your health. What think you yourself?"
"What I ought to think, gentlemen, is that I am much honored to have your good opinion and your friendly wishes." And Graham gathered them all with a smile that gave his delicate and comely features a rare fascination. "You are true comrades as well as brave gentlemen. I will not deny, though I would only say it among my friends, that I have thought of that vacancy, and have wondered whether the appointment would come my way. I received, indeed, a private word to apply for it this evening, but that I will not do. The Prince knows what I have done, though I do not make so much of saving his life as you may think. If he is pleased to give me this advance, well, gentlemen, I hope I shall not bring disgrace upon the Scots Brigade. But let us change the subject. We be a barbarous people in the North, but after all a gentleman does not love to talk about his own doings, still less of his own glory. To bed, my comrades, we may have heavy work to-morrow."
The Prince gave his troops a day's rest, and left the artillery to do their work, and Claverhouse was reading for the sixth time some letters of his mother's, when Grimond came in with the air of a man full of news, but determined not to tell them until he was questioned, and even then to give what he had grudgingly and by way of favor.
"What news, did ye say, Mr. John? Weel, if ye mean from Scotland, ye have the last yersel' in the letters of your honorable mither. What I am hearing from some Scot that cam oot o' the west country is that if the council does na maister the Covenanters, the dear carles will maister them, and then Scotland will be a gey ill place to live in. It will be a fine sicht when you and me, Claverhouse, has to sign the Solemn League and Covenant, and hear Sandy Peden, that they call a prophet, preachin' three hours on the sins o' prelacy and dancin'. My certes!" And at the thought thereof Grimond lost the power of speech.
"Never mind Scotland, Jock, just now; the auld country will take care of herself till we go home, and then we'll give such assistance as in the power of a good sword. Who knows, man, but we'll be riding through the muirs of Ayrshire after something bigger than muir-fowl before many years are over? But the camp, man, what's going on here this morning, and what are the folk talking about, for, as ye know, I've been on the broad of my back after yesterday's work?"
"If ye mean by news, laird, what wasna expected, and that, I'm judging, is a correct definition o' news, there's naethin' worth mentionin'. A dozen more Scots have come to get their livin' or their death, as Providence wills, in a foreign army, instead of working their bit o' land on a brae-side in bonnie Scotland. But that's no news, for it has been goin' on for centuries, and I'm expectin' will last as long as thae foreign bodies need buirdly men and Scotland has a cold climate.
"They are saying, I may mention, that Chamilly is getting sick o' these mortars, and didna particularly like the attack yesterday, and the story is going about that he will soon ask for terms, and that if he gets the honors of war the Prince may have the town. It will be another feather in his cap, and, to my thinkin', he has got ower many for his deservin'--an underhand and evil-hearted loon." And Grimond spoke with such vehemence and a keen dislike that Claverhouse suspected he had heard something more important than he had told.
"'Is that all?' ye ask, Claverhouse, and I reply no; but I wish to gudeness that it was. If news be what has happened, even though some of us expected it, then I have got some, although I would rather that my tongue was blistered than tell it. It cam into my mind that the Prince micht be appointin' the new colonel to the Scots Brigade this mornin', and so I just happened to give a cry on an Angus man who is gettin' his bit livin' as a servant to one of the aides-de-camp. He is called a Dutchman, but has honest Scots blood in his veins. We havered about this and