His hunting-days were well-nigh past now; yet, at a meet, all the field rejoiced to see the fine old man in his saddle, and with all his pride of bearing--for a wealthy parvenu, however honestly he had won his wealth, Sir Piers would have treated with chilling hauteur--he was never above conversing with some sturdy farmer of Kyle or Cunninghame, kindly and affably, on the price of stock, the fall of wheat, on breeding, fattening, or draining, and always winding up by some, often irrelevant, anecdote of his sporting experiences in India, or when he followed the drums of the Cameronians. Old as he was, he had never been known to shrink from a bullfinch, or be fished out of a brook; he was welcome in every homestead throughout the country-side, and the farmers' wives always assumed their brightest looks, brought forth their whitest tablecloths and the best contents of larder and pantry, in honour of the old Laird of Eaglescraig, when he came their way. He was a Justice of the Peace and Commissioner of Supply for the County; he read the _Field_, of course, as what country gentleman does not? He studied the War Office _Gazette_ regularly, as if he expected his own name to appear there, once weekly; he was simple in all his tastes and happy in all his surroundings, yet, for all that, there was a skeleton in his house and heart, known, perhaps, to himself alone. He was a childless man now--childless by an act of his own--and the title and estates, which he inherited from a long line of ancestors, were eventually to pass from him to the heir of entail, whom he strove hard, but in vain, to like or admire. The latter, Hew Caddish Montgomerie, was then about thirty years of age. He was not ungentlemanly either in manner or bearing; but his face, like his disposition, was very defective. His eyes were called grey, and seemed to be grey at times; yet, on closer inspection, it was but too apparent that those shifty and furtive orbs of his were of different colours, for one was a species of bilious green. They were closely set on each side of a nose that strongly resembled a shoe-horn, and his mouth, which was both cruel and licentious in contour, was partly concealed, or altered in expression, by a luxuriant brown moustache. He had come home, we have said, on leave from the C.S., a sharp hand at cards and with a billiard-cue, deeply dipped in debt, and with the current reputation, among his set, of being 'a bad lot.' His mother, daughter of a Sudder judge, was one of the old English family of Caddish, a name which Hew was wont to affirm was a corruption of Cavendish; be that as it may, the corruption thereof, in some instances, suited his character amazingly well. 'This is rather unlike your usual proud exclusiveness, Sir Piers,' said he, after a pause. 'What? inviting this young officer to knock over a few birds?' 'Yes--without an introduction.'