.

"For the time, one becomes a military statue; and even when they
go, it is difficult to take up the talk as it was left. Oh, it is
wearisome work, and heartily glad I shall be, when the trumpets
blow and we march out of Berlin. However, we are beginning to be
pretty busy. I have been on horseback, twelve hours a day on an
average, for the past week. Gordon started yesterday for Magdeburg,
and Macgregor has been two days absent, but I don't know where.
Everyone is busy, from the king himself--who is always busy about
something--to the youngest drummer. Nobody outside a small circle
knows what it is all about. Apparently we are in a state of
profound peace, without a cloud in the sky, and yet the military
preparations are going on actively, everywhere.

"Convoys of provisions are being sent to the frontier fortresses.
Troops are in movement from the Northern Provinces. Drilling is
going on--I was going to say night and day, for it is pretty nearly
that--and no one can make out what it is all about.

"There is one thing--no one asks questions. His majesty thinks for
his subjects, and as he certainly is the cleverest man in his
dominions, everyone is well content that it should be so.

"And now, about yourself. I am running on and talking nonsense,
when I have all sorts of questions to ask you. But that is always
the way with me. I am like a bottle of champagne, corked down while
I am in the palace, and directly I get away the cork flies out by
itself, and for a minute or two it is all froth and emptiness.

"Now, when did you arrive, how did you arrive, what is the last
news from Scotland, which of the branches of the Drummonds do you
belong to, and how near of kin are you to the marshal? Oh, by the
way, I ought to know the last without asking; as you are a
Drummond, and a relation of Keith, you can be no other than the son
of the Drummond of Tarbet, who married Margaret Ogilvie, who was a
first cousin of Keith's."

"That is right," Fergus said. "My father fell at Culloden, you
know. As to all your other questions, they are answered easily
enough. I know very little of the news in Scotland, for my mother
lived a very secluded life at Kilgowrie, and little news came to us
from without. I came from Leith to Stettin, and there I bought a
horse and rode on here."

His companion laughed.

"And how about yourself? I suppose you know nothing of this beastly
language?"

"Yes; I can speak it pretty fluently, and of c