And I was in no good-humour at an unsuppressed laugh following my descent when set down at the angle, where a cross road, striking off from the main one, led me towards Glentanner, from which I was still nearly five miles distant.
It was an old-fashioned road, which, preferring ascents to sloughs, was led in a straight line over height and hollow, through moor and dale.
Every object around me; as I passed them in succession, reminded me of old days, and at the same time formed the strongest contrast with them possible.

Unattended, on foot, with a small bundle in my hand, deemed scarce sufficient good company for the two shabby-genteels with whom I had been lately perched on the top of a mail-coach, I did not seem to be the same person with the young prodigal, who lived with the noblest and gayest in the land, and who, thirty years before, would, in the same country, have, been on the back of a horse that had been victor for a plate, or smoking aloof in his travelling chaise-and-four.

My sentiments were not less changed than my condition.

I could quite well remember that my ruling sensation in the days of heady youth was a mere schoolboy's eagerness to get farthest forward in the race in which I had engaged; to drink as many bottles as -- ; to be thought as good a judge of a horse as -- ; to have the knowing cut of -- 's jacket.

These were thy gods, O Israel! Now I was a mere looker-on; seldom an unmoved, and sometimes an angry spectator, but still a spectator only, of the pursuits of mankind.
I felt how little my opinion was valued by those engaged in the busy turmoil, yet I exercised it with the profusion of an old lawyer retired from his profession, who thrusts himself into his neighbour's affairs, and gives advice where it is not wanted, merely under pretence of loving the crack of the whip.
I came amid these reflections to the brow of a hill, from which I expected to see Glentanner, a modest-looking yet comfortable house, its walls covered with the most productive fruit-trees in that part of the country, and screened from the most stormy quarters of the horizon by a deep and ancient wood, which overhung the neighbouring hill.