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,