nothing more to say to me I
will be stepping. If you have nothing more to say?" he added, with that
burning, childish eagerness that was now so common with the man.

"No, my lord, I have nothing more," said I, drily enough.

"Then I think I will be stepping," says my lord, and stood and looked at
me, fidgeting with his hat, which he had taken off again. "I suppose you
will have no errands? No? I am to meet Sir William Johnson, but I will
be more upon my guard." He was silent for a time, and then, smiling: "Do
you call to mind a place, Mackellar--it's a little below Eagles--where
the burn runs very deep under a wood of rowans? I mind being there when
I was a lad--dear, it comes over me like an old song!--I was after the
fishing, and I made a bonny cast. Eh, but I was happy. I wonder,
Mackellar, why I am never happy now?"

"My lord," said I, "if you would drink with more moderation you would
have the better chance. It is an old byword that the bottle is a false
consoler."

"No doubt," said he, "no doubt. Well, I think I will be going."

"Good-morning, my lord," said I.

"Good-morning, good-morning," said he, and so got himself at last from
the apartment.

I give that for a fair specimen of my lord in the morning and I must
have described my patron very ill if the reader does not perceive a
notable falling off. To behold the man thus fallen: to know him accepted
among his companions for a poor, muddled toper, welcome (if he were
welcome at all) for the bare consideration of his title; and to recall
the virtues he had once displayed against such odds of fortune; was not
this a thing at once to rage and to be humbled at?

In his cups, he was more excessive. I will give but the one scene, close
upon the end, which is strongly marked upon my memory to this day, and
at the time affected me almost with horror.

I was in bed, lying there awake, when I heard him stumbling on the stair
and singing. My lord had no gift of music, his brother had all the
graces of the family, so that when I say singing, you are to understand
a manner of high, carolling utterance, which was truly neither speech
nor song. Something not unlike is to be heard upon the lips of children,
ere they learn shame; from those of a man grown elderly it had a strange
effect. He opened the door with noisy precaution; peered in, shading his
candle; conceived me to slumber; entered, set his light upon the table,
and took off his hat. I saw him very plain; a