remains the same. The modern building, a house of two stories, after a
lapse of twenty years, is yet unfinished. On this account, it has retained
the appellation of the "New Inn," though, like many who have frequented
it, it has grown old ere its maturity. Its dingy whiteness, and its
apparent superfluity of windows (many of them being closed with rough
boards), give it somewhat of a dreary look, especially in a wet day.

The ancient inn was a house, of which the eaves approached within about
seven feet of the ground; while the roof, sloping gradually upward, formed
an angle at several times that height. It was a comfortable and pleasant
abode to the weary traveller, both in summer and winter; for the frost
never ventured within the sphere of its huge hearths; and it was protected
from the heat of the sultry season by three large elms that swept the roof
with their long branches, and seemed to create a breeze where there was
not one. The device upon the sign, suspended from one of these trees, was
a hand holding a long-necked bottle, and was much more appropriate than
the present unmeaning representation of a black eagle. But it is necessary
to speak rather more at length of the landlord than of the house over
which he presided.

Hugh Crombie was one for whom most of the wise men, who considered the
course of his early years, had predicted the gallows as an end before he
should arrive at middle age. That these prophets of ill had been deceived
was evident from the fact that the doomed man had now passed the fortieth
year, and was in more prosperous circumstances than most of those who had
wagged their tongues against him. Yet the failure of their forebodings was
more remarkable than their fulfilment would have been.

He had been distinguished, almost from his earliest infancy, by those
precocious accomplishments, which, because they consist in an imitation of