t me; another comes, and eats my pines, and drinks my port, goes
home, and calls me a purse-proud upstart, because he can't match 'em.
Never mind; old Mark's old Mark; sound in the heart, and sound in the
liver, just the same as thirty years ago, and will be till he takes his
last quietus est--

'And drops into his grassy nest.'

Bye, bye, Doctor! Come, Mary!"

And out he toddled, with silent little Mary at his heels.

"Old Mark wears well, body and soul," said Tom.

"He is a noble, generous fellow, and as delicate-hearted as a woman
withal, in spite of his conceit and roughness. Fifty and odd years now,
Tom, have we been brothers, and I never found him change. And brothers
we shall be, I trust, a few years more, till I see you back again from
the East, comfortably settled. And then--"

"Don't talk of that, sir, please!" said Tom, quite quickly and sharply.
"How ill poor Mary looks!"

"So they say, poor child; and one hears it in her voice. Ah, Tom, that
girl is an angel; she has been to me daughter, doctor, clergyman, eyes
and library; and would have been nurse too, if it had not been for
making old Jane jealous. But she is ill. Some love affair, I suppose--"

"How quaint it is, that the father has kept all the animal vigour to
himself, and transmitted none to the daughter."

"He has not kept the soul to himself, Tom, or the eyes either. She will
bring me in wild flowers, and talk to me about them, till I fancy I can
see them as well as ever. Ah, well! It is a sweet world still, Tom, and
there are sweet souls in it. A sweet world: I was too fond of looking at
it once, I suppose, so God took away my sight, that I might learn to
look at Him." And the old man lay back in his chair, and covered his
face with his handkerchief, and was quite still awhile. And Tom watched
him, and thought that he would give all his cunning and power to be like
that old man.

Then Jane came in, and laid the cloth,--a coarse one enough,--and Tom
picked a cold mutton bone with a steel fork, and drank his pint of beer
from the public-house, and lighted his father's pipe, and then his own,
and vowed that he had never dined so well in his life, and began his
traveller's stories again.

And in the evening Mark came in, with a bottle of the '21 in his
coat-tail pocket; and the three sat and chatted, while Mary brought out
her work, and stitched listening silently, till it was time to lead the
old man upstairs.

Tom put his father to