The gloomy old servant, who stuck to him
during the repast, persisted in offering it, as though the credit of
the hospitality of Loughlinter depended on it. There are so many men
by whom the _tenuis ratio saporum_ has not been achieved, that the
Caleb Balderstones of those houses in which plenty does not flow
are almost justified in hoping that goblets of Gladstone may pass
current. Phineas Finn was not a martyr to eating or drinking. He
played with his fish without thinking much about it. He worked
manfully at the steak. He gave another crumple to the tart, and left
it without a pang. But when the old man urged him, for the third
time, to take that pernicious draught with his cheese, he angrily
demanded a glass of beer. The old man toddled out of the room, and on
his return he proffered to him a diminutive glass of white spirit,
which he called usquebaugh. Phineas, happy to get a little whisky,
said nothing more about the beer, and so the dinner was over.

He rose so suddenly from his chair that the man did not dare to ask
him whether he would not sit over his wine. A suggestion that way was
indeed made, would he "visit the laird out o' hand, or would he bide
awee?" Phineas decided on visiting the laird out of hand, and was
at once led across the hall, down a back passage which he had never
before traversed, and introduced to the chamber which had ever been
known as the "laird's ain room." Here Robert Kennedy rose to receive
him.

Phineas knew the man's age well. He was still under fifty, but he
looked as though he were seventy. He had always been thin, but he was
thinner now than ever. He was very grey, and stooped so much, that
though he came forward a step or two to greet his guest, it seemed as
though he had not taken the trouble to raise himself to his proper
height. "You find me a much altered man," he said. The change had
been so great that it was impossible to deny it, and Phineas
muttered something of regret that his host's health should be so
bad. "It is trouble of the mind,--not of the body, Mr. Finn. It is
her doing,--her doing. Life is not to me a light thing, nor are
the obligations of life light. When I married a wife, she became
bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh. Can I lose my bones and
my flesh,--knowing that they are not with God but still subject
elsewhere to the snares of the devil, and live as though I were a
sound man? Had she died I could have borne it. I hope they have made
you comforta