CHAPTER XIX.
AN OLD SOLDIER'S STORY.
"If he was of Leven's," said the lieutenant.
"I told him your honour was."
"Then," said he, "I served three campaigns with him in
Flanders."—Tristram Shandy.
A last glance at his old friends before we go in pursuit of Quentin.
"I fear me," said the quartermaster, shaking his old yellow wig, which still survived, and letting a long stream of tobacco smoke escape from his mouth, as he and the dominie lingered over their toddy-jugs one evening in "the snuggery," "I fear me much that the Master's London debts and liabilities are more than his father, worthy man, reckons on, and that Rohallion, wood and haugh, hill and glen, main and farm-town, will all be made ducks and drakes of within a week after the old Lord is carried through the haunted gate and up the kirk loan yonder."
"Wae is me that I should hear this," said the dominie, sadly.
"I speak in confidence, dominie," said the quartermaster, laying his "yard of clay" lightly on the other's arm, and lowering his voice.
"Of course—of course. But how different hath the Master's life been from his father's! Wasting his patrimony among London bucks and bullies—among parasites and flatterers, even as Timon of Athens wasted his substance, till he was driven to seek sustenance by digging for the poorest roots of the earth."
"Our old Lord has ever acted wisely, dominie; when not on active service, he has ever been resident on his ain auld patrimonial property—wisely so, I say, for it beseems not that the great names of the land should die out of the memory of those who inhabit it; d—n all absentees, say I!"
And as the quartermaster buried his red nose in his toddy-jug, the concluding anathema became an indistinct mumble.