Not a few of the younger branches of the family had followed the same evil profession, and taken foreign pay--chiefly from poverty and prejudice combined, but not a little in some cases from the inborn love of fighting that seems to characterize the Celt.

The last soldier of them had served the East India Company both by sea and land: tradition more than hinted that he had chiefly served himself.

Since then the heads of the house had been peaceful farmers of their own land, contriving to draw what to many farmers nowadays would seem but a scanty subsistence from an estate which had dwindled to the twentieth part of what it had been a few centuries before, though even then it could never have made its proprietor rich in anything but the devotion of his retainers.
Growing too hot between the sun and the wall, Cosmo rose, and passing to the other side of the house beyond the court-yard, and crossing a certain heave of grass, came upon one unfailing delight in his lot--a preacher whose voice, inarticulate, it is true, had, ever since he was born, been at most times louder in his ear than any other.

It was a mountain stream, which, through a channel of rock, such as nearly satisfied his most fastidious fancy, went roaring, rushing, and sometimes thundering, with an arrow-like, foamy swiftness, down to the river in the glen below.

The rocks were very dark, and the foam stood out brilliant against them.