Juden was verging on sixty years of age; his figure was short and paunchy, his face full and florid; his twinkling grey eyes wore always a cunning expression, and had generally a sotted appearance about them, which made it extremely difficult to determine whether he was drunk or sober. His large round head was bald, and his chin close shaven, according to the fashion for the lower classes, few but nobles and cavaliers retaining the manly moustaches and imperial. A clean white cravat fell over his doublet of dark-green cloth, the red braiding of which was neatly curved to suit his ample paunch; breeches of dark plush, black cotton stockings and heavy shoes, the instep of each being covered by a large brass buckle, completed his attire. A scar still remained on his shining scalp to attest the dangers he had dared in his younger days. The last of a once numerous and splendid but now diminished household, old Juden Stenton was a faithful follower of Lord Clermistonlee, for whom he would have laid down his life without a sigh of regret. He acted by turns butler and baillie, cook and valet, groom, farrier, trooper, and factotum, being the beau ideal of the staunch but unscrupulous serving-man of the day, who changed sides in religion, politics, and everything just as the Laird did, and who knew no will or law save those of his leader and master. When Clermistonlee (then Sir Randal Clermont of Drumsheugh), ruined by the mad excesses into which he had plunged at the dissipated court of Charles II., in a fit of despair joined the insurgent Covenanters at Bothwell Bridge, Juden put a blue cockade in his bonnet, "girded up his loins," as he said, "and went forth to battle for Scotland's oppressed kirk and broken covenant." But when Sir Randal's name (in consequence of mistake, or of some friendly influence in the Scottish cabinet) was omitted in the list of the attainted, and he changed sides, obtaining--none knew how or why--rank and riches under the persecutors, Juden changed too, and donning the buff coat and scarlet, became a bitter foe to "all crop-eared and psalmsinging rebels," and riding as a royalist trooper, suppressed many a harmless conventicle, and hunted and hounded, slashed and shot, or dragged to prison those who had been his former comrades, for in political matters Juden's mind was as facile and easy as that of a German. He had too often less honourably acted the pander to his lord, in many a vile intrigue and cruel seduction; for of all the wild rakes of the time (Rochester excepted) none had rushed so furiously on the career of fashionable vice and dissipation as Clermistonlee; and even now, when forty years of age, he continued the same kind of life from mere habit, perhaps, rather than inclination.