To all appearance, the equanimity of Sampson was unshaken. He
sought to assist his parents by teaching a school, and soon had
plenty of scholars, but very few fees. In fact, he taught the sons
of farmers for what they chose to give him, and the poor for
nothing; and, to the shame of the former be it spoken, the
pedagogue's gains never equalled those of a skilful ploughman. He
wrote, however, a good hand, and added something to his pittance
by copying accounts and writing letters for Ellangowan. By
degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from general society,
became partial to that of Dominie Sampson. Conversation, it is
true, was out of the question, but the Dominie was a good
listener, and stirred the fire with some address. He attempted
even to snuff the candles, but was unsuccessful, and relinquished
that ambitious post of courtesy after having twice reduced the
parlour to total darkness. So his civilities, thereafter, were
confined to taking off his glass of ale in exactly the same time
and measure with the Laird, and in uttering certain indistinct
murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusion of the long and winding
stories of Ellangowan.

On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to
Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a
threadbare suit of black, with a coloured handkerchief, not over
clean, about his sinewy, scraggy neck, and his nether person
arrayed in grey breeches, dark-blue stockings, clouted shoes, and
small copper buckles.

Such is a brief outline of the lives and fortunes of those two
persons in whose society Mannering now found himself comfortably