light upon the table and its white cloth, and showed fully the expressions of the two young men's countenances. Both were still gay, and laugh and jest had gone on between them during the meal; but every now and then a look of deep thoughtfulness, almost amounting to melancholy, crossed the face of the earl, passing away again like the shadow of a flying cloud cast momentarily on a fine landscape. They had been speaking of many things while the servant of the earl and some of the people of the inn had been coming and going. The period of Lord Gowrie's sojourn at Padua as a scholar had been referred to, and the high academic honour which had been conferred upon him somewhat more than a year before, by his election to the office of rector, had been commented upon by Hume, who laughingly said, "If I had puzzled my dull brains for seven years, I never could have obtained or merited such a distinction, John." It was one of Lord Gowrie's graver moments when his friend made this observation, and he replied gloomily, "Those who eat the fruit early, Hume, are left with bare boughs in the autumn. I was elected Lord Provost of Perth before I was fourteen; I fought in a lost battle at fifteen; and I was rector of this university before I was twenty. Blighted hopes, or early death, we often find the fate of those who taste the bitter stream of life so soon." "Nonsense," replied his friend; "have you studied the sublime art of astrology to so little purpose? It is but that you are born under a fortunate star, and will go on in honour and success until the end." "Small success at the field of Down," replied the earl; "for a more disastrous rout never befel brave men than there overtook Athol and Montrose." "But great success to you," answered Hume, laughing; "for you escaped where many a brave man fell, and were pardoned without inquiry, when many were mulcted of half their goods--Still, still your fortunate star was on the ascendant; and the devil, the king, and the popish lords could not get the better of its influence; and now what brings you to Padua?" "By and by," said the young earl--"we'll talk of that by and by. Tell me, first, all that has happened to you, according to your promise." "My life, good faith, has been dull enough," replied Sir John Hume, "till within the last week, when I have had a little occupation for my thoughts besides dull problems and hard studies. Do you remember an old man with a gray beard, who used to wander about towards eventide, in a long black gown and a velvet cap? Manucci is his name, a Florentine, who has travelled much in different lands, speaks English like an Englishman, and French like a Frenchman, and used to look like Titian's portrait, only more meagre and somewhat less fresh and lusty." Lord Gowrie had twice nodded his head in token that he knew the person spoken of; but Hume had still gone on describing, till at length the young earl said, almost impatiently, "Yes, yes, I know him well. What of him?"