In progress of time, Abel Sampson, probationer of divinity, was admitted to the privileges of a preacher.  But, alas! partly from his own bashfulness, partly owing to a strong and obvious disposition to risibility which pervaded the congregation upon his first attempt, he became totally incapable of proceeding in his intended discourse, gasped, grinned, hideously rolled his eyes till the congregation thought them flying out of his head, shut the Bible, stumbled down the pulpit-stairs, trampling upon the old women who generally take their station there, and was ever after designated as a ‘stickit minister.’  And thus he wandered back to his own country, with blighted hopes and prospects, to share the poverty of his parents.  As he had neither friend nor confidant, hardly even an acquaintance, no one had the means of observing closely how Dominie Sampson bore a disappointment which supplied the whole town with a week’s sport.  It would be endless even to mention the numerous jokes to which it gave birth, from a ballad called ‘Sampson’s Riddle,’ written upon the subject by a smart young student of humanity, to the sly hope of the Principal that the fugitive had not, in imitation of his mighty namesake, taken the college gates along with him in his retreat.

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 seated.

CHAPTER III