_The Old Lieutenant_, begun in _Good Words_ before he knew it was to be a story, and continued without sight of an end, is disjointed in the narrative, and loaded with extraneous matter; but the elder Fleming is like one of Thackeray’s men, and, of the domestics of the good old days when the social bond was not cash payment but affection, where, outside of Scott, will you find a more delightful type than Babby? When Ned was about to leave home for his first voyage, ‘no one saw the tears which filled her large eyes, or heard her blowing her little nose half the night.’ After Ned’s marriage, his father, inviting the young couple to visit the old home, says simply, ‘I think that Babby will expect it.’ Babby has a tongue in her head, and is never so eloquent as when she rails at the new minister. Under the old one she had felt many a time ‘jist mad at hersel’ that she wasna a better woman.’ ‘But this chield Dalrymple that’s cam’ among us! Hech, sirs! what a round black crappit heid he has, like a bull-dog’s, and a body round and fat like a black pudding; and the cratur gangs struttin’ aboot wi’ his umbrella under his oxter, crawin’ like a midden cock, wha but him, keep us a’! an’ pittin’ his neb into every ane’s brose wi’ his impudence. And syne he rages and rampages in the poopit, wi’ the gowk’s spittle in his mouth, flytin’ on folk, and abusin’ them for a’ that’s bad, till my nerves rise, and I could jist cry oot, if it wasna for shame, “Haud yer tongue, ye spitefu’ cratur!” And again,--“Eh, I was glad ye werena married by Dalrymple! He routs in the poopit like a bull, and when the body’s crackin’ wi’ ye, he cheeps, cheeps like a chirted puddock.” “A what?” asked Kate. “A squeezed tade!” replied Babby; “d’ye no’ ken yer ain lang’age? And as for his sermons, they’re jist like a dog’s tail, the langer the sma’er.”’ If Ned is partly made to order, the crew are real old salts. Their conversation finally recalls Flint’s buccaneers, as when one (a milder Israel Hands) remarks, ‘But what, suppose I makes up my mind, do you see, to go ahead, and says, as it were, says I, I’ll not pray, nor read the Bible, nor give up my grog, nor anything else, nor be a saint, but a sinner, and sail when I like, and where I like, and be my own captain--eh?’