The hope of gaining such a name, or the fear of losing
it, was in the pupil the strongest ally of the master, the most
powerful enforcement of his influences. It was a scheme of government
by aspiration. But it owed all its operative power to the character
of the man who had adopted rather than invented it--for the scheme
had been suggested by a certain passage in the book of the Revelation.
Without having read a word of Swedenborg, he was a believer in the
absolute correspondence of the inward and outward; and, thus long
before the younger Darwin arose, had suspected a close relationship
--remote identity, indeed, in nature and history, between the
animal and human worlds. But photographs from a good many different
points would be necessary to afford anything like a complete notion
of the character of this country schoolmaster.
Towards noon, while he was busy with an astronomical class,
explaining, by means partly of the blackboard, partly of two boys
representing the relation of the earth and the moon, how it comes
that we see but one half of the latter, the door gently opened
and the troubled face of the mad laird peeped slowly in. His body
followed as gently, and at last--sad symbol of his weight of care
--his hump appeared, with a slow half revolution as he turned to
shut the door behind him. Taking off his hat, he walked up to Mr
Graham, who, busy with his astronomy, had not perceived his entrance,
touched him on the arm, and, standing on tiptoe, whispered softly
in his ear, as if it were a painful secret that must be respected,
"I dinna ken whaur I cam frae.
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