oldier's return
to a reception so cruel. The General said nothing, but sat musing, his
eyes, wide and distant, on the board. And out in the street there was
the traffic of the town, the high calls of lads in their boisterous
evening play, the laugh of a girl. From the kitchen came the rattle of
Peggy's operations, and in a low murmur Miss Mary's voice as she hummed
to herself, her symptom of anxiety, as she was sieving the evening milk
in the pantry.

The Cornal gulped the merest thimbleful of spirits and resumed in a
different key.

"Then, then," said he, "then I became the family's fool. Oh, ay!"--and
he laughed with a crackle at the throat and no merriment--"I was the
family fool; there was aye a succession of them in our house, one after
another, dancing to this woman's piping. For a while nobody saw it;
Dugald never saw it, for he was sitting moping, wearying for some
work anywhere away from this infernal clime of rain and sleep and old
sorrows; Mary never noticed it--at least not for a little; she could not
easily fancy her companion the character she was. But I would be meeting
the girl here and there about the country, in the glen, in the town,
as well as here in this very parlour where I had to sit and look
indifferent, though--though my heart stounded, and I never met her but
I felt a traitor to my brother. You will believe that, Dugald?" said he,
recognition for a moment flashing to his eye.

And the General nodded, stretching himself weary on the chair.

"Oh, ay! even then I wished myself younger, for she was not long beyond
her teens, and walking beside her I would be feeling musty and old,
though I was not really old, as my picture there above the chimneypiece
will show. I was not old, in heart--it pattered like a bairn's steps to
every glimpse and sentence of her. I lost six months at this game, my
corps calling me, but I could not drag myself away. Once I spoke of
going, and she sang 'The Rover'--by God! it scaled me to her footsteps.
I stayed for very pity of myself, seeing myself a rover indeed if I
went, more distressed than ever gave the key to any song. The woods, the
woods in spring; the country full of birds; Dhuloch lap-lapping on the
shore; the summer with hay filling the field, and the sky blue from hill
to hill, the nights of heather and star--oh, yes, she led me a pretty
dance, I'm thinking, and sometimes I will be wondering if it was worth
the paying for."

The Paymaster's house was gr