as the other; there has been a touch of palsy
there; and the next hint will draw down his chin to his collar-bone, and
convert him, a month before dissolution, into a slavering idiot. There
is no occupation, small or great, insignificant or important, to which
he can turn, for any length of time, his hand, his heart, or his head.
He cannot angle--for his fingers refuse to tie a knot, much more to busk
a fly. The glimmer and the glow of the stream would make his brain
dizzy--to wet his feet now would, he fears, be death. Yet he thinks that
he will go out--during that sunny blink of a showery day--and try the
well-known pool in which he used to bathe in boyhood, with the long,
matted, green-trailing water-plants depending on the slippery rocks, and
the water-ousel gliding from beneath the arch that hides her "procreant
cradle," and then sinking like a stone suddenly in the limpid stream. He
sits down on the bank, and fumbling in his pouch for his pocket-book,
brings out, instead, a pocket-pistol. Turning his fiery face towards the
mild, blue, vernal sky, he pours the gurgling brandy down his
throat--first one dose, and then another--till, in an hour, stupefied
and dazed, he sees not the silvery crimson-spotted trouts, shooting, and
leaping, and tumbling, and plunging in deep and shallow; a day on which,
with one of Captain Colley's March-Browns, in an hour we could fill our
pannier. Or, if it be autumn or winter, he calls, perhaps, with a voice
at once gruff and feeble, an old Ponto, and will take a pluff at the
partridges. In former days, down they used to go, right and left, in
potato or turnip-field, broomy brae or stubble--but now his sight is dim
and wavering, and his touch trembles on the trigger. The covey whirrs
off, unharmed in a single feather--and poor Ponto, remembering better
days, cannot conceal his melancholy, falls in at his master's heel, and
will range no more. Out, as usual, comes the brandy-bottle--he is still
a good shot when his mouth is the mark; and having emptied the fatal
flask, he staggers homewards, with the muzzles of his double-barrel
frequently pointed to his ear, both being on full cock, and his brains
not blown out only by a miracle. He tries to read the newspaper--just
arrived--but cannot find his spectacles. Then, by way of variety, he
attempts a tune on the fiddle; but the bridge is broken, and her side
cracked, and the bass-string snapped--and she is restored to her peg
among the cobwebs