ale-house, where he might be seen three or four nights a-week, sometimes in a very lofty and dignified state of haziness, freely bestowing the most grave advice upon everybody, and disposed to take rather a melancholy view of the degradation of the times, and of things in general. But this was the worst that anyone could say against him. He was fond of his little grandchildren, and was always busy with something for their amusement; good to his daughter, whom he often helped out of his own little funds; and in general friendly and serviceable. He presented himself to his old commander with a little awkwardness, fully expecting, as it seemed, to be taken to task for his morning's exploits; and his expectations were not disappointed. Colonel Sutherland was too much given to advising youth himself to have any patience with the advice of the sergeant. It was an invasion of his own domain which he could not forgive. "I am glad to hear you are so comfortable," said the Colonel, "and that you manage to live in peace with your son-in-law, which, I confess to you, I would have thought rather doubtful; for I know you're rather strong in your opinions--eh! is it your daughter that keeps the peace?" "Na, Cornel, na," said the sergeant; "I'm no so onexperienced as that; faothers and moothers are best in their oun place. I have a cot to mysel', and a' my traps about me--next house to Mary, poor thing!--and she's kept a' goin' since I've come, and the childer they keep back and forard; and so far as the husband goes, it never was said, among a' slanders, that I was ought but a peaceable man--" "Oh! a very peaceable man," said Colonel Sutherland, with a smile. "That, to be sure, is the last thing one could think of doubting; but come, you have your faults, my good fellow--what do you say to me, now, for such an account as I heard your giving, this morning, to the young man?" "Well, Cornel!" exclaimed the culprit, keeping up his boldness, though a little abashed-- "Well! It does not appear to me to be well at all," said the Colonel; "how often have I told you, when on recruiting duty, to tell the truth? You pour a parcel of lies into a poor blockhead's head, and blow up his pride with thoughts of what's going to happen to him; and you expect, when he has found out that it's all lies, as he must do, that he will believe the rest of what you say to him! That's bad enough; but to go into it _con amore_--I mean for pure love of romancing--when there was neither necessity nor business in it--I admit to you that's something that beats me."