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ieved from the weight of his knapsack, I cannot tell. Our corps voted him to be no man who could find time to be ill, even in earnest, during an invasion. My attention, however, was now wholly taken up with the stranger, who, it appeared, had been dropped, as if from the clouds, in the very middle of a waste, howling wilderness, to volunteer to serve in the place of my craven comrade, Jonathan Barlowman. The youth excited my curiosity the more, because, as I have already informed ye, he was as silent as a milestone, and not half so satisfactory; for beyond the little word "Yes," which I once got out of him, not another syllable would he breathe--but he kept his head half turned away from me. I felt the consciousness and the assurance growing in me more and more that he was a French spy; therefore I kept my musket so that I could level it at him, and discharge it at half a moment's warning; and I was rejoicing to think that it would be a glorious thing if I got an opportunity of signalizing myself on the very first day of the invasion. I really began to dream of titles and rewards, the thanks of parliament, and the command of a regiment. It is a miracle that, in the delirium of my waking dream, I did not place the muzzle of my musket to my strange comrade's head. But daylight began to break just as we were about Danskin, and my curiosity to see the stranger's face--to make out who he was or what he was, or whether he was a Frenchman, or one of our own countrymen--was becoming altogether insupportable. But, just with the first peep of day, I got a glimpse of his countenance. I started back for full five yards--the musket dropped out of my hands! "Robie! Robie, ye rascal!" I exclaimed, in a voice that was heard from the one end of the line to the other, and that made the whole regiment halt--"what in the wide world has brought you here? What do ye mean to be after?" "To fight the French, faither!" said my brave laddie; "and ye ken ye always said, that in the event of an invasion, it wad be the duty of every one capable of firing a musket, or lifting a knife, to take up arms. I can do baith; and what mair me than another?" This was torturing me on the shrine of my own loyalty, and turning my own weapons upon myself, in a way that I never had expected. "Robie! ye daft, disobedient, heart-breaker ye!" continued I, "did I not command ye to remain at home with your mother, to comfort her, and, if it were necessary,
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