and there is no saying what brilliant destiny may
await you."

"But he must keep clear of the petticoats, Graheme," Colonel Munro
laughed; "evidently danger lurks for him there, and if he is caught
napping again some Delilah will assuredly crop the hair of this young
Samson of ours."

"There was not much of Delilah in that fury who felled me with a mallet,
colonel," Malcolm laughed; "however, I will be careful in future, and
will not give them a chance."

"Ah! it may come in another form next time, Malcolm," Munro said; "this
time it was an old woman, next time it may be a young one. Beware, my
boy! they are far the most dangerous, innocent though they may look."

A laugh ran round the circle.

"Forewarned forearmed, colonel," Malcolm said sturdily, "I will be on
my guard against every female creature, young or old, in future. But
I don't think that in this affair the woman has had much to boast
about--she and her friends had best have left me alone."

"That is so, Malcolm," the colonel said warmly. "You have borne yourself
well and bravely, and you have got an old head on those young shoulders
of yours. You are as full of plans and stratagems as if you had been
a campaigner for the last half century; and no man, even in the Green
Brigade, no, not Hepburn himself, could have held that church tower more
ably than you did. It will be a good tale to tell the king as we ride
on the march tomorrow, for he loves a gallant deed, and the more so when
there is prudence and good strategy as well as bravery. He has more than
once asked if you have been getting into any new adventures, and seemed
almost surprised when I told him that you were doing your duty with your
company. He evidently regards it as your special mission to get into
harebrained scrapes. He regards you, in fact, as a pedagogue might view
the pickle of the school."

There was a general laugh at Malcolm's expense.

"I don't know how it is I am always getting into scrapes," the lad said
half ruefully when the laugh subsided. "I am sure I don't want to get
into them, colonel, and really I have never gone out of my way to do so,
unless you call my march to help the Count of Mansfeld going out of my
way. All the other things have come to me without any fault of my own."

"Quite so, Graheme," the colonel said smiling; "that's always the excuse
of the boy who gets into scrapes. The question is, Why do these things
always happen to you and to nobody else? If yo