“I am glad to see you, sir--I am very glad to see you. My poor gentleman is, I am afraid, very unwell; and oh, Mr. Oldbuck, he’ll see neither doctor, nor minister, nor writer! And think what it would be, if, as my poor Mr. Hadoway used to say, a man was to die without advice of the three learned faculties!” “Greatly better than with them,” grumbled the cynical Antiquary. “I tell you, Mrs. Hadoway, the clergy live by our sins, the medical faculty by our diseases, and the law gentry by our misfortunes.” “O fie, Monkbarns!--to hear the like o’ that frae you!--But yell walk up and see the poor young lad?--Hegh sirs? sae young and weel-favoured--and day by day he has eat less and less, and now he hardly touches onything, only just pits a bit on the plate to make fashion--and his poor cheek has turned every day thinner and paler, sae that he now really looks as auld as me, that might be his mother--no that I might be just that neither, but something very near it.” “Why does he not take some exercise?” said Oldbuck. “I think we have persuaded him to do that, for he has bought a horse from Gibbie Golightly, the galloping groom. A gude judge o’ horse-flesh Gibbie tauld our lass that he was--for he offered him a beast he thought wad answer him weel eneugh, as he was a bookish man, but Mr. Lovel wadna look at it, and bought ane might serve the Master o’ Morphie--they keep it at the Graeme’s Arms, ower the street;--and he rode out yesterday morning and this morning before breakfast--But winna ye walk up to his room?” “Presently, presently. But has he no visitors?” “O dear, Mr. Oldbuck, not ane; if he wadna receive them when he was weel and sprightly, what chance is there of onybody in Fairport looking in upon him now?” “Ay, ay, very true,--I should have been surprised had it been otherwise--Come, show me up stairs, Mrs. Hadoway, lest I make a blunder, and go where I should not.” The good landlady showed Mr. Oldbuck up her narrow staircase, warning him of every turn, and lamenting all the while that he was laid under the necessity of mounting up so high. At length she gently tapped at the door of her guest’s parlour. “Come in,” said Lovel; and Mrs. Hadoway ushered in the Laird of Monkbarns.