was not too much insisted on. They were there not
so much mourners as the guests of Captain Campbell, nigh on a dozen
of half-pay officers who had escaped the shambles of Europe, with the
merchants of the place, and some of the farmers of the glen, the banker,
the Sheriff, the Fiscal and the writers of whom the town has ever had
more than a fair share. Dr. Colin had blessed the viands and gone away;
he was a new kind of minister and a surprising one, who had odd views
about the drinking customs of the people, and when his coat skirts
had disappeared round the corner of the church there was a feeling of
relief, and old Baldy Bain, "Copenhagen" as they called him, who was
precentor in the Gaelic end of the church, was emboldened to fill his
glass up to more generous height than he had ever cared to do in the
presence of the clergyman. The food and drink were spread on two
long tables; the men stood round or sat upon the forms their children
occupied in school hours. The room was clamant with the voices of the
company. Gathered in groups, they discussed everything under heaven
except the object of their meeting--the French, the sowing, the
condition of the hogs, the Duke's approaching departure for London, the
storm, the fishing. They wore their preposterous tall hats on the backs
of their heads with the crape bows over the ears, they lifted up the
skirts of their swallow-tail coats and hung them on their arms with
their hands in their breeches pockets. And about them was the odour
of musty, mildewed broadcloth, taken out of damp presses only on such
occasions.

Mr. Spencer, standing very straight and tall and thin, so that his
trousers at the foot strained tightly at the straps under his insteps,
looked over the assembly, and with a stranger's eye could not but be
struck by its oddity. He was seeing--lucky man to have the chance!--the
last of the old Highland burgh life and the raw beginnings of the
new; he was seeing the real _doaine-uasail_, gentry of ancient family,
colloguing with the common merchants whose day was coming in; he was
seeing the embers of the war in a grey ash, officers, merchants, bonnet
lairds, and tenants now safe and snug and secure in their places because
the old warriors had fought Boney. The schoolroom was perfumed with the
smoke of peat, for it was the landward pupils' week of the fuelling,
and they were accustomed to bring each his own peat under his arm every
morning. The smoke swirled and edd