He attended her funeral--he heard the earth falling heavy and hollow on the coffin-lid--he saw the green sod placed over her grave--he witnessed the irrepressible anguish of her father, and the sad regret of her friends--and all this without shedding a tear. He was turning to depart, when some one thrust a letter into his hand; he opened it almost mechanically. It contained a considerable sum of money, and a few lines from his agent, stating that, in consequence of a favourable change in his circumstances, he had been enabled to satisfy all his creditors. Thomson crumpled up the bills in his hand. He felt as if his heart stood still in his breast; a noise seemed ringing in his ears; a mist cloud appeared as if rising out of the earth and darkening round him. He was caught, when falling, by old William Stewart, and, on awakening to consciousness and the memory of the past, found himself in his arms. He lived for about ten years after, a laborious and speculative man, ready to oblige, and successful in all his designs. And no one deemed him unhappy. It was observed, however, that his dark brown hair was soon mingled with masses of grey, and that his tread became heavy and his frame bent. It was remarked, too, that, when attacked by a lingering epidemic, which passed over well-nigh the whole country, he of all the people was the only one that sank under it.
THE LINTON LAIRDS, OR EXCLUSIVES AND INCLUSIVES.
In no part of her Majesty's widespread dominions does mighty Aristocracy rear its proud head with greater majesty than at Linton. There are, or were, in the neighbourhood of that ancient borough, no fewer than forty-five lairds, all possessing portions of the soil; and from the soil it is that the big genius of aristocratic pride derives, like the old oak, the pith of her power. It is of no avail to say--and we, being ourselves of an ancient family, as poor as the old dark denizens of the soil who were displaced by the Norwegian brown species, despise the taunt--that fifteen out of the whole number of Linton lairds were, at one period, on the poor's box. Gentry, with old noble blood in their veins, are not a whit less to be valued that they are beggars, for it is the peculiar character of gentle blood, that it never gets thinner by poor meat. A low marriage sometimes deteriorates it; and hence the horror of the privileged species at that kind of degradation; but the tenth cousin of a scurvy baronet will retain the purity of the noble fluid, in spite of husks, acorns, and onions. All the efforts of the patriots called radicals--even if they should have recourse to the starving system, by taking the properties of their masters--will never be able to bring down to a proper popular equal consistency the blood of the old stock; and so long as they dare not, for the spilling of their own thin stuff, _let out_ the life stream of their lords, they must submit to see it running in the old channels as ruby and routhy as it did in the reign of Malcolm Canmore.