came out with a quill behind his ear and a finger to his brow.

"What is wrong in the place to-day?" asked his Grace with a flourish of
his crop about him to the lounging rascals and the groups at the tavern
doors. "Am I paying good day's wages for the like of that?"

Islay Campbell bobbed and smirked. "It's the coming of the army," said
he. "The county corps comes to-morrow and your men are all dukes to-day.
They would not do a hand's turn for an emperor."

"Humph!" said Duke George. "I wish I could throw off life's
responsibilities so easily. The rogues! the rogues!" he mused, soothing
his horse's neck with a fine and kindly hand. "I suppose it's in
them, this unrest and liability to uproar under the circumstances.
My father--well, well, let them be." His heels turned the horse in a
graceful curvet "I'm saying, Islay," he cried over his shoulder, "have a
free cask or two at the Cross in the morning."

But it was in the Paymaster's house that the fullest stress, the most
nervous restlessness of anticipation were apparent. The Paymaster's
snuff was now in two vest-pockets and even then was insufficient, as
he went about the town from morning till night babbling in excited
half-sentences of war, and the fields he had never fought in, to men who
smiled behind his back. His brothers' slumbers in the silent parlour had
been utterly destroyed till "Me-the-day!" Miss Mary had to cry at last
when her maid brought back untasted viands, "I wish the army was never
to darken our gates, for two daft men up there have never taken a
respectable meal since the billet order came. Dugald will be none the
better for this."

All this excitement sustained the tremulous feeling at the boy's
heart. There must be something after all, he thought, in the soldier's
experience that is precious and lasting when those old men could find in
a rumour the spark to set the smouldering fire in a blaze. He wondered
to see the heavy eyelids of the General open and the pupils fill as
he had never seen them do before, to hear a quite new accent, though
sometimes a melancholy, in his voice, and behold a distaste to his
familiar chair with its stuffed and lazy arms. The Cornal's character
suffered a change too. He that had been gruff and indifferent took on a
pleasing though awkward geniality. He would jest with Miss Mary till
she cried "The man's doited!" though she clearly liked it; to Gilian he
began the narration of an unending series of campaign tale