a bottle of wine, and held the lantern that his master might eat with some comfort, if it had to be with more haste.
"Do you ken, Jock, where I was when you wakened me, and flashed the light upon my face? Away in bonnie Glen Ogilvie, where everything is at its best to-day. I dreamed that I was off to Sidlaw Hill, to see what was doing with the muir-fowl, and I felt the good Scots air blowing upon my face. This is a black wakening, Jock, but I've slept worse, and you have done well for breakfast. Ye never came honestly by it, man. Have ye been raiding?"
"Providence guided me, Maister John, and I micht have given a little assistance mysel'. As I was crossing thro' a corner of the Dutch camp, I caught a glimpse of this roast chuckie, with some other bits o' things, and it cam into my mind that that was somebody's breakfast. Whether he had taken all he wanted or whether he was going to be too late was-na my business, but the Lord delivered that fowl into my hands, and I considered it a temptin' o' Providence no to tak it, to say nothin' o' the white bread. The wine and the ham I savit frae yesterday."
"You auld thief, I might have guessed where you picked up the breakfast. I only hope 'twas a heavy-built Dutchman who could starve for a week without suffering, and not a lean, hungry Scot who needed some breakfast to put strength in him for a day's fighting, if God be good enough to send it. Isn't it a regiment of the Scots brigade which is lying next to us, Jock?"
"It is," replied that worthy servitor, "and I was hopin' that it was Captain MacKay's rations which were given into my hands, so to say, by the higher power. I was standing behind you, Maister John, last nicht when you and him was argling-bargling, and if ever I saw a cunning twa-faced Covenanter, it's that man. They say he has got a good word with the Prince through his Dutch wife, and where ye give that kind of man an inch, he will take an ell. It's no for me to give advice, me bein' in my place and you in yours. But I promised your honorable mither that I wouldna see you come to mischief if I could help it, and I am sair mistaken if yon man will no be a mercilous and persistent enemy. May the Almichty forbid it, but if MacKay of Scourie can hinder it there will be little advancement for Graham of Claverhouse in this army."
"You are a dour and suspicious devil, Jock, and you've always been the same ever since I remember you. Captain MacKay is a whig and a Presbyterian, but he is a good soldier, and I wish I had been more civil to him last night. We are here to fight for the Prince of Orange and to beat the French, and let the best man win; it will be time enough to quarrel when we get back to Scotland. Kindly Scots should bury their differences, and stand shoulder to shoulder in a foreign land."
"That is bonnie talk, laird, but dinna forget there's been twa kinds of Scot in the land since the Reformation, and there will be twa to the end of the chapter, and they'll never agree till the day of judgment, and then they'll be on opposite sides. There was Queen Mary and there was John Knox, there was that false-hearted loon Argyle, that ye gave a grand nip at the fire last nicht, and there was the head o' your hoose, the gallant Marquis--peace to his soul. Now there's the Carnegies and the Gordons and the rest o' the royal families in the Northeast, and the sour-blooded Covenanters down in the West, and it's no in the nature o' things that they should agree any more than oil and water. As for me, the very face of a Presbyterian whig makes me sick. But there's the trumpet again," and Grimond helped his master to put on his arms.
"I've been awfu favored this mornin', Maister John, for what div ye think? I've secured nae less than a baggage waggon for oorsels. The driver was stravagin' aboot in the dark and didna know where he was going, so I asked him if he wasna coming for the baggage of the English gentlemen, to say naething of