This last exclamation followed the Colonel's abrupt disappearance along the garden-path, leaving Patchey amazed and wonderstricken, with his hand upon the door. Colonel Sutherland had heard enough to inspire him with a new hope in respect to his visitor. To be sure, he recognized him!--to be sure, it could be no other person! He made haste into his cozy dining-room, casting a hurried glance as he passed at the carpet-bags and portmanteau, which still encumbered the hall. The dining-room was in confusion, much unlike its usual state; great-coats, and cravats, and wrappings of every kind lay scattered on the chairs; while in his own easy chair by the fire the stranger sat pouring out his tea, and with all the materials for a comfortable breakfast round him. Certainly he had lost no time. "Armitage!--it is you, then?" cried the Colonel, hastening up to him with the heartiest welcome. "Ah! yes, it is me--how d'ye do, Sutherland?--delighted to see you again. Here I am in full possession, like an old campaigner," said the stranger, somewhat languidly; "puts one in mind of Kitmudgharee, eh?--the happiest time of my life!" "And yet I am very glad to hear you have advanced in fortune and the world since then," said Colonel Sutherland, drawing a chair to the other side of the table; "and how is your health? They tell me you have become an invalid of late days--how is that? you used to be the most vigorous of us all. India?--liver affected?--how is it?" "Humph!" said Sir John, shaking his head; "can't tell--come to my fortune--some people say that's it. Nothing to do but please a man's self is what I call hard lines, Sutherland; and duties of property, and all that. Never had any bad health till I got rich. Here's a nice kind of existence for a man come to my time of life--not married and not intending to marry. Here's a set of men that hunt half the year and shoot the other half--ought to keep friends with 'em--only society in the country, except my Lord Duke, and he's stuck-up. Then, when I'm at home, there's a confounded lawyer with his new leases and his raised rents, and 'Sir John,' 'Sir John,' till I'm sick of my own name. Then there's a fellow of a chaplain pegs into me about an heir. What the deuce do I want with an heir? Says the estates go into another family after me--swears it's a sin to let the name of Armitage die out of the country. What's the consequence?--I can't look a woman in the face without thinking she wants to marry me, or I want to marry her, or something; and the end of the whole concern was, Sutherland, that I ran away--bolted, that's the fact, and got your letter in Paris, where I was bored to death. Thought I couldn't do better than come to you express--and, by George! I haven't enjoyed my breakfast like this for ten years!" "Very well--here you shall do as you like, and hear not a word of leases or heirs," said Colonel Sutherland, laughing. "We'll have it all our own way at Milnehill--ladies never come here."