his fairing, I'll be caution for it."

"What makes you so positive of that, my friend?" asked the horseman.

"I heard it wi' my ain lugs," answered Cuddie, foretauld to him by a man
that had been three hours stane dead, and came back to this earth again
just to tell him his mind. It was at a place they ca' Drumshinnel."

"Indeed?" said the stranger. "I can hardly believe you, my friend."

"Ye might ask my mither, then, if she were in life," said Cuddie; "it was
her explained it a' to me, for I thought the man had only been wounded.
At ony rate, he spake of the casting out of the Stewarts by their very
names, and the vengeance that was brewing for Claver'se and his dragoons.
They ca'd the man Habakkuk Mucklewrath; his brain was a wee ajee, but he
was a braw preacher for a' that."

"You seem," said the stranger, "to live in a rich and peaceful country."

"It's no to compleen o', sir, an we get the crap weel in," quoth Cuddie;
"but if ye had seen the blude rinnin' as fast on the tap o' that brigg
yonder as ever the water ran below it, ye wadna hae thought it sae bonnie
a spectacle."

"You mean the battle some years since? I was waiting upon Monmouth that
morning, my good friend, and did see some part of the action," said the
stranger.

"Then ye saw a bonny stour," said Cuddie, "that sail serve me for
fighting a' the days o' my life. I judged ye wad be a trooper, by your
red scarlet lace-coat and your looped hat."

"And which side were you upon, my friend?" continued the inquisitive
stranger.

"Aha, lad?" retorted Cuddie, with a knowing look, or what he designed for
such,--"there 's nae use in telling that, unless I kend wha was asking
me."

"I commend your prudence, but it is unnecessary; I know you acted on that
occasion as servant to Henry Morton."

"Ay!" said Cuddie, in surprise, "how came ye by that secret? No that I
need care a bodee about it, for the sun's on our side o' the hedge now. I
wish my master were living to get a blink o't"

"And what became of him?" said the rider.

"He was lost in the vessel gaun to that weary Holland,--clean lost; and
a' body perished, and my poor master amang them. Neither man nor mouse
was ever heard o' mair." Then Cuddie uttered a groan.

"You had some regard for him, then?" continued the stranger.

"How could I help it? His face was made of a fiddle, as they say, for a'
body that looked on him liked him. And a braw soldier he was. Oh, an ye
had but seen him down a