aye fond o' him, addressed him frae the head o' the table:--

"'Cambogie,' quoth she, 'I'd like to hae your opinion about that wine. It's
some the duke has just received, and we should like to hear what you think
of it.'

"'It's nae sae bad, my leddy,' said my uncle; for ye see he was a man of
few words, and never flattered onybody.

"'Then you don't approve much of it?' said the duchess.

"'I've drank better, and I've drank waur,' quo' he.

"'I'm sorry you don't like it, Caimbogie,' said the duchess, 'for it can
never be popular now,--we have such a dependence upon your taste.'

"'I cauna say ower muckle for my _taste_, my leddy, but ae thing I _will_
say,--I've a most damnable _smell!_'

"I hear that never since the auld walls stood was there ever the like o'
the laughing that followed; the puir duke himsel' was carried away, and
nearly had a fit, and a' the grand lords and leddies a'most died of it. But
see here, the earle has nae left a drap o' whiskey in the flask."

"The last glass I drained to your respectable uncle's health," said Quill,
with a most professional gravity. "Now, Charlie, make a little room for me
in the straw."

The doctor soon mounted beside me, and giving me a share of his ample
cloak, considerably ameliorated my situation.

"So you knew Sparks, Doctor?" said I, with a strong curiosity to hear
something of his early acquaintance.

"That I did: I knew him when he was an ensign in the 10th Foot; and, to say
the truth, he is not much changed since that time,--the same lively look of
a sick cod-fish about his gray eyes; the same disorderly wave of his yellow
hair; the same whining voice, and that confounded apothecary's laugh."

"Come, come, Doctor, Sparks is a good fellow at heart; I won't have him
abused. I never knew he had been in the infantry; I should think it must
have been another of the same name."

"Not at all; there's only one like him in the service, and that's himself.
Confound it, man, I'd know his skin upon a bush; he was only three weeks
in the Tenth, and, indeed, your humble servant has the whole merit of his
leaving it so soon."

"Do let us hear how that happened."

"Simply thus: The jolly Tenth were some four years ago the pleasantest
corps in the army; from the lieutenant-colonel down to the last joined
sub., all were out-and-outers,--real gay fellows. The mess was, in fact,
like a pleasant club, and if you did not suit it, the best thing you could
do was to sel