He wrote, however, a good hand, and added something to his pittance by copying accounts and writing letters for Ellangowan.

By degrees, the Laird, who was much estranged from general society, became partial to that of Dominie Sampson.

Conversation, it is true, was out of the question, but the Dominie was a good listener, and stirred the fire with some address.

He attempted even to snuff the candles, but was unsuccessful, and relinquished that ambitious post of courtesy after having twice reduced the parlour to total darkness.

So his civilities, thereafter, were confined to taking off his glass of ale in exactly the same time and measure with the Laird, and in uttering certain indistinct murmurs of acquiescence at the conclusion of the long and winding stories of Ellangowan.
On one of these occasions, he presented for the first time to Mannering his tall, gaunt, awkward, bony figure, attired in a threadbare suit of black, with a coloured handkerchief, not over clean, about his sinewy, scraggy neck, and his nether person arrayed in grey breeches, dark-blue stockings, clouted shoes, and small copper buckles.
Such is a brief outline of the lives and fortunes of those two persons in whose society Mannering now found himself comfortably seated..