He pinched rappee as he spoke, in rapid doses from a snuff-box, and spread the brown powder in extravagant carelessness over his vest. He might affect what light-heartedness he could; I saw that the past fortnight had made a difference for the worse on him. The pouches below the eyes had got heavier and darker, the lines had deepened on his brow, the ruddy polish had gone off his cheek, and it was dull and spotted; by ten o’clock at night-when he used to be very jovial over a glass--I could tell he would be haggard and yawning. At his years men begin to age in a few hours; a sudden wrench to the affections, or shock to a long-disciplined order of things in their lives, will send them staggering down off the braehead whereon they have been perched with a good balance so long that they themselves have forgot the natural course of human man is to be progressing somewhere. “Ah, lad, lad! haven’t we the times?” he said, as he led me within to the parlour. “Inneraora in the stour in her reputation as well as in her tenements. I wish the one could be amended as readily as the other; but we mustn’t be saying a word against princes, ye ken,” he went on in the discreet whisper of the conspirator. “You were up and saw him last night, I’m hearing. To-day they tell me he’s himself again, and coming down to a session meeting at noon. I must put myself in his way to say a friendly word or two. Ah! you’re laughing at us. I understand, man, I understand. You travellers need not practise the art of civility; but we’re too close on the castle here to be out of favour with MacCailein Mor. Draw in your chair, and--Mary, Mary, goodwife! bring in the bottle with you and see young Elrigmore.” In came the goodwife with even greater signs of trouble than her husband, but all in a flurry of good-humoured welcome. They sat, the pair of them, before me in a little room poorly lit by a narrow window but half-glazed, because a lower portion of it had been destroyed in the occupation of the Irish, and had to be timbered up to keep the wind outside. A douce pathetic pair; I let my thoughts stray a little even from their daughter as I looked on them, and pondered on the tragedy of age that is almost as cruel as war, but for the love that set Provost Brown with his chair haffit close against his wife’s, so that less noticeably he might take her hand in his below the table and renew the glow that first they learned, no doubt, when lad and lass awandering in summer days, oh long ago, in Eas-a-chosain glen.