I need not pause to detail the passing of the day with Gowrie. The law's delay is proverbial as one of the banes of human existence in the blessed land wherein we live.--It was so even in his time; and he found, on consulting with those who had to deal with such matters, that the drawing up of the renunciation, simple as it seemed, would require the labour and attention of several days, in order to couch it in the full and ample terms which he knew would be required by the king. He had to give long explanations, and to enter into details which he had not previously considered, so that the greater part of a spring day was consumed before he left the dim and dingy den where the man of law held his abode. On his return to his own house he passed more than an hour in walking up and down the large and handsome sitting-room, and meditating over the past and the future. If it be asked whether his thoughts were sad or bright, I must answer, very much mixed, as is ever the case with a man of strong sense and active imagination. But Gowrie, it must be remembered, was in the spring of life, in that bright season when the song of the wild bird, hope, is the most loud and sweet and seducing. The circumstances which surrounded him might alarm or sadden him for the time, but the cheering voice still spoke up in his heart, and the syren sang not in vain. At length he ordered lights to be brought, and casting himself into a chair, took up a book--his favourite Sallust--and began to read. The pages opened at the Catiline, and the first words struck him, as strangely applicable to the half-formed resolution which had been floating vaguely in his mind, of passing life in peaceful retirement. "Omnis homines, qui sese student præstare ceteris animalibus, summa ope niti decet vitam silentio ne transeant, veluti pecora, quæ natura prona, atque ventri obedientia, finxit." "And yet," he said, "methinks many a man can raise himself above the brute without mingling in the busy turmoil of the world's affairs--nay, do more real service to his country and his race in the silence of deep but peaceful thought than in the noisy contests of courts and cities." Then he went on to read, till he came to the splendid description of Catiline.--"Lucius Catilina, nobili genere natus, magna vi et animi et corporis, sed ingenio malo provoque," &c.