with a couple of loaves, or a ham, or what
not, stuck on their bayonets. Such scenes, and scenes worse by far,
were but too common in those days, and even the authority of officers
was of small avail at such a time.

Into the midst of such a pandemonium as this came small parties of the
cavalry, most of them already excited with drink and ready for any
devilry. Among the noisiest and most quarrelsome of the dragoons were
two non-commissioned officers--brutal-looking ruffians both of them--who
made their way from group to group, drinking wherever the chance
offered, shouting obscene songs, and making themselves insufferably
offensive whenever a man more quietly disposed than his comrades
happened to be met. Boastful and quarrelsome, these two, with a few
dragoons of different regiments, at length attached themselves to
Sempil's Regiment, amongst whom it chanced that a group of men, more
quiet and well-behaved than the general run, sat around a fire, cleaning
their arms or cooking rations, and discussing the battle and the heavy
losses of the regiment. It was not difficult to guess that the majority
of the group were men bred among the great, sweeping, round-backed hills
of the Scottish Border--from "up the watters" in Selkirk or
Peeblesshires, some of them, others again perhaps from Liddesdale,
Eskdale, or Annandale, or one of the many dales famous in Border
history; you could hear it in their tongue. But also there was in those
quiet, strongly-built men something that spoke of the old, dour,
unconquerable, fighting Border stock that for so many centuries lived
at feud with English neighbours. Many of them had joined the regiment
four years earlier, when it had passed through the Border on its march
from Fort William to Buckinghamshire.

But if they had seen much service since then, never had they seen
anything to approach this famous day of Minden, and as the long casualty
list was discussed, many were the good Border names mentioned that
belonged to men now lying stiff and cold in death, who that morning when
the sun rose were hale and well.

"Rob Scott's gane," said one.

"Ay, and Tam Elliot," said a grizzled veteran. "I kenned, and _he_
kenned, he wad never win through this day. He telled me that his deid
faither, him that was killed at Prestonpans, had twice appeared tae him.
And we a' ken what _that_ aye means. Some o' you dragoon lads maybe saw
as muckle as ye cared for o' auld Scotland that day o' Prestonpans