ctober blasts, but
think of Jamie yonder on the cold foreign field with no stone for his
memorial; Dugald, so lately gone, an old man, bent and palsied, would
return in the flicker of the candle, remitted to his prime, the very
counterpart of the sturdy gallant on the wall. Sometimes he would talk
with these wraiths, and Miss Mary standing still in the lobby, her heart
tortured by his loneliness, would hear him murmuring in these phantom
visitations. She would, perhaps, venture in now and then timidly, and
take a seat unbidden on the corner of a chair near him, and embark
on some topic of the day. For a little he would listen almost with a
brightness, but brief, brief was the mood; very soon would he let his
chin fall upon his breast, and with pouted lips relapse into his
doleful meditation.

All life, all the interests, the activities of the town seemed to drift
by him; folk saw him less and less often on the plain stones of
the street; children grew up from pinafores to kilts, from kilts to
breeches, never knowing of his presence in that community that at last
he saw but of an afternoon in momentary glimpses from the window.

On a week-end, perhaps, the veterans would come up to cheer him if they
could; tobacco that he nor any of his had cared for in that form
would send its cloud among Miss Mary's dear naperies, but she never
complained: they might have fumed her out of press and pantry if
they brought her brother cheer. They talked loudly; they laughed
boisterously; they acted a certain zest in life: for a little he would
rouse to their entertainment, fiddling heedlessly with an empty glass,
but anon he would see the portrait of Dugald looking on them wondering
at their folly, and that must daunten him. It would not take long till
some extravagance of these elders made him wince, and there was Cornal
Colin again in the dolours, poor company for them that would harbour
any delusion of youth. It was pitiful then to see them take their
departures, almost slinking, ashamed to have sounded the wrong note in
that chamber of sober recollections. Miss Mary, lighting them to the
door with one of her mother's candlesticks, felt as she had the light
above her head and showed them down the stair as if she had been the
last left at a funeral feast. Her shadow on the wall, dancing before her
as she returned, seemed some mockery of the night.

Only Old Brooks could rouse the Cornal to some spirit of liveliness.
In a neighbourly