He had risen to the rank of sergeant-major of artillery, by hard service in various quarters of the world, and was reckoned one of the most tried and trusty men of the Scotch Train.  A ball, which shattered his arm in a peninsular campaign, at length procured him an honourable discharge. with an allowance from Chelsea, and a handsome gratuity from the patriotic fund.  Moreover, Sergeant More M’Alpin had been prudent as well as valiant; and, from prize-money and savings, had become master of a small sum in the three per cent consols.

He retired with the purpose of enjoying this income in the wild Highland glen, in which, when a boy, he had herded black cattle and goats, ere the roll of the drum had made him cock his bonnet an inch higher, and follow its music for nearly forty years.  To his recollection, this retired spot was unparalleled in beauty by the richest scenes he had visited in his wanderings.  Even the Happy Valley of Rasselas would have sunk into nothing upon the comparison.  He came—­he revisited the loved scene; it was but a sterile glen, surrounded with rude crags, and traversed by a northern torrent.  This was not the worst.  The fires had been quenched upon thirty hearths—­of the cottage of his fathers he could but distinguish a few rude stones—­the language was almost extinguished—­the ancient race from which he boasted his descent had found a refuge beyond the Atlantic.  One southland farmer, three grey-plaided shepherds, and six dogs, now tenanted the whole glen, which in his youth had maintained, in content, if not in competence, upwards of two hundred inhabitants.

In the house of the new tenant, Sergeant M’Alpin found, however, an unexpected source of pleasure, and a means of employing his social affections.  His sister Janet had fortunately entertained so strong a persuasion that her brother would one day return, that she had refused to accompany her kinsfolk upon their emigration.  Nay, she had consented, though not without a feeling of degradation, to take service with the intruding Lowlander, who, though a Saxon, she said, had proved a kind man to her.  This unexpected meeting with his sister seemed a cure for all the disappointments which it had been Sergeant More’s lot to encounter, although it was not without a reluctant tear that he heard told, as a Highland woman alone could ten it, the story of the expatriation of his kinsmen.

She narrated at great length the vain offers they had made of advanced rent, the payment of which must have reduced them to the extremity of poverty, which they were yet contented to face, for permission to live and die on their native soil.  Nor did Janet forget the portents which had announced the departure of the Celtic race, and the arrival of the strangers.  For two years previous to the emigration, when the night wind howled dawn the pass of Balachra, its notes were distinctly modelled to the tune of “Ha til MI TULIDH” (we return no more), with which the emigrants usually bid farewell to their native shores.  The uncouth cries of the Southland shepherds, and the barking of their dogs, were often heard in the midst of the hills long before their actual arrival.  A bard, the last of his race, had commemorated the expulsion of the natives of the glen in a tune, which brought tears into the aged eyes of the veteran, and of which the first stanza may be thus rendered:—­