This I found bitterly, even though I had the prospect before me of spending my old age in peace and plenty.

I could not think of leaving my auld house--every room, every nook in it was familiar to my heart.

The garden trees seemed to wave their branches sorrowfully over my head, as bidding me a farewell; and when I saw all the scraighing hens catched out of the hen-house I had twenty years before built and tiled with my own hands, and tumbled into a sack, to be carried on limping Jock Dalgleish's back up to our new abode at Lugton, my heart swelled to my mouth, and the mist of gushing tears bedimmed my eyesight.

Four of Thomas Burlings' flour carts stood laden before the door with our furniture, on the top of which were three of Nanse's grand geraniums in flower-pots, with five of my walking-sticks tied together with a string; and as I paced through the empty rooms, where I had passed so many pleasant and happy hours, the sound of my feet on the bare floor seemed in my ears like an echo from the grave.

On our road to Lugton I could scarcely muster common sense to answer a person who wished us a good-day; and Nanse, as we daundered on arm-in-arm, never once took her napkin from her een.