“Little eneuch o’ that!” said Malcolm. “Oh yes! I do,” said the marquis, answering his daughter. “But he must keep the skipper from my books and the scholar from my boat.” “Ye mean a scholar wha wad skip yer buiks, my lord! Haith! sic wad be a skipper wha wad ill scull yer boat!” said Malcolm, with a laugh at the poor attempt. “Bravo!” said the marquis, who certainly was not over critical. “Can you write a good hand?” “No ill, my lord.” “So much the better! I see you’ll be worth your wages.” “That depen’s on the wages,” returned Malcolm. “And that reminds me you’ve said nothing about them yet.” “Naither has yer lordship.” “Well, what are they to be?” “Whatever ye think proper, my lord. Only dinna gar me gang to Maister Crathie for them.” The marquis had sent away the man who was waiting when Malcolm entered, and during this conversation Malcolm had of his own accord been doing his best to supply his place. The meal ended, Lady Florimel desired him to wait a moment in the hall. “He’s so amusing, papa!” she said. “I want to see him stare at the books. He thinks the schoolmaster’s hundred volumes a grand library! He’s such a goose! It’s the greatest fun in the world watching him.” “No such goose!” said the marquis; but he recognized himself in his child, and laughed. Florimel ran off merrily, as bent on a joke, and joined Malcolm. “Now, I’m going to show you the library,” she said. “Thank ye, my leddy; that _will_ be gran’!” replied Malcolm. He followed her up two staircases, and through more than one long narrow passage: all the ducts of the house were long and narrow, causing him a sense of imprisonment--vanishing ever into freedom at the opening of some door into a great room. But never had be had a dream of such a room as that at which they now arrived. He started with a sort of marvelling dismay when she threw open the door of the library, and he beheld ten thousand volumes at a glance, all in solemn stillness. It was like a sepulchre of kings. But his astonishment took a strange form of expression, the thought in which was beyond the reach of his mistress. “Eh, my leddy!” he cried, after staring for a while in breathless bewilderment, “it’s jist like a byke o’ frozen bees! Eh! gien they wad a’ to come to life an’ stick their stangs o’ trowth intill a body, the waukin’ up wad be awfu’!--It jist gars my heid gang roon’!” he added, after a pause. “It is a fine thing,” said the girl, “to have such a library.” “’Deed is ’t, my leddy! It’s ane o’ the preevileeges o’ rank,” said Malcolm. “It taks a faimily that hauds on throu’ centeries in a hoose whaur things gether, to mak sic an unaccoontable getherin’ o’ buiks as that. It’s a gran’ sicht--worth livin’ to see.” “Suppose you were to be a rich man some day,” said Florimel, in the condescending tone she generally adopted when addressing him, “it would be one of the first things you would set about--wouldn’t it--to get such a library together?”