he wine before you may serve for a preface.
We shall have your wine in five minutes."

The claret jug empty, Sir Willoughby offered to send for more. De Craye
was languid over the question. Vernon rose from the table.

"We have a bottle of Doctor Middleton's port coming in," Willoughby
said to him.

"Mine, you call it?" cried the doctor.

"It's a royal wine, that won't suffer sharing," said Vernon.

"We'll be with you, if you go into the billiard-room, Vernon."

"I shall hurry my drinking of good wine for no man," said the Rev.
Doctor.

"Horace?"

"I'm beneath it, ephemeral, Willoughby. I am going to the ladies."

Vernon and De Craye retired upon the arrival of the wine; and Dr.
Middleton sipped. He sipped and looked at the owner of it.

"Some thirty dozen?" he said.

"Fifty."

The doctor nodded humbly.

"I shall remember, sir," his host addressed him, "whenever I have the
honour of entertaining you, I am cellarer of that wine."

The Rev. Doctor set down his glass. "You have, sir, in some sense, an
enviable post. It is a responsible one, if that be a blessing. On you
it devolves to retard the day of the last dozen."

"Your opinion of the wine is favourable, sir?"

"I will say this:--shallow souls run to rhapsody:--I will say, that I
am consoled for not having lived ninety years back, or at any period
but the present, by this one glass of your ancestral wine."

"I am careful of it," Sir Willoughby said, modestly; "still its natural
destination is to those who can appreciate it. You do, sir."

"Still my good friend, still! It is a charge; it is a possession, but
part in trusteeship. Though we cannot declare it an entailed estate,
our consciences are in some sort pledged that it shall be a succession
not too considerably diminished."

"You will not object to drink it, sir, to the health of your
grandchildren. And may you live to toast them in it on their
marriage-day!"

"You colour the idea of a prolonged existence in seductive hues. Ha!
It is a wine for Tithonus. This wine would speed him to the rosy
Morning--aha!"

"I will undertake to sit you through it up to morning," said Sir
Willoughby, innocent of the Bacchic nuptiality of the allusion.

Dr Middleton eyed the decanter. There is a grief in gladness, for a
premonition of our mortal state. The amount of wine in the decanter did
not promise to sustain the starry roof of night and greet the dawn.
"Old wine, my friend, denies us the full bottl