dame of the cottage, had been despatched to Kippletringan on the
night of Mannering's arrival.

Though we have said so much of the Laird himself, it still remains
that we make the reader in some degree acquainted with his
companion. This was Abel Sampson, commonly called, from his
occupation as a pedagogue, Dominie Sampson. He was of low birth,
but having evinced, even from his cradle, an uncommon seriousness
of disposition, the poor parents were encouraged to hope that their
bairn, as they expressed it, "might wag his pow [* Head] in a
pulpit yet."

With an ambitious view to such consummation, they pinched and
pared, rose early and lay down late, ate dry bread and drank cold
water, to secure to Abel the means of learning. Meantime, his tall,
ungainly, figure, his taciturn and grave manners, and some
grotesque habits of swinging his limbs, and screwing his visage,
while reciting his task, made poor Sampson the ridicule of all his
school-companions. The same qualities secured him at Glasgow
college a plentiful share of the same sort of notice. Half the
youthful mob "of the yards" used to assemble regularly to see
Dominie Sampson (for he had already attained that honourable title)
descend the stairs from the Greek class, with his Lexicon under his
arm, his long misshapen legs sprawling abroad, and keeping awkward
time to the play of his immense shoulder-blades, as they raised and
depressed the loose and threadbare black coat which was his
constant and only wear. When he spoke, the efforts of the
professor (professor of divinity, though he was) were totally
inadequate to restrain the inextinguishable laughter of the
students, and sometimes even to repress his own. The long, sallow