'Ha ha!' returned the Captain. There spoke the juvenile, whose sole idea is, that to dance at a ball with a chivalrous port, and a laced jacket, forms one of the most essential employments of the soldier's life, and here is an actual subaltern of Highlanders, hardly three hours old at his first detachment, and already almost disgusted with the service. Depend on't, my good sir, if you look with my experience upon the matter, you will find yourself in exceeding good quarters here at Corgarff. For mine own part I volunteered here out of my turn, and mean to remain the whole two years I conceive this party will be kept employed upon the hills.

Two years!' I exclaimed in dismay,-'two years, my dear sir! Did you say two years was the likely term we are to be employed in this service? Give me but a sergeant's party, two days' rations, and full powers, and I swear to thee by the white ridge of Benlidi that I will destroy every bothie in Strathdon. Two years! Captain M'Lean, perish the idea of such a waste of life.'

And when, pray, do you expect, Ensign Marvel, to return to headquarters?' inquired the Captain.

Certainly, sir,' I replied, 'at the end of three months (the usual term.) when another subaltern will be sent out to relieve me.'

'INDEED!' returned the Captain, 'the idea is not an unpleasant one; but, unhappily, no such regulation exists. There is no stated period for relief of this detachment, Mr. Marvel. Once here, you will remain until the regiment gets a route for some other quarter of the globe. Yes, Ensign Marvel, you are a young soldier, and have much to learn. Fill your glass. How long did you say you had joined ?' 'Two months.' I sighed.

'But two months. Good. Then you have been sent here out of your turn. You will, I see plainly, be out here four years instead of two, unless, indeed, (which is more than probable from the quantity of deaths I perceive by the last returns from the west,) you are wanted to feed the land-crabs in Demerara.'

'I'll volunteer there,' said I. 'Immediately send in my name to head-quarters, Captain, if you love me.'

Ah! ah!' said the commandant; 'so will the whole detachment, drummer, piper, pioneer, and all, if the Colonel would but listen to their cravings. That's the burthen of the song-anywhere but Corgarff.'

By this time our bottle had become a body without a soul. The Captain's nose gave token that he was in the arms of Nature's soft nurse; the rush-candle had burnt down to a snuff; the wind sounded in the huge chimney, like some demon struggling to burst his torments; the turf-fire was altogether swamped; and the shivering sentinels within the loop-holed walls, the third hour of drowsy morning named.' So the Captain's highland serving-man having ere he retired, with infinite celerity and cleverness, shaken down a quantity of cloaks and blankets beside his master's bed, by way of a couch for me, I followed the example of my superior, and, rolling myself up amongst these habiliments, was soon fast as 'weariness upon the flint.'

By computation, and the report of the still-howling sentinels, I must have enjoyed some two hours' repose, when the loud beat of an unbraced sheepskin, rattling and rolling scarce ten feet above, 'drummed in my ear,' at which, starting, I awoke,

Presently, however, the ear-piercing fife went through my brain like a sharp bodkin, and effectually aroused me. If the reader has never heard an infantry brass-drum, beaten as a British drummer can and will beat it, and that, too, under the same roof with himself,-although he may have, Petruchio-like, listened to 'great ordnance in the field,' and 'Heaven's artillery in the skies,' heard lions roar, and even been violently assailed by woman's tongue, he can yet have no proper conception of the villanous compound of noises which now disturbed 'the curtain'd sleep' at Corgarff.

To add to this concord of sweet sounds, the screaming skirl of a Highland bagpipe, blown with tremendous energy, and rendered ten times more villanously discordant than I had ever before heard that sweet instrument, from the circumstance of its being apparently almost in the same apartment, began also to blow up a terrible yell, whilst the heavy tread of some sixty or seventy individuals rushing from their beds

added to the clamour.

'Hallo!' said I, sitting up in my 'flinty and steel couch,' this will prove a brave kingdom to me, where I shall have all my music for nothing. What, in the name of the fiend, is the matter now! The place smells like a jail. What a horrible savour of rank tobacco and vinegar wine. Best rouse the captain: the castle's surely on fire! What, Lucius, ho! Lucius, awake, I say! "I would it were my fault to sleep so soundly.""

'Hallo, there! what's ado?' growled M'Lean. 'What the de'il, man, are ye making such a rout about? Go to sleep, Ensign Marvel, -go to sleep, man.’

Sleep, my good sir,' I said, 'do you talk of sleep amidst such a din as that above. Get up, Captain, and strike a light, for the love of Heaven! the castle's sure on fire, or the frame of things disjoint.'

