rvice he had made his little fortune, and lost three brothers;
so that you were in equal danger to displease him, in terming Prince
Charles, the Pretender, or by saying anything derogatory to the dignity
of King George. Further, it must not be denied, that when the day of
receiving his dividends came round, the Sergeant was apt to tarry longer
at the Wallace Arms of an evening, than was consistent with strict
temperance, or indeed with his worldly interest; for upon these
occasions, his compotators sometimes contrived to flatter his
partialities by singing jacobite songs, and drinking confusion to
Bonaparte, and the health of the Duke of Wellington, until the Sergeant
was not only flattered into paying the whole reckoning, but occasionally
induced to lend small sums to his interested companions. After such
sprays, as he called them, were over, and his temper once more cool, he
seldom failed to thank God, and the Duke of York, who had made it much
more difficult for an old soldier to ruin himself by his folly, than had
been the case in his younger days.

It was not on such occasions that I made a part of Sergeant More
M'Alpin's society. But often, when my leisure would permit, I used to
seek him, on what he called his morning and evening parade, on which,
when the weather was fair, he appeared as regularly as if summoned by
tuck of drum. His morning walk was beneath the elms in the churchyard;
"for death," he said, "had been his next-door neighbour for so many
years, that he had no apology for dropping the acquaintance." His
evening promenade was on the bleaching-green by the river-side, where
he was sometimes to be seen on an open bench, with spectacles on
nose, conning over the newspapers to a circle of village politicians,
explaining military terms, and aiding the comprehension of his hearers
by lines drawn on the ground with the end of his rattan. On other
occasions, he was surrounded by a bevy of school-boys, whom he sometimes
drilled to the manual, and sometimes, with less approbation on the part
of their parents, instructed in the mystery of artificial fire-works;
for in the case of public rejoicings, the Sergeant was pyrotechnist (as
the Encyclopedia calls it) to the village of Gandercleugh.

It was in his morning walk that I most frequently met with the veteran.
And I can hardly yet look upon the village footpath, overshadowed by
the row of lofty elms, without thinking I see his upright form advancing
towards m