John Spence, who, as we have seen, was connected with the early history of Adam Mercer, had now reached an extreme old age, somewhere between eighty and ninety years. As he himself for a considerable time had stuck to the ambiguous epoch of "aboon fourscore", it was concluded by his friends that his ninth decade had nearly ended. He was hale and hearty, however,--"in possession of all his faculties", as we say--with no complaint but "the rheumatics", which had soldered his joints so as to keep him generally a prisoner in the large chair "ayont the fire", or compel him to use crutches, when he "hirpled" across the floor. He was able, however, in genial weather, to occupy the bench at his cottage door, there to fondle the young dogs, and to cultivate the acquaintance of the old ones. He had long ago given up all active work, and was a pensioner on his Lordship; but he still tenaciously clung to the title of "Senior Keeper". The vermin even which he had killed, and nailed, as a warning to evil-doers, over the gable-ends and walls of outhouses, had, with the exception of a few fragments of bleached fossils, long since passed away, giving place to later remains. John was a great favourite with his master; and his advice was asked in all matters connected with the game on the estate of Castle Bennock. His anecdotes and reminiscences of old sporting days which he had spent with three generations of the family, and with generations of their friends and relations, were inexhaustible. And when the great annual festival of "the 12th" came round, and the Castle was crowded, and the very dogs seemed to snuff the game in the air and became excited, then John’s cottage, with its kennels and all its belongings, was a constant scene of attraction to the sportsmen; and there he held a sort of court, with the dignity and gravity of an old Nimrod. The cottage was beautifully situated in a retired nook at the entrance of a glen, beside a fresh mountain stream, and surrounded by a scattered wood of wild birches, mountain ash, and alder. The first ridge of Benturk rose beyond the tree tops, with an almost perpendicular ascent of loose stones, ribbed by wintry floods, and dotted by tufts of heather and dots of emerald-green pasture, up to the range of rocks which ramparted the higher peaks, around which in every direction descended and swept far away the endless moorland of hill and glen. John had long been a widower, and now resided with his eldest son Hugh, whose hair was already mingled with white, like brown heather sprinkled with snow.