CHAPTER TENTH.
Tell me not of it, friend--when the young weep, Their tears are luke-warm brine;--from your old eyes Sorrow falls down like hail-drops of the North, Chilling the furrows of our withered cheeks, Cold as our hopes, and hardened as our feeling-- Theirs, as they fall, sink sightless--ours recoil, Heap the fair plain, and bleaken all before us.
Old Play.
The Antiquary, being now alone, hastened his pace, which had been retarded by these various discussions, and the rencontre which had closed them, and soon arrived before the half-dozen cottages at Mussel-crag.

They had now, in addition to their usual squalid and uncomfortable appearance, the melancholy attributes of the house of mourning.

The boats were all drawn up on the beach; and, though the day was fine, and the season favourable, the chant, which is used by the fishers when at sea, was silent, as well as the prattle of the children, and the shrill song of the mother, as she sits mending her nets by the door.

A few of the neighbours, some in their antique and well-saved suits of black, others in their ordinary clothes, but all bearing an expression of mournful sympathy with distress so sudden and unexpected, stood gathered around the door of Mucklebackit's cottage, waiting till "the body was lifted." As the Laird of Monkbarns approached, they made way for him to enter, doffing their hats and bonnets as he passed, with an air of melancholy courtesy, and he returned their salutes in the same manner.
In the inside of the cottage was a scene which our Wilkie alone could have painted, with that exquisite feeling of nature that characterises his enchanting productions.
The body was laid in its coffin within the wooden bedstead which the young fisher had occupied while alive.

At a little distance stood the father, whose rugged weather-beaten countenance, shaded by his grizzled hair, had faced many a stormy night and night-like day.