Until six months ago this veteran was an active carpenter, coming and going, about his work at ninety-six like a man in middle age.

Then he went to bed with a bad cold, and will probably never rise again.

In all his life he never has touched meat or soup, and when they are now offered him rejects them angrily.

He has lived, and preferred to live, entirely on oatmeal in the form of cakes and porridge, and on potatoes; so I make a present of him as a glorious example to the vegetarians.

As in so many other cases, his memory of recent events is dim and clouded--of events long past, clear and photographic: the negatives taken in youth quite perfect, the lenses which now take, dimmed and fractured.
He perfectly recollects, for example, the assembling here of the recruits going out to the Continent before the battle of Waterloo, and can give the names and describe the peculiarities of stalwart lads long since crumbled into dust around Mont St.Jean.With the curious unconcern about death which marks his people, this expectant emigrant into the unknown world chats about his departure as if it were for Dublin, and his kinsfolk chat with him.
"Ye'll be going soon!" "Oh yes, I shan't trouble ye more than an hour or two more." In quite another part of the domain we came upon a Covenanter--a true, authentic Covenanter, who might have walked out of _Old Mortality_; the name of him, Keyes.