Once away, Gibbie had no thought of returning. Up Daurside was the sole propulsive¹ force whose existence he recognized. But when he lifted his head from drinking at the stream, which was one of some size, and, greatly refreshed, looked up its channel, a longing² seized him to know whence came the water of life which had thus restored him to bliss—how a burn first appears upon the earth. He thought it might come from the foot of a great conical mountain which seemed but a little way off. He would follow it up and see. So away he went, yielding at once, as was his wont³, to the first desire that came. He had not trotted⁵ far along the bank, however, before, at a sharp turn it took, he saw that its course was a much longer one than he had imagined, for it turned from the mountain, and led up among the roots of other hills; while here in front of him, direct from the mountain, as it seemed, came down a smaller stream, and tumbled noisily into this. The larger burn would lead him too far from the Daur; he would follow the smaller one. He found a wide shallow place, crossed the larger, and went up the side of the smaller.  
Doubly free after his imprisonment⁶ of the morning, Gibbie sped joyously⁷ along. Already nature, her largeness, her openness, her loveliness, her changefulness, her oneness in change, had begun to heal the child's heart, and comfort him in his disappointment with his kind. The stream he was now ascending⁸ ran along a claw of the mountain, which claw was covered with almost a forest of pine, protecting little colonies of less hardy⁹ timber. Its heavy green was varied¹⁰ with the pale delicate fringes of the fresh foliage¹¹ of the larches¹³, filling the air with aromatic¹⁴ breath. In the midst of their soft tufts, each tuft buttoned with a brown spot, hung the rich brown knobs and tassels¹⁵ of last year's cones¹⁶. But the trees were all on the opposite side of the stream, and appeared to be mostly on the other side of a wall. Where Gibbie was, the mountain-root was chiefly of rock, interspersed¹⁷ with heather.
 
A little way up the stream, he came to a bridge over it, closed at the farther end by iron gates between pillars, each surmounted¹⁸ by a wolf's head in stone. Over the gate on each side leaned a rowan-tree, with trunk and branches aged¹⁹ and gnarled amidst their fresh foliage. He crossed the burn to look through the gate, and pressed his face between the bars to get a better sight of a tame rabbit that had got out of its hutch. It sat, like a Druid white with age, in the midst of a gravel²⁰ drive, much overgrown with moss²¹, that led through a young larch¹² wood, with here and there an ancient tree, lonely amidst the youth of its companions. Suddenly from the wood a large spaniel came bounding upon the rabbit. Gibbie gave a shriek²², and the rabbit made one white flash into the wood, with the dog after him. He turned away sad at heart.
 
"Ilka cratur 'at can," he said to himself, "ates ilka cratur 'at canna!"
 
It was his first generalization²³, but not many years passed before he supplemented it with a conclusion:
 
"But the man 'at wad be a man, he maunna."
 
Resuming his journey of investigation²⁴, he trotted along the bank of the burn, farther and farther up, until he could trot⁴ no more, but must go clambering over great stones, or sinking to the knees in bog²⁵, patches of it red with iron, from which he would turn away with a shudder²⁶. Sometimes he walked in the water, along the bed of the burn itself; sometimes he had to scramble²⁷ up its steep side, to pass one of the many little cataracts²⁸ of its descent. Here and there a small silver birch, or a mountain-ash, or a stunted²⁹ fir-tree, looking like a wizard child, hung over the stream. Its banks were mainly of rock and heather, but now and then a small patch of cultivation³⁰ intervened. Gibbie had no thought that he was gradually leaving the abodes³¹ of men behind him; he knew no reason why in ascending things should change, and be no longer as in plainer ways. For what he knew, there might be farm after farm, up and up for ever, to the gates of heaven. But it would no longer have troubled him greatly to leave all houses behind him for a season. A great purple foxglove could do much now—just at this phase of his story, to make him forget—not the human face divine, but the loss of it. A lark³³ aloft in the blue, from whose heart, as from a fountain whose roots were lost in the air, its natural source, issued, not a stream, but an ever spreading lake of song, was now more to him than the memory of any human voice he had ever heard, except his father's and Sambo's. But he was not yet quite out and away from the dwellings³⁵ of his kind.
 
I may as well now make the attempt to give some idea of Gibbie's appearance, as he showed after so long wandering. Of dress he had hardly enough left to carry the name. Shoes, of course, he had none. Of the shape of trousers there remained nothing, except the division before and behind in the short petticoat to which they were reduced; and those rudimentary divisions were lost in the multitude of rents of equal apparent significance. He had never, so far as he knew, had a shirt upon his body; and his sole other garment was a jacket, so much too large for him, that to retain the use of his hands he had folded back the sleeves quite to his elbows. Thus reversed they became pockets, the only ones he had, and in them he stowed whatever provisions were given him of which he could not make immediate³⁶ use—porridge and sowens and mashed³⁷ potatoes included: they served him, in fact, like the first of the stomachs of those animals which have more than one—concerning which animals, by the way, I should much like to know what they were in "Pythagoras' time." His head had plentiful³⁸ protection in his own natural crop—had never either had or required any other. That would have been of the gold order, had not a great part of its colour been sunburnt, rained, and frozen out of it. All ways it pointed³⁹, as if surcharged with electric fluid, crowning him with a wildness which was in amusing contrast with the placidity⁴⁰ of his countenance⁴¹. Perhaps the resulting queerness in the expression of the little vagrant⁴², a look as if he had been hunted till his body and soul were nearly ruffled⁴³ asunder⁴⁴, and had already parted company in aim and interest, might have been the first thing to strike a careless observer. But if the heart was not a careless one, the eye would look again and discover a stronger stillness than mere⁴⁵ placidity—a sort of live peace abiding⁴⁶ in that weather-beaten little face under its wild crown of human herbage. The features of it were well-shaped, and not smaller than proportioned to the small whole of his person. His eyes—partly, perhaps, because there was so little flesh upon his bones—were large, and in repose⁴⁷ had much of a soft animal expression: there was not in them the look of You and I know. Frequently, too, when occasion roused the needful instinct, they had a sharp expression of outlook and readiness, which, without a trace of fierceness or greed, was yet equally animal. Only all the time there was present something else, beyond characterization: behind them something seemed to lie asleep. His hands and feet were small and childishly dainty, his whole body well-shaped and well put together—of which the style of his dress rather quashed the evidence.
 
Such was Gibbie to the eye, as he rose from Daurside to the last cultivated ground on the borders of the burn, and the highest dwelling³⁴ on the mountain. It was the abode³² of a cottar, and was a dependency of the farm he had just left. The cottar was an old man of seventy; his wife was nearly sixty. They had reared stalwart sons and shapely daughters, now at service here and there in the valleys below—all ready to see God in nature, and recognize Him in providence⁴⁸. They belong to a class now, I fear, extinct, but once, if my love prejudice not my judgment⁴⁹ too far, the glory and strength of Scotland: their little acres are now swallowed up in the larger farms.
 
It was a very humble⁵⁰ dwelling, built of turf upon a foundation of stones, and roofed with turf and straw—warm, and nearly impervious⁵¹ to the searching airs of the mountain-side. One little window of a foot and a half square looked out on the universe. At one end stood a stack of peat, half as big as the cottage itself, All around it were huge............