 possessing them. To
trace the connection of nations by their usages, and the similarity of the
implements which they employ, has been long my favourite study. Everything that
can illustrate such connections is most valuable to me.«
    »Well, sir, I shall be much gratified by your acceptance of them, and a few
trifles of the same kind. And now, am I to hope you have forgiven me?«
    »O, my dear boy, you are only thoughtless and foolish.«
    »But Juno - she is only thoughtless too, I assure you - the breaker tells me
she has no vice or stubbornness.«
    »Well, I grant Juno also a free pardon - conditioned, that you will imitate
her in avoiding vice and stubbornness, and that henceforward she banish herself
forth of Monkbarns parlour.«
    »Then, uncle,« said the soldier, »I should have been very sorry and ashamed
to propose to you anything in the way of expiation of my own sins, or those of
my follower, that I thought worth your acceptance; but now, as all is forgiven,
will you permit the orphan-nephew, to whom you have been a father, to offer you
a trifle, which I have been assured is really curious, and which only the cross
accident of my wound has prevented my delivering to you before? I got it from a
French savant, to whom I rendered some service after the Alexandria affair.«
    The captain put a small ring-case into the Antiquary's hands, which, when
opened, was found to contain an antique ring of massive gold, with a cameo, most
beautifully executed, bearing a head of Cleopatra. The Antiquary broke forth
into unrepressed ecstasy, shook his nephew cordially by the hand, thanked him an
hundred times, and showed the ring to his sister and niece, the latter of whom
had the tact to give it sufficient admiration; but Miss Griselda (though she had
the same affection for her nephew) had not address enough to follow the lead.
    »It's a bonny thing,« she said, »Monkbarns, and, I dare say, a valuable; but
it's out o' my way - ye ken I am nae judge o' sic matters.«
    »There spoke all Fairport in one voice!« exclaimed Oldbuck; »it is the very
spirit of the borough has infected us all; I think I have smelled the smoke
these two days, that the wind has stuck, like a remora, in the north-east - and
its prejudices fly farther than
