The purchase gave him particular pleasure, because the farm not only marched with his home-grounds, but filled up a great notch in the map of the property between Glashruach and the Mains, with which also it marched.

It was good land, and he let it at once, on his own terms, to Mr.Duff.
In the spring, affairs looked rather bad for him, and in the month of May, he considered himself compelled to go to London: he had a faith in his own business-faculty quite as foolish as any superstition in Gormgarnet.

There he fell into the hands of a certain man, whose true place would have been in the swell mob, and not in the House of Commons--a fellow who used his influence and facilities as member of Parliament in promoting bubble companies.
He was intimate with an elder brother of the laird, himself member for a not unimportant borough--a man, likewise, of principles that love the shade; and between them they had no difficulty in making a tool of Thomas Galbraith, as chairman of a certain aggregate of iniquity, whose designation will not, in some families, be forgotten for a century or so.

During the summer, therefore, the laird was from home, working up the company, hoping much from it, and trying hard to believe in it--whipping up its cream, and perhaps himself taking the froth, certainly doing his best to make others take it, for an increase of genuine substance.

He devoted the chamber of his imagination to the service of Mammon, and the brownie he kept there played him fine pranks.
A smaller change, though of really greater importance in the end, was, that in the course of the winter, one of Donal's sisters was engaged by the housekeeper at Glashruach, chiefly to wait upon Miss Galbraith.