'True; but I have served for twenty years in Denmark, Muscovy, and Brandenburg, and reckon these as forty; yet I am only a poor Marechal de Logis of horse, while such boys as those painted fops De Toneins and Turenne, are camp-masters and knights of all the king's orders. However, my Lord Dundrennan, we have an auld Scottish proverb, which saith _a hauf egg is better than a toom doup_, so I must e'en content me. When we campaigned ten years ago in Westphalia, a place where, as their own proverb says, you are sure to find bad quarters, worse rations, and long miles, I often heard the 'half egg' quoted by one who is now dead and gone--poor Hepburn--than whom no better soldier ever belted him with steel.' This compliment to our dead leader was received by all with a silent bow of assent. 'But Tushielaw was a wise man, and hath gone home four months ago to his old tower on the Border side,' resumed Gordon; 'I would that I had some such neuk to hang my sword in when I grow too old to carry it.' 'Tushielaw,' said Dundrennan, 'was a brave and wild spirit. The last May-day we were in Paris, how merrily he, De Toneins, the Chevalier, and I danced with the grisettes round a Maypole cut from the Bois de Boulogne, and planted just outside the Porte St. Antoine. He was severely wounded in that affair we had at Mannheim--' 'Ah--you fought that while I was cooling my heels in the Bastille.' 'We were campaigning among the mountains of the Bergstrasse. It was in the month of December; the country was covered with snow, and our infantry were busy under Hepburn, de la Force, and de Maille Breze in the fortification of Heidelberg and Mannheim. We were now in the land of brutal barons, beer-bloated philosophers, beggarly mightinesses, devils, ghosts, and doppelgangers. 'Now this town of Mannheim, until we girt it by ramparts, was nothing more than a pretty village, guarded by the old castle of Rheinhausen; and our proceedings there, in stone and lime, were so highly resented by the Imperialists, that they never left us an hour in peace. Our boots were never off, and we slept in our frozen tents, with belts and harness on, till we were weary of our lives, and furious at the foe. 'One evening, when the sun was setting behind the mountains, and when the ice lay deep and strong upon the waters of the frozen Rhine and Neckar, a party of Austrian horse, led by young Count Pappenheim, with furred roquelaures over their black iron trappings, came suddenly upon our quarters, and gave us an _alerte_. On the right flank which, as you know, is always our post, the Marquis of Gordon ordered the trumpets to sound 'to horse;' and after some smart piqueering with our pistols, we fell on with our rapiers, at full gallop, and routed three hundred of Goetz's dragoons, driving them across the valley of the Rhine in full and disastrous flight.