native spirit was congenial, although experience had taught him how to avail himself of the motives of others, used to Menteith neither the language of praise nor of promise, but clasped him to his bosom as he exclaimed, “My gallant kinsman!” And by this burst of heartfelt applause was Menteith thrilled with a warmer glow of delight, than if his praises had been recorded in a report of the action sent directly to the throne of his sovereign.

“Nothing,” he said, “my lord, now seems to remain in which I can render any assistance; permit me to look after a duty of humanity—­the Knight of Ardenvohr, as I am told, is our prisoner, and severely wounded.”

“And well he deserves to be so,” said Sir Dugald Dalgetty, who came up to them at that moment with a prodigious addition of acquired importance, “since he shot my good horse at the time that I was offering him honourable quarter, which, I must needs say, was done more like an ignorant Highland cateran, who has not sense enough to erect a sconce for the protection of his old hurley-house of a castle, than like a soldier of worth and quality.”

“Are we to condole with you then,” said Lord Menteith, “upon the loss of the famed Gustavus?”

“Even so, my lord,” answered the soldier, with a deep sigh, “Diem CLAUSIT supremum, as we said at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen.  Better so than be smothered like a cadger’s pony in some flow-moss, or snow-wreath, which was like to be his fate if this winter campaign lasted longer.  But it has pleased his Excellency” (making an inclination to Montrose) “to supply his place by the gift of a noble steed, whom I have taken the freedom to name ‘loyalty’s reward,’ in memory of this celebrated occasion.”

“I hope,” said the Marquis, “you’ll find Loyalty’s Reward, since you call him so, practised in all the duties of the field,—­but I must just hint to you, that at this time, in Scotland, loyalty is more frequently rewarded with a halter than with a horse.”

“Ahem! your Excellency is pleased to be facetious.  Loyalty’s Reward is as perfect as Gustavus in all his exercises, and of a far finer figure.  Marry! his social qualities are less cultivated, in respect he has kept till now inferior company.”

“Not meaning his Excellency the General, I hope,” said Lord Menteith.  “For shame, Sir Dugald!”

“My lord,” answered the knight gravely, “I am incapable to mean anything so utterly unbecoming.  What I asseverate is, that his Excellency, having the same intercourse with his horse during his exercise, that he hath with his soldiers when training them, may form and break either to every feat of war which he chooses to practise, and accordingly that this noble charger is admirably managed.  But as it is the intercourse of private life that formeth the social character, so I do not apprehend that of the single soldier to be much polished by the conversation of the corporal or the sergeant, or that of Loyalty’s Reward to have been much dulcified, or ameliorated, by the society of his Excellency’s grooms, who bestow more oaths, and kicks, and thumps, than kindness or caresses, upon the animals intrusted to their charge; whereby many a generous quadruped, rendered as it were misanthropic, manifests during the rest of his life a greater desire to kick and bite his master, than to love and to honour him.”