Then first Donal began to perceive that the cratur was growing an athlete.

When he landed, he gave Donal a merry laugh of welcome, but without stopping flew up the hill to take the lamb to its mother.

Fresh from the icy water, he ran so fast that it was all Donal could do to keep up with him.
The Deid Pot, then, taught Gibbie what swimming it could, which was not much, and what diving it could, which was more; but the nights of the following summer, when everybody on mountain and valley were asleep, and the moon shone, he would often go down to the Daur, and throwing himself into its deepest reaches, spend hours in lonely sport with water and wind and moon.

He had by that time learned things knowing which a man can never be lonesome.
The few goats on the mountain were for a time very inimical to him.
So often did they butt him over, causing him sometimes severe bruises, that at last he resolved to try conclusions with them; and when next a goat made a rush at him, he seized him by the horns and wrestled with him mightily.

This exercise once begun, he provoked engagements, until his strength and aptitude were such and so well known, that not a billy-goat on Glashgar would have to do with him.
But when he saw that every one of them ran at his approach, Gibbie, who could not bear to be in discord with any creature, changed his behaviour towards them, and took equal pains to reconcile them to him--nor rested before he had entirely succeeded.
Every time Donal came home, he would bring some book of verse with him, and, leading Gibbie to some hollow, shady or sheltered as the time required, would there read to him ballads, or songs, or verse more stately, as mood or provision might suggest.