Page:Scott - Tales of my Landlord - 3rd series - 1819.djvu/154

144 drinking confusion to Buonaparte, and the health of the Duke of Wellington, until the Serjeant was not only flattered into paying the whole reckoning, but occasionally induced to lend small sums to his interested companions. After such sprays, as he called them, were over, he seldom failed to thank God, and the Duke of York, who had made it much more difficult for an old soldier to ruin himself by his folly, than had been the case in his younger days.

It was not upon such occasions that I made a part of Serjeant More M'Alpin's society. But often, when my leisure would permit, I used to seek him, on what he called his morning and evening parade, on which, when the weather was fair, he appeared as regularly as if summoned by tuck of drum. His morning walk was beneath the elms in the churchyard; "for death," he said, "had been his next-door neighbour for so many years, that he had no apology for dropping the acquaintance." His evening promenade was on the bleaching green, by the river side, where he was sometimes