eadfastly at
the reflection of his features. It was several minutes before he spoke,
and when he did, the voice was tremulous and full of deep feeling.

'George, I am sadly changed; there is but little of the handsome
Chevalier here. I didn't think to look like this these fifteen years to
come.'

'Faith! for one who has gone through all that you have, I see no
such signs of wear and tear,' said Kelly. 'Had you been a Pope or a
Cardinal--had you lived like an Elector of Hanover, with no other perils
than a bare head in a procession, or the gouty twinges of forty years'
"sauer kraut----"'

'Keep your coarse ribaldry for your equals, sirrah. Let there be some,
at least, above the mark of your foul slander,' cried Charles angrily;
and then, throwing the looking-glass from him, he fell back upon his bed
like one utterly exhausted. Kelly (who knew him too well to continue an
irritating topic, his habit being to leave quietly alone the spirit that
forgot more rapidly than it resented) sipped his wine in silence for
some minutes. 'This day, sixteen years ago, I breakfasted in Carlisle,
at the house of a certain Widow Branards. It's strange how I remember a
name I have never heard since,' said Charles, in a voice totally altered
from its late tone of excitement. 'Do you know, Kelly, that it was on
the turn of a straw the fate of England hung that morning? Keppoch
had cut his hand with the hilt of his claymore, and instead of
counselling--as he ever did--a forward movement, he joined those who
advised retreat. Had we gone on, George, the game was our own. There is
now no doubt on the matter.'

'I have always heard the same,' said Kelly; 'and that your Majesty
yielded with a profound conviction that the counsel was ruinous. Is it
true, sire, that O'Sullivan agreed with your Majesty?'

'Quite true, George; and the poor fellow shed tears--perhaps for the
only time in his life--when he heard that the decision was given against
us. Stuart of Appin and Kerr were of the same mind; but _Dits aliter
visum_, George. We turned our back on Fortune that morning, and she
never showed us her face after.'

'You are not forgetting Falkirk, surely?' said Kelly, who never lost an
opportunity of any flattering allusion to the Prince's campaigns.

'Falkirk was but half what it ought to have been. The chieftains got
to quarrel among themselves, and left Hawley to pursue his retreat
unmolested; as the old song says,

'"The turnkey spat i