, who trotted from room
to room after him, affording him exactly the same degree of sympathy
which a dog doth to his master when distressed in mind, by looking in
his face from time to time with a piteous gaze, as if to assure him that
he partakes of his trouble, though he neither comprehends the cause or
the extent of it, nor has in the slightest degree the power to remove
it.

At length when Mowbray had got some matters arranged to his mind, and
abandoned a great many which he would willingly have put in better
order, he sat down to dinner upon the Wednesday preceding the appointed
day, with his worthy aide-de-camp, Mr. Meiklewham; and after bestowing a
few muttered curses upon the whole concern, and the fantastic old maid
who had brought him into the scrape, by begging an invitation, declared
that all things might now go to the devil their own way, for so sure as
his name was John Mowbray, he would trouble himself no more about them.

Keeping this doughty resolution, he sat down to dinner with his counsel
learned in the law; and speedily they dispatched the dish of chops which
was set before them, and the better part of the bottle of old port,
which served for its menstruum.

"We are well enough now," said Mowbray, "though we have had none of
their d----d kickshaws."

"A wamefou' is a wamefou'," said the writer, swabbing his greasy chops,
"whether it be of the barleymeal or the bran."

"A cart-horse thinks so," said Mowbray; "but we must do as others do,
and gentlemen and ladies are of a different opinion."

"The waur for themselves and the country baith, St. Ronan's--it's the
jinketing and the jirbling wi' tea and wi' trumpery that brings our
nobles to nine-pence, and mony a het ha'-house to a hired lodging in the
Abbey."

The young gentleman paused for a few minutes--filled a bumper, and
pushed the bottle to the senior--then said abruptly, "Do you believe in
luck, Mick?"

"In luck?" answered the attorney; "what do you mean by the question?"

"Why, because I believe in luck myself--in a good or bad run of luck at
cards."

"You wad have mair luck the day, if you had never touched them," replied
his confident.

"That is not the question now," said Mowbray; "but what I wonder at is
the wretched chance that has attended us miserable Lairds of St. Ronan's
for more than a hundred years, that we have always been getting worse in
the world, and never better. Never has there been such a backsliding
generation,