ality. The mother, while Lord Clancharlie was
becoming an owl in Switzerland, made up her mind, being a beauty, to
give over sulking, and was forgiven that Goth, her first lover, by one
undeniably polished and at the same time a royalist, for it was the king
himself.

She had been but a short time the mistress of Charles II., sufficiently
long however to have made his Majesty--who was delighted to have won so
pretty a woman from the republic--bestow on the little Lord David, the
son of his conquest, the office of keeper of the stick, which made that
bastard officer, boarded at the king's expense, by a natural revulsion
of feeling, an ardent adherent of the Stuarts. Lord David was for some
time one of the hundred and seventy wearing the great sword, while
afterwards, entering the corps of pensioners, he became one of the forty
who bear the gilded halberd. He had, besides being one of the noble
company instituted by Henry VIII. as a bodyguard, the privilege of
laying the dishes on the king's table. Thus it was that whilst his
father was growing gray in exile, Lord David prospered under Charles II.

After which he prospered under James II.

The king is dead. Long live the king! It is the _non deficit alter,
aureus_.

It was on the accession of the Duke of York that he obtained permission
to call himself Lord David Dirry-Moir, from an estate which his mother,
who had just died, had left him, in that great forest of Scotland, where
is found the krag, a bird which scoops out a nest with its beak in the
trunk of the oak.

II.

James II. was a king, and affected to be a general. He loved to surround
himself with young officers. He showed himself frequently in public on
horseback, in a helmet and cuirass, with a huge projecting wig hanging
below the helmet and over the cuirass--a sort of equestrian statue of
imbecile war. He took a fancy to the graceful mien of the young Lord
David. He liked the royalist for being the son of a republican. The
repudiation of a father does not damage the foundation of a court
fortune. The king made Lord David gentleman of the bedchamber, at a
salary of a thousand a year.

It was a fine promotion. A gentleman of the bedchamber sleeps near the
king every night, on a bed which is made up for him. There are twelve
gentlemen who relieve each other.

Lord David, whilst he held that post, was also head of the king's
granary, giving out corn for the horses and receiving a salary of L260.