Pshaw!' said the Captain, turning on his pillow. Go to sleep, Ensign Marvel, till parade-time. You'll find plenty of dull hours on hand at Corgarff, without stealing them from the night. That's only the reveillé sounding. When you have been fain to eat, drink, and sleep at the sound of the drum for forty years you'll repose as soundly to its accompaniment as I do.'

'O heaven!' methought, better be with the dead, as Macbeth says, than be obliged to sleep in the affliction of these terrible dreams, that (apparently here,) shake us nightly.'

Curses both loud and deep also now began to ring out, as the men in the ill-boarded floor above jostled and scrambled about, in the endeavour to get lights, don their clothes, and turn out at the summons of the non-commissioned officers. Meanwhile, the noise having in some sort subsided, and the men having rather rushed down than descended the winding stairs, borne open the huge door with their united strength, and commenced digging the castle out of the snow, ('their custom always in the early dawn,') I ventured again to coax myself into a sort of fitful and feverish slumber, from which I was awoke by a tremendous buffet, which seemed to have demolished half the teeth in my

head.

• Hallo there!' I exclaimed, as soon as I in some measure recovered my breath and senses, 'what kind of treatment is this for a gen

tleman and a soldier. Captain, thou abominable dd cheater ! -thou rascally, yea, forsooth, knave!-thou whoreson Ahithophel! if you have put this thing upon me, thou shalt rue the hour within the hour.'

Saying this, I tried to arise; but apparently one of the copingstones of the tower had fallen from its pinnacle, and been dashed in my face, whilst a sort of cross-beam lay athwart my legs, and a dead weight pressed heavily upon my epigastrum. I clutched the offending object nearest to my hands, and, hurling it into the air, transferred it from my own features to the proboscis of Captain M'Lean, who in turn sent it spinning to the other side of the dungeon, with a bellow like the roar of a highland bull.

'Eh, sirs! God be here! but what's you-Ensign Marvel, sir, what's this you have done to me?'

I know not, Captain,' I replied, the usages of this fortress; but it appears to me "some airy devil hovers in the sky and pours down mischief." I am battered and bruised here in a most unhandsome style. To all appearance the roof of the tower above is being blown piecemeal into the Dee, and fragments of the battlements are falling upon our heads. For my own part I'll take it on my damnation, there 's not a square inch of my body that is not pounded into mummy, my nose is flattened to my face, and my jaws apparently are halfdisfurnished.

'Donald M'Dunnie,' said the Captain to the serving-man, who just at that moment entered the cell, in order to advertise his master that it was time he rose, and prepared for the morning-parade, 'Donald, man, look upon that knapsack, pouch, firelock, and bayonet, and observe which of my unlucky scoundrels has allowed them to fall through the flooring above us.'

It was even so the flooring over head was in so dilapidated a condition that it was no uncommon circumstance for the men's accoutrements to come tumbling through some chasm into the apartment beneath.

Such was Corgarff, and such was my first night on detachment in the Highlands.

Ensign Marvel,' continued the Captain as soon as the serving-man had left the room, I presume you hear the clamour of that drum, which, reverberating over the hills so pleasantly, advertises us that the men are on parade. Perhaps you will excuse my soliciting the favour your attendance upon that ceremony; after which you will oblige me by rejoining me here at breakfast, and reporting the state of the detachment.'

of

Upon this order I patched up my dilapidated jaws, replaced some half-dozen of my front teeth, arose, and shook myself like a Newfoundland dog, and girding on my rapier, sallied outside the walls of the castle.

I looked around me as soon as I emerged from the sally-port in the loopholed walls, and was fairly outside the building, in order to observe the outdoor aspect and appearance of the extraordinary region I had got into. There was not much to interest or make me in love with the view presented. Dreary wastes of snow extended for miles and miles eastward, fogs and bogs, mosses and morasses, were to the westward; craggy cliffs, and thunder-battered hills, were to the north; and a lonesome glen, through which the rapid Dee wound its course,

was to the south. No tree was to be observed, no hut or cottage was to be seen. The castle looked like some tomb or pyramid of the desert; and the drum, which rattled out, and was borne far away in the rushing blast, sounded like a hopeless signal of distress from a solitary vessel alone in an unknown sea.

The detachment, consisting of seventy hapless exiles, including myself, and the still sleeping Captain,' was assembled upon a little esplanade, which had been cut out by themselves for the purpose of parading on, a sort of shelf in the rock, where they stood two deep in rank, and knee-deep in snow. They stood with ordered arms, and quite at ease, albeit that, unlike any other soldiers I had ever before seen, they were so far from carrying themselves erect and soldier-like as they stood, that each man was bent forwards into a hoop; and, such was the force and fury of the winds on the hill upon which the castle was situated, that it was all they could do to stand at all.

