that his resumption of the dress which he had worn while a
youth, although favourable to his views in other respects, might render it more
difficult for him to remain incognito. But a few years of campaigns and
wanderings had so changed his appearance that he had great confidence that in
the grown man, whose brows exhibited the traces of resolution and considerate
thought, none would recognise the raw and bashful stripling who won the game of
the popinjay. The only chance was that here and there some whig, whom he had led
to battle, might remember the Captain of the Milnwood Marksmen; but the risk, if
there was any, could not be guarded against.
    The Howff seemed full and frequented as if possessed of all its old
celebrity. The person and demeanour of Niel Blane, more fat and less civil than
of yore, intimated that he had increased as well in purse as in corpulence; for
in Scotland, a landlord's complaisance for his guests decreases in exact
proportion to his rise in the world. His daughter had acquired the air of a
dexterous bar-maid, undisturbed by the circumstances of love and war, so apt to
perplex her in the exercise of her vocation. Both showed Morton the degree of
attention which could have been expected by a stranger travelling without
attendants, at a time when they were particularly the badges of distinction. He
took upon himself exactly the character his appearance presented, - went to the
stable and saw his horse accommodated, - then returned to the house, and seating
himself in the public room (for to request one to himself, would, in those days,
have been thought an overweening degree of conceit), he found himself in the
very apartment in which he had some years before celebrated his victory at the
game of the popinjay, a jocular preferment which led to so many serious
consequences.
    He felt himself, as may well be supposed, a much-changed man since that
festivity; and yet, to look around him, the groups assembled in the Howff seemed
not dissimilar to those which the same scene had formerly presented. Two or
three burghers husbanded their »dribbles o' brandy;« two or three dragoons
lounged over their muddy ale, and cursed the inactive times that allowed them no
better cheer. Their cornet did not, indeed, play at backgammon with the curate
in his cassock, but he drank a little modicum of aqua mirabilis with the
grey-cloaked Presbyterian minister. The scene was another, and yet the same,
differing only in persons, but corresponding in general character.
    »Let the tide of the world wax or