his own necessities, Hugh contrived to provide food and raiment for the
old man: how, it would be difficult to say, and perhaps as well not to
inquire. He also exhibited traits of sensitiveness to neglect and insult,
and of gratitude for favors; both of which feelings a course of life like
his is usually quick to eradicate.

At length the restraint--for such his father had ever been--upon Hugh
Crombie's conduct was removed by death; and then the wise men and the old
began to shake their heads; and they who took pleasure in the follies,
vices, and misfortunes of their fellow-creatures, looked for a speedy
gratification. They were disappointed, however; for Hugh had apparently
determined, that, whatever might be his catastrophe, he would meet it
among strangers, rather than at home. Shortly after his father's death, he
disappeared altogether from the vicinity; and his name became, in the
course of years, an unusual sound, where once the lack of other topics of
interest had given it a considerable degree of notoriety. Sometimes,
however, when the winter blast was loud round the lonely farm-house, its
inmates remembered him who had so often chased away the gloom of such an
hour, and, though with little expectation of its fulfilment, expressed a
wish to behold him again.

Yet that wish, formed, perhaps, because it appeared so desperate, was
finally destined to be gratified. One summer evening, about two years
previous to the period of this tale, a man of sober and staid deportment,
mounted upon a white horse, arrived at the Hand and Bottle, to which some
civil or military meeting had chanced, that day, to draw most of the
inhabitants of the vicinity. The stranger was well though plainly dressed,
and anywhere but in a retired country town would have attracted no
particular attention; but here, where a traveller was not of every-day
occurrence, he was soon surrounded by a little crowd, who, when his eye