"I plead guilty," said Robert; "I acted as a fool, but bore the consequence like a philosopher. My last shilling had disappeared. The performance proceeded--I was delighted, enraptured, overwhelmed. The curtain dropped. The house was crowded to suffocation--my throat was parched--and with my last penny--(keep your seat, Mr Liddell)--with my last penny I bought an orange from a fruit-seller in the gallery. The second piece was concluded. The human mass moved every one to the tavern or their homes, a supper and a pillow, and I--I alone of the thousands--went forth penniless into the streets, hungry, shivering, and fatigued, to wander without hope!" "And served ye right," said Peter. "I dinna pity ye, sir. No, no; after that, I'm done wi' ye. But how did ye get through the night?" "The day dawned," resumed Robert Musgrave, "and I was still wandering--fainting, trembling, cold, and benumbed. I had long had some pretensions to literature. I was born in the midst of poetry. It sang around me from the deathless voices of my native Esk, hymning to its green woods and its massy crags. It looked down upon me from the thunder-belted brows of my native mountains, and drew my soul upwards to itself. It grew with my growth, it became a part of my being, and, in the midst of my debasement, it parted not from me." "Famous! famous!--drat, ye're an orator, doctor!" cried the farmer, in admiration of the eloquent fervour of his countryman. "Cumberland--and where is the county like it? I wish, doctor, I had been a bishop for your sake--ye should have had a benefice." "My luggage," continued the other, "consisted only of a chest containing little beyond books and manuscripts. With the same feeling which every author may be supposed to have for his productions, I considered mine were not inferior to others which were puffed and published. I say puffed and published; for, now-a-days, it is common for a puff to be both written and published before the work be-praised is in the hands of the printer." "Coom, now, Maister Musgrave," said the farmer, "not so fast, if you please; I can believe anything that's possible in a reasonable way. But how a book can be praised before it be read and printed, or, as I should say, before it is a book, I canna comprehend. So ye mustna come over me in that way, doctor." "It is not so impossible as you imagine," replied the other; "you know that money is a powerful agent." "Ay, troth do I," said the farmer; "now I understand ye; I know 'That money makes the mare to go, Whether she has legs or no.'"