One day, I remember, when he was about nine years of age, going early to the house where he and his mother lived, and it being before his mother was stirring, I went into little Duncan Campbell's room to divert myself with him, I found him sitting up in his bed with his eyes broad open, but as motionless as if he had been asleep, or even, if it had not been for a lively beautiful colour which the little pretty fair silver-haired boy always had in his cheeks, as if he had been quite dead; he did not seem so much as to breathe; the eyelids of him were so fixed and immoveable, that the eyelashes did not so much as once shake, which the least motion imaginable must agitate; not to say that he was like a person in an ecstacy, he was at least in what we commonly call a brown study, to the highest degree, and for the largest space of time I ever knew. I, who had been frequently informed by people who have been present at the operations of second-sighted persons, that at the sight of a vision the eyelids of the person are erected, and the eyes continue staring till the object vanishes; I, I say, sat myself softly down on his bed-side, and with a quiet amazement observed him, avoiding diligently any motion that might give him the least disturbance, or cause in him any avocation or distraction of mind from the business he was so intent upon. I remarked that he held his head sideways, with his mouth wide open, and in a listening posture, and that after so lively a manner, as, at first general thought, made me forget his deafness, and plainly imagine he heard something, till the second thought of reflection brought into my mind the misfortune that shut up all passage for any sound through his ears. After a steadfast gaze, which lasted about seven minutes, he smiled, and stretched his arms as one recovering from a fit of indolence, and rubbed his eyes; then turning towards me, he made the sign of a salute, and hinted to me, upon his fingers, his desire for pen, ink, and paper, which I reached him from a little desk that stood at his bed's feet. Placing the paper upon his knees, he wrote me the following lines, which together with my answers I preserve by me, for their rarity, to this very day, and which I have transcribed word for word, as they form a little series of dialogue. _Duncan Campbell._ I am sorry I cannot stay with you; but I shall see my pretty youth and my lamb by and by, in the fields, near a little coppice or grove, where I go often to play with them, and I would not lose their company for the whole world; for they and I are mighty familiar together, and the boy tells me everything that gets me my reputation among the ladies and nobility, and you must keep it secret. _My question._ I will be sure to keep it secret; but how do you know you are to meet them there to-day? Did the little boy appoint you?