ry, "your
magnanimous opponent has fled, though not upon eagle's wings, from the
foe that was low--Egad, she walloped away with all the grace of triumph,
and has carried my stick off also, by way of spolia opima."

M'Intyre had little to answer for himself, except that a Highlander
could never pass a deer, a seal, or a salmon, where there was a
possibility of having a trial of skill with them, and that he had forgot
one of his arms was in a sling. He also made his fall an apology for
returning back to Monkbarns, and thus escape the farther raillery of his
uncle, as well as his lamentations for his walking-stick.

"I cut it," he said, "in the classic woods of Hawthornden, when I did
not expect always to have been a bachelor--I would not have given it for
an ocean of seals--O Hector! Hector!--thy namesake was born to be the prop
of Troy, and thou to be the plague of Monkbarns!"

CHAPTER TENTH.

Tell me not of it, friend--when the young weep,
Their tears are luke-warm brine;--from your old eyes
Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North,
Chilling the furrows of our withered cheeks,
Cold as our hopes, and hardened as our feeling--
Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless--ours recoil,
Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.
Old Play.

The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, which had been
retarded by these various discussions, and the rencontre which had
closed them, and soon arrived before the half-dozen cottages at
Mussel-crag. They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and
uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of
mourning. The boats were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day
was fine, and the season favourable, the chant, which is used by the
fishers when at sea, was silent, as well as the prattle of the children,
and the shrill song of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the
door. A few of the neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved
suits of black, others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an
expression of mournful sympathy with distress so sudden and unexpected,
stood gathered around the door of Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till
"the body was lifted." As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they made
way for him to enter, doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with
an air of melancholy courtesy, and he