here was never a good word for Mr.
Henry, and nothing but regret and praise for the Master; and his rival
at home, not only with his father and his wife, but with the very
servants.

They were two old serving-men that were the leaders. John Paul, a
little, bald, solemn, stomachy man, a great professor of piety and (take
him for all in all) a pretty faithful servant, was the chief of the
Master's faction. None durst go so far as John. He took a pleasure in
disregarding Mr. Henry publicly, often with a slighting comparison. My
lord and Mrs. Henry took him up, to be sure, but never so resolutely as
they should; and he had only to pull his weeping face and begin his
lamentations for the Master--"his laddie," as he called him--to have the
whole condoned. As for Henry, he let these things pass in silence,
sometimes with a sad and sometimes with a black look. There was no
rivalling the dead, he knew that; and how to censure an old serving-man
for a fault of loyalty was more than he could see. His was not the
tongue to do it.

Macconochie was chief upon the other side; an old, ill-spoken, swearing,
ranting, drunken dog; and I have often thought it an odd circumstance in
human nature that these two serving-men should each have been the
champion of his contrary, and blackened their own faults, and made light
of their own virtues, when they beheld them in a master. Macconochie had
soon smelled out my secret inclination, took me much into his
confidence, and would rant against the Master by the hour, so that even
my work suffered. "They're a' daft here," he would cry, "and be damned
to them! The Master--the deil's in their thrapples that should call him
sae! it's Mr. Henry should be master now! They were nane sae fond o' the
Master when they had him, I'll can tell ye that. Sorrow on his name!
Never a guid word did I hear on his lips, nor naebody else, but just
fleering and flyting and profane cursing--deil ha'e him! There's nane
kennt his wickedness: him a gentleman! Did ever ye hear tell, Mr.
Mackellar, o' Wully White the wabster? No? Aweel, Wully was an unco
praying kind o' man; a dreigh body, nane o' my kind, I never could abide
the sight of him; onyway he was a great hand by his way of it, and he up
and rebukit the Master for some of his ongoings. It was a grand thing
for the Master o' Ball'ntrae to tak' up a feud wi' a wabster, wasna't?"
Macconochie would sneer; indeed, he never took the full name upon his
lips but with a so