Of the furniture of our meal I can only say that poverty and decent appearance kept up a brave fight throughout.  The table-cloth was ragged, but spotlessly clean; the silver-ware scanty and worn with high polishing.  The plates and glasses displayed a noble range of patterns, but were for the most part chipped or cracked.  Each knife had been worn to a point, and a few of them joggled in their handles.  In a lull of the talk I caught myself idly counting the darns in my table-napkin.  They were—­if I remember—­fourteen, and all exquisitely stitched.  The dinner, on the other hand, would have tempted men far less hungry than we—­grilled steaks of salmon, a roast haunch of venison, grouse, a milk-pudding, and, for dessert, the dish of apples already mentioned; the meats washed down with one wine only, but that wine was claret, and beautifully sound.  I should mention that we were served by a grey-haired retainer, almost stone deaf, and as hopelessly cracked as the gong with which he had beaten us to dinner.  In the long waits between the courses we heard him quarrelling outside with the woman who had admitted us; and gradually—­I know not how—­the conviction grew on me that they were man and wife, and the only servants of our host’s establishment.  To cover the noise of one of their altercations I began to congratulate the Laird on the quality of his venison, and put some idle question about his care for his deer.

“I have no deer-forest,” he answered.  “Elspeth is my only housekeeper.”

I had some reply on my lips, when my attention was distracted by a sudden movement by the Rev. Samuel Saul.  This honest man had, as we shook hands in the great hall, broken into a flood of small talk.  On our way to the dining-room he took me, so to speak, by the button-hole, and within the minute so drenched me with gossip about Ardlaugh, its climate, its scenery, its crops, and the dimensions of the parish, that I feared a whole evening of boredom lay before us.  But from the moment we seated ourselves at table he dropped to an absolute silence.  There are men, living much alone, who by habit talk little during their meals; and the minister might be reserving himself.  But I had almost forgotten his presence when I heard a sharp exclamation, and, looking across, saw him take from his lips his wine-glass of claret and set it down with a shaking hand.  The Laird, too, had heard, and bent a darkly questioning glance on him.  At once the little man—­whose face had turned to a sickly white—­began to stammer and excuse himself.

“It was nothing—­a spasm.  He would be better of it in a moment.  No, he would take no wine:  a glass of water would set him right—­he was more used to drinking water,” he explained, with a small, nervous laugh.

Perceiving that our solicitude embarrassed him, we resumed our talk, which now turned upon the last peninsular campaign and certain engagements in which the Morays had borne part; upon the stability of the French Monarchy, and the career (as we believed, at an end) of Napoleon.  On all these topics the Laird showed himself well informed, and while preferring the part of listener (as became his youth) from time to time put in a question which convinced me of his intelligence, especially in military affairs.