degree of his success. At the time of which I write, however, the
probability as to his success was scarcely ascertained, for he had
been only a fortnight at the task.

It was the middle of the month of April, in a rather backward
season. The weather had been stormy, with frequent showers of sleet
and snow. Old winter was doing his best to hold young Spring back
by the skirts of her garment, and very few of the wild flowers had
yet ventured to look out of their warm beds in the mould.
Sutherland, therefore, had made but few discoveries in the
neighbourhood. Not that the weather would have kept him to the
house, had he had any particular desire to go out; but, like many
other students, he had no predilection for objectless exertion, and
preferred the choice of his own weather indoors, namely, from books
and his own imaginings, to an encounter with the keen blasts of the
North, charged as they often were with sharp bullets of hail. When
the sun did shine out between the showers, his cold glitter upon the
pools of rain or melted snow, and on the wet evergreens and gravel
walks, always drove him back from the window with a shiver. The
house, which was of very moderate size and comfort, stood in the
midst of plantations, principally of Scotch firs and larches, some
of the former old and of great growth, so that they had arrived at
the true condition of the tree, which seems to require old age for
the perfection of its idea. There was very little to be seen from
the windows except this wood, which, somewhat gloomy at almost any
season, was at the present cheerless enough; and Sutherland found it
very dreary indeed, as exchanged for the wide view from his own home
on the side of an open hill in the Highlands.

In the midst of circumstances so uninteresting, it is not to be