark-complexioned, with dark hair,
destined to grow darker still, with hands and feet well modelled,
but which would have made four feet and four hands such as
Shargar's.

When his mind was not oppressed with the consideration of any
important metaphysical question, he learned his lessons well; when
such was present, the Latin grammar, with all its attendant
servilities, was driven from the presence of the lordly need. That
once satisfied in spite of pandies and imprisonments, he returned
with fresh zest, and, indeed, with some ephemeral ardour, to the
rules of syntax or prosody, though the latter, in the mode in which
it was then and there taught, was almost as useless as the task set
himself by a worthy lay-preacher in the neighbourhood--of learning
the first nine chapters of the first Book of the Chronicles, in
atonement for having, in an evil hour of freedom of spirit, ventured
to suggest that such lists of names, even although forming a portion
of Holy Writ, could scarcely be reckoned of equally divine authority
with St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans.




CHAPTER VIII.

THE ANGEL UNAWARES.

Although Betty seemed to hold little communication with the outer
world, she yet contrived somehow or other to bring home what gossip
was going to the ears of her mistress, who had very few visitors;