idings concerning him; and all that I
could learn was, that a regiment had left the Castle that morning at two
o'clock, and embarked at Leith for Chatham, from whence they were to
proceed direct abroad; and that several recruits were attached to it, some
of them only sworn in an hour before they embarked; but whether my poor
Robie was among them or not, no one could tell.

I left Edinburgh no wiser, no happier, and in no way more comforted than I
entered it, and returned to his mother a sad and sorrowing-hearted man. She
wrung her hands the instant she beheld me, and, in a tone that might have
touched the heart of a stone, cried aloud--"Oh, my lost! lost bairn! Ye hae
made a living grave o' yer mother's breast."

I would have set off immediately for London, and from thence down to
Chatham, to inquire for him there; but the wind was favourable when the
vessel sailed, and it was therefore certain, that, by the time I got back
to Dunse, she was at the place of her destination; and moreover, I had no
certainty or assurance that he was on board. Therefore, we spent another
day in fruitless lamentations and tears, and in vain inquiries around our
own neighbourhood, and amongst his acquaintances.

But my own heart yearned continually, and his mother's moaning was
unceasing in my ear, as the ticking of a spider, or the beating of a
stop-watch to a person that is doomed to die. I could find no rest. I
blamed myself for not proceeding direct from Edinburgh to Chatham; and,
next day, I went down to Berwick, to take my place in the mail to London.

By the way I met several of the yeomanry, who were only returning from
Dunbar, where they had been summoned by the alarm; and I found that Berwick
also had been in arms. But taking my place on the mail, I proceeded,
without sleep or rest, to London, and from thence hastened to Chatham.
There again I found that the regiment which I sought was already half way
down the Channel; but I ascertained also that my poor thoughtless boy was
one of the recruits, and even that was some consolation, although but a
poor one.

Again I returned to his mother, and told her of the tidings. They brought
her no comfort, and, night and day, she brooded on the thought of her fair
son lying dead and mangled on the field of slaughter, or of his returning
helpless and wounded to his native land. And often it was wormwood to my
spirit, and an augmentation of my own sorrows, to find that, in secret, she
murmur