Gilian The Dreamer

God's gift to begin with. And now that he was among the children of the town he found them lovable, but yet no more lovable than the children of the glen. The magic he had fancied th

hanged one illusion for another. It is a wonderful rich world for dreams, and

h pockets full of playthings, sometimes animals from the woods and fields about the town-frogs, moles, hedgehogs, or fledgeling birds. Brooks rarely suspected the presence of these distractions in his sacred grove, for he was dull of vision and preferred to see his scholars about him in a vague mist rather than wear in their presence the great horn spectacles that were privy to his room in Crombie's Land. The town's clock staring f

you take your drams in so common a civilian house as that. A man and a soldier keeps the Abercrombie, a fellow who fought for his country. And look at the company! MacNicol

ad always his a

tain, Captain!" (and here would he grasp the Paymaster by the coat lapels with the friendly freedom of an old acquaintance,) "Captain, Captain! it is not a world for war though we are the fools to be fancying so, but a world for good-fellowship, so short the period we have of it, so wonderful the mind of the

rs of wars, its marchings-off and weedings-out, it would die of a rot. I hope you are not putting too many notions of that clerkly kin

he will be. I can no more fashion him to the common standard than I can make the fir-tree like unto the juniper. I've had many a curious student yonder, wild and tame, dunce and genius, but this one baffles m

brow, "but you have the reputation, Mr. Brooks, you have turned out lads wh

ally he felt ashamed of in his fight with ignorance and he used it rarely, though cu

The boy is unco, the boy is a lusus naturo, that is all; as sharp as a needle when his intere

him, or looking out at the beech branches that tapped in faint breezes at the back windows, or listening with an ecstatic ear to the crisp contact of stone and scythe as the mowers in the fields behind put a new edge on their instruments. Oh! the outer world was ever the world of charm for him, winter or summer, as he sat in that constrained and humming school. That sound of scythes a-sharping was more pleasing to his ear tha

thin old lady of carefully nurtured gentility, with cheeks like a winter apple for hue, with eyebrows arching high in a perpetual surprise at so hurried and ridiculous a world, and a curled brown wig that was suspected of doing duty for the three sisters who were never seen but one at a time. Marget Maclean's little shop was the dulles

add: "That one was up at the Castle last Saturday. Lady Charlotte's maid, you will notice, wet all the pages crying over the places where the lover went to sea another voyage. It is a very clever book, my dear, and I think there is a mor

sked Gilian one day, moved thereto by an

Miss Marget. "Now l

obbed behind her ears as she tilted up her head and gla

re she frowned slightly, "I do not think you are old enough for poetry. It is too romantic, and-it lingers in the memory. I have not read hi

y jets. Half-way up the Ramparts was a foot-wide ledge, and here the boy would walk round the bastions and in the square face to the sea would sit upon the ledge with his legs dangling over the water and read his volume. It might be the "Mysteries of Udolpho," "Thaddeus of Warsaw," "Moll Flanders," or "Belinda," the story of one Random, a wandering vagabond, or Crusoe, but no matter where the story le

r trip upon the walls ere some other boys discovered him guilty, flushing and trembling with a story book in his hand. They looked with astonishment at their discovery and

ee the big ones are sunk so

of the boys, Young Islay, shocked, or

hat could have been no greater had it been his heart. He had to forego many books from Marg

s whereof the shepherds made their crooks. But the forest lay for miles behind the town, a great land of shade and pillars where the winds roved and tangled. It abounded in wild life, and sounded ever in spring and summer with songs and cries. Into its glades he would wander and stand delirious to the solitude, tingling to the wild. The dim vistas about him had no affrights; he was at home, he was the child of the tranquil, the loving

ntleman with a queue like Turner's, pondering upon freedom, while the spiders wrought for his instruction; deer breaking from covert to dash away, or moving in stately herds across the forest openings, became a foreign cavalr

dst of the same book, trying hard to fill up the gaps that his sacrifice of leaves had brought into the narrative, and Y

ened to fit in with some passage in his mind where foes cried. In vain

s basket slung upon his back, and his rod in the crook of an arm, like a gun, a straight, sturdy lad of neat limb, a handsome fa

ineffective explanation, relinquishing the volu

were doing nothing of the kind." He turned over the pages with scornful fingers. "It's not a school-book, there's

from him. "You don't know a

re ashamed of your book; you come here often with books; you

w to reply. Down went the rod and the book, and with the fishing-basket swinging and beating at his back, Young Islay fell upon the zealous student. Gilian's arms, as he defend

st cried Young Islay, d

"I'm only tired,'' but he

book was in his path. He kicked it before him like a football until he reached the ditch beside the hunting road, and there he left it. A little later Gilian saw him in a distant v