ich you bade me farewell
at Noble House, [The first stage on the road from Edinburgh to Dumfries
via Moffat.] and mounted your miserable hack to return to your law
drudgery, still sounds in my ears. It seemed to say, 'Happy dog! you can
ramble at pleasure over hill and dale, pursue every object of curiosity
that presents itself, and relinquish the chase when it loses interest;
while I, your senior and your better, must, in this brilliant season,
return to my narrow chamber and my musty books.'

Such was the import of the reflections with which you saddened our
parting bottle of claret, and thus I must needs interpret the terms of
your melancholy adieu.

And why should this be so, Alan? Why the deuce should you not be sitting
precisely opposite to me at this moment, in the same comfortable George
Inn; thy heels on the fender, and thy juridical brow expanding its
plications as a pun rose in your fancy? Above all, why, when I fill this
very glass of wine, cannot I push the bottle to you, and say, 'Fairford,
you are chased!' Why, I say, should not all this be, except because Alan
Fairford has not the same true sense of friendship as Darsie Latimer,
and will not regard our purses as common, as well as our sentiments?

I am alone in the world; my only guardian writes to me of a large
fortune which will be mine when I reach the age of twenty-five complete;
my present income is, thou knowest, more than sufficient for all
my wants; and yet thou--traitor as thou art to the cause of
friendship--dost deprive me of the pleasure of thy society, and
submittest, besides, to self-denial on thine own part, rather than my
wanderings should cost me a few guineas more! Is this regard for
my purse, or for thine own pride? Is it not equally absurd and
unreasonable, whichever source it springs from? For myself, I tell thee,
I have, and shall have, more than enough for both. This same methodical
Samuel Griffiths, of Ironmonger Lane, Guildhall, London, whose letter
arrives as duly as quarter-day, has sent me, as I told thee, double
allowance for this my twenty-first birthday, and an assurance, in his
brief fashion, that it will be again doubled for the succeeding years,
until I enter into possession of my own property. Still I am to refrain
from visiting England until my twenty-fifth year expires; and it is
recommended that I shall forbear all inquiries concerning my family, and
so forth, for the present.

Were it not that I recollect my poo