Mary coloured, and glanced round timidly, for several officers of the garrison who had been lounging on the parapets drew near, and she knew few songs save those of her native hills, and consequently they were in a language totally unintelligible to the gentlemen of the Royal Americans and Parker's Foot; but on being pressed by the colonel and his little one, who nestled at her feet, she sang the only English song with which she was acquainted. It was a paraphrase of one of the psalms,* and was then a favourite with the Jacobites, who sang it to a beautiful and plaintive old Highland air. * Psalm cxxxvii. On Gallia's shore we sat and wept, When Scotland we thought on. Robbed of her bravest sons, and all Her ancient spirit gone! "Revenge!" the sons of Gallia said, "Revenge your wasted land; Already your insulting foes Crowd the Batavian strand! "How shall the sons of Freedom e'er For foreign conquest fight? For power how wield the sword, deprived Of liberty and right? "If thee, O Scotland! we forget, Even to our latest breath, May foul dishonour stain our name, And bring a coward's death. "May sad remorse for fancied guilt Our future days employ, If all thy sacred rights are not Above our ohiefest joy. "And thou, proud Gaul, O faithless friend, Thy ruin is not far; May God, on thy devoted head, Pour all the woes of war! "When thou, thy slaughtered little ones, And outraged dames shalt see; Such help, such pity mayest thou have, As Scotland had from thee!" * * * * As Mary sang, many loiterers of the Black Watch had joined the little group around her, and listened as if turned to stone. The veteran colonel of the Royal Americans, who had been long, long from the land of his birth, felt his grave iron nature melted. He sat on the parapet of the gun-battery, with his chin placed in his right hand, and his left nervously grasping the hilt of his sword. His keen grey eyes, which roved uneasily from one object to another, began at last to moisten and fill, and then tears ran down the furrows of his cheeks--old dry channels worn by war and time, but all unused to such visitors.