It was during the absence of her husband on one of his trading excursions that the children came crowding round the door, to ask Ella to come and listen to the new music some gentlemen in fine clothes were playing as they went up the pass. Katie was brought out by her little people at the same moment. The children climbed the height to get another view of the strangers, and their mothers followed. A recruiting party was ascending between the rocks at the same moment that more companies than one were leaving the burying-ground. The children clapped their hands and began to dance to the booming drum and the shrill fife; but Ella immediately stopped them. “Don’t ye mark,” she said, “there’s Rob and Meg Murdoch coming down the hill? Would ye like to see anybody dancing in your sight when you have just laid your father’s head in the ground?” “I saw Rob drunk this very morn, mother, and he danced as if his father had been there looking on.” “If Rob behaves as if he had no feeling, that is no reason why you should seem to think he has none.” “Look at Meg!” cried another child. “She is laughing as if it was a bridal instead of a funeral.” Ella was shocked, though not much surprised, to see Meg run forward to meet the soldiers, as if they were old acquaintance, and linger behind with them when her party, including her stupid brother, had cracked their joke and passed on. It occurred to her that Meg’s brother-in-law might be among the soldiers and she said so by way of excuse; but immediately called the children down from the height, unwilling that such an example of unfeeling levity should remain before their eyes. They were naturally somewhat unwilling to lose sight of the scarlet coats, having never beheld any before. “Ye will see such often enough, now, my dears,” said their mother, sighing. “These people know how to choose their time. The fife is ever merriest when the heart’s music is hushed; and whenever people are at their wit’s end with want and sorrow, the red-coats come and carry away such as are glad to drown thought and seek change instead of waiting for it.” “Yes, indeed,” replied Katie: “a funeral at the top of the hill, and a recruiting party going to meet it, is natural enough; and so it would have been to see lads made to drink in the king’s name when their stomachs were craving food. I wondered we had had no recruiting before; for the worse the times, the more are ready to leave home behind them, and go and serve the king.”