'The power of man,' says a great writer, at no time appears more contemptible than when it is placed in contrast with scenes of natural terror and dignity. The army of Montrose, when in the act of ascending the passes, and traversing the Highlands, seemed a contemptible handful of stragglers about to be devoured by the jaws of the mountain. The truth of this saying of the great Sir Walter struck forcibly upon me as I regarded the handful of individuals before me, their tartans fluttering, and their accoutrements clattering in the furious blast, huddled 'shoulder to shoulder,' and looking like a flock of scarts, or sea-gulls, perched upon the shelving rock, and almost frozen to the spot they clung to.

'Company-at-ten-tion!' shouted the Bardolphic Sergeant, as he stepped up, and presented me with a small strip of paper, containing the state and history of his power. The men are all present, sir, except those employed to slaughter the ox,-those employed to bake oat-cakes and barley scons, those employed to heave the snow out of the rooms and dungeons of the castle, and those employed in heating water for the men who will be frost-bitten when parade is over. Have a care, sir, how you move!' he continued, as I was about to approach the company, in order to peruse them in rank; if you get too much headway in this wind, you'll be carried clean down the mountain-side, an awa' over the hills, into Invernesshire. We 've already lost four men in that way sin' we came here, who have been reported as deserters ever since.'

Now, be it known this was the first time I had ever had greatness thrust upon me, and been in command on parade. But two months joined, saving the goose step, part of the manual and platoon, and right and left about, I was perfectly innocent of the knowledge of military matters, had never set a squadron in the field, nor the divişion of a battle knew more than a spinster.'

In few, the Highlanders were infinitely amused with the oddity of this drill parade. Their features, spite of discipline, became affected with sundry convulsive twitchings; and even the face of the grim sergeant, which ordinarily bore a most unaccountable resemblance to a bass viol, was now (in his efforts at maintaining a proper and dignified deportment) drawn into the exact resemblance of a spout.

Finishing the exercise by a volley, which sent sixty bullets across the waste, and awakened all the echoes from Lonach to Leichtsoidhar, I was about to express my satisfaction at the efficiency of the detach

VOL. X.

12

ment, when a harsh voice beside me, superseded me in command, and reduced me to a cipher.

'Sergeant Bendochie, order arms, unfix bayonets, and march the Ensign Marvel, sir, you are under arrest-mind, close

arrest.'

I turned round, and beheld Captain Archibald M'Lean' standing in slippers, which his humble haste had falsely thrust upon contrary

feet.'

'Go to your room,' he said.

I attempted to expostulate, but it was all in vain.

The room, Corporal Mactavish, below the foundations of the castle, the subaltern's quarter, show Mr. Marvel into. Place a sentinel over him, and order my servant to bring me breakfast immediately.'

Angry winter passed away, and the approach of spring still found us howling in the wilderness, and lying at pleasure at Corgarff. Each day was a month. Captain M'Lean, having so effective an officer, had given himself leave of absence, and left me sole and solitary in command, and king of Strathdon. To incessant snow had succeeded constant rain. I had laboured in my vocation, and carried the war so successfully into the glens and fastnesses around, that the blackened rafters and umbered remains of what were once the bothies of the hardy whiskey.brewers, are now all that the adventurous grouseshooter can discover of that popular trade, when, one wet morning, the Captain, returning in haste, ordered a heavy marching-order parade, formed an advance and rearguards, locked up the castle, and putting the key in his pocket, prepared to depart.

'Seid suas! he shouted, as he drew his claymore,' strike up there -quick march !'

The detachment moved forwards; they descended the slope upon which the castle was situated, and, as the head of the party was seen to emerge from the mists they had so long been dwellers in, the pipes, after sending forth a wailing cry, struck up the celebrated dirge with which the Highlanders march to the shore when about to embark to some distant clime- Cha till mi tuille,—we return no more.'

'M'Lean,' I said, as I ventured to accost him, after we had safely stemmed the torrent of the rushing Dee, 'are we fairly quit of these fastnesses? Do you really mean to say we are sounding "farewell to St rathdon ?""'

'Even so, Ensign Marvel,' he replied; 'I believe we have now quite done with that "loveliest spot of earth."

And our destination ?' I said, 'is it head-quarters, M'Lean?' 'There lies my way-due west,' said the chief, pointing his claymore down the pass before us.'

Then, westward, ho!' said I joyfully, 'for England, cousin, if that be the case

'Not so, good swabber,' returned the Captain, putting an official into my hand; 'you are to hull here a little longer. Although the mortality in the west hath made it necessary to order out an extra draft, till we sail, good sir, we have to pursue our present employment. Accordingly, I am marching this morning, Ensign Marvel, to relieve the detachment of the forty-twa stationed in the castle of Bræmar.'