how do you say it in English?--a raspberry tart. And where was our fine
battalion of conscripts? Then another battalion of young troops tried
it, all together in a rush, shouting and yelling; but what will shouting
do against a mitraille of grape? And there was our second battalion
laid out on the hillside. And then the foot chasseurs of the Guard, old
soldiers, were told to take the battery; and there was nothing fine
about their advance--no column, no shouting, nobody killed--just a few
scattered lines of tirailleurs and pelotons of support; but in ten
minutes the guns were silenced, and the Spanish gunners cut to pieces.
War must be learned, my young friend, just the same as the farming of
sheep."

"Pooh!" said I, not to be out-crowed by a foreigner. "If we had thirty
thousand men on the line of the hill yonder, you would come to be very
glad that you had your boats behind you."

"On the line of the hill?" said he, with a flash of his eyes along the
ridge. "Yes, if your man knew his business he would have his left about
your house, his centre on Corriemuir, and his right over near the
doctor's house, with his tirailleurs pushed out thickly in front.
His horse, of course, would try to cut us up as we deployed on the
beach. But once let us form, and we should soon know what to do.
There's the weak point, there at the gap. I would sweep it with my
guns, then roll in my cavalry, push the infantry on in grand columns,
and that wing would find itself up in the air. Eh, Jack, where would
your volunteers be?"

"Close at the heels of your hindmost man," said I; and we both burst out
into the hearty laugh with which such discussions usually ended.

Sometimes when he talked I thought he was joking, and at other times it
was not quite so easy to say. I well remember one evening that summer,
when he was sitting in the kitchen with my father, Jim, and me, after
the women had gone to bed, he began about Scotland and its relation to
England.

"You used to have your own king and your own laws made at Edinburgh,"
said he. "Does it not fill you with rage and despair when you think
that it all comes to you from London now?"

Jim took his pipe out of his mouth.

"It was we who put our king over the English; so if there's any rage, it
should have been over yonder," said he.

This was clearly news to the stranger, and it silenced him for the
moment.

"Well, but your laws are made down there, and surely that is not go