CHAPTER THIRTEENTH.
Still in his dead hand clenched remain the strings That thrill his father's heart--e'en as the limb, Lopped off and laid in grave, retains, they tell us, Strange commerce with the mutilated stump, Whose nerves are twinging still in maimed existence.
Old Play.
The Antiquary, as we informed the reader in the end of the thirty-first CHAPTER, [tenth] had shaken off the company of worthy Mr.Blattergowl, although he offered to entertain him with an abstract of the ablest speech he had ever known in the teind court, delivered by the procurator for the church in the remarkable case of the parish of Gatherem.
Resisting this temptation, our senior preferred a solitary path, which again conducted him to the cottage of Mucklebackit.

When he came in front of the fisherman's hut, he observed a man working intently, as if to repair a shattered boat which lay upon the beach, and going up to him was surprised to find it was Mucklebackit himself.

"I am glad," he said in a tone of sympathy--"I am glad, Saunders, that you feel yourself able to make this exertion." "And what would ye have me to do," answered the fisher gruffly, "unless I wanted to see four children starve, because ane is drowned?
It's weel wi' you gentles, that can sit in the house wi' handkerchers at your een when ye lose a friend; but the like o' us maun to our wark again, if our hearts were beating as hard as my hammer." Without taking more notice of Oldbuck, he proceeded in his labour; and the Antiquary, to whom the display of human nature under the influence of agitating passions was never indifferent, stood beside him, in silent attention, as if watching the progress of the work.

He observed more than once the man's hard features, as if by the force of association, prepare to accompany the sound of the saw and hammer with his usual symphony of a rude tune, hummed or whistled,--and as often a slight twitch of convulsive expression showed, that ere the sound was uttered, a cause for suppressing it rushed upon his mind.

At length, when he had patched a considerable rent, and was beginning to mend another, his feelings appeared altogether to derange the power of attention necessary for his work.