One great change wrought in Walter since he had been under Lewis’s direction--a change from which his tutor augured the most favourable results--was the almost total disappearance of those fits of morbid despondency and indifference to external objects, at times almost amounting to unconscious imbecility, to which he had formerly been subject; it was therefore a part of Lewis’s system to encourage him to follow up vigorously any pursuit for which he evinced the slightest predilection; indeed, so effectual a means did he consider this of arousing his faculties, that he often sacrificed to it the daily routine of mechanical teaching. Having, therefore, run over in his mind the pros and cons, and decided that if he accompanied his pupil no danger could accrue, he graciously gave his consent, and having encased his feet in a stout pair of boots, and seen that Walter followed his example, both master and pupil hastened to the stable-yard to join the worthy individual with whom the expedition had originated. Millar, who, as the reader has probably ere this divined, was none other than General Grant’s head gamekeeper, appeared anxious to be off without delay, as he had received orders to kill a certain amount of game which was required for a forthcoming dinner-party. The morning was, as we have already said, lovely, and Lewis enjoyed the brisk walk through some of the most wild and picturesque scenery the country afforded with a degree of zest at which he was himself surprised. The pheasants, however, not being endowed with such superornithological resignation as certain water-fowl, who, when required for culinary purposes were invited, as the nursery rhyme relates, to their own executions by the unalluring couplet, “Dilly dilly dilly ducks, come and be killed!”