The sound of his step upon the passage roused Clara from a reverie, perhaps a sad one; and she had trimmed her lamp, and stirred her fire, so slow did he walk, before he at length entered her apartment.
"You are a good boy, brother," she said, "to come thus early home; and I have some good news for your reward.

The groom has fetched back Trimmer--He was lying by the dead hare, and he had chased him as far as Drumlyford--the shepherd had carried him to the shieling, till some one should claim him." "I would he had hanged him, with all my heart!" said Mowbray.
"How!--hang Trimmer ?--your favourite Trimmer, that has beat the whole country ?--and it was only this morning you were half-crying because he was amissing, and like to murder man and mother's son ?" "The better I like any living thing," answered Mowbray, "the more reason I have for wishing it dead and at rest; for neither I, nor any thing that I love, will ever be happy more." "You cannot frighten me, John, with these flights," answered Clara, trembling, although she endeavoured to look unconcerned--"You have used me to them too often." "It is well for you then; you will be ruined without the shock of surprise." "So much the better--We have been," said Clara, "'So constantly in poortith's sight, The thoughts on't gie us little fright.' So say I with honest Robert Burns." "D--n Barns and his trash!" said Mowbray, with the impatience of a man determined to be angry with every thing but himself, who was the real source of the evil.
"And why damn poor Burns ?" said Clara, composedly; "it is not his fault if you have not risen a winner, for that, I suppose, is the cause of all this uproar." "Would it not make any one lose patience," said Mowbray, "to hear her quoting the rhapsodies of a hobnail'd peasant, when a man is speaking of the downfall of an ancient house! Your ploughman, I suppose, becoming one degree poorer than he was born to be, would only go without his dinner, or without his usual potation of ale.

His comrades would cry 'poor fellow!' and let him eat out of their kit, and drink out of their bicker without scruple, till his own was full again.

But the poor gentleman--the downfallen man of rank--the degraded man of birth--the disabled and disarmed man of power!--it is he that is to be pitied, who loses not merely drink and dinner, but honour, situation, credit, character, and name itself!" "You are declaiming in this manner in order to terrify me," said Clara: "but, friend John, I know you and your ways, and I have made up my mind upon all contingencies that can take place.

I will tell you more--I have stood on this tottering pinnacle of rank and fashion, if our situation can be termed such, till my head is dizzy with the instability of my eminence; and I feel that strange desire of tossing myself down, which the devil is said to put into folk's heads when they stand on the top of steeples--at least, I had rather the plunge were over." "Be satisfied, then; if that will satisfy you--the plunge _is_ over, and we are--what they used to call it in Scotland--gentle beggars--creatures to whom our second, and third, and fourth, and fifth cousins may, if they please, give a place at the side-table, and a seat in the carriage with the lady's maid, if driving backwards will not make us sick." "They may give it to those who will take it," said Clara; "but I am determined to eat bread of my own buying--I can do twenty things, and I am sure some one or other of them will bring me all the little money I will need.