"I am bidden go on a quest into the wild country by the seashore, a mission that in itself I should like well enough were it not that it comes to me by the hand of Black Murdo of Barra." Davie Dunbar whistled thoughtfully. "When the corbie is from home, it's like to be an ill day for wee lame lammies!" he said, sententiously. Wat Gordon cocked his guardsman's cap at the words. He had set it on his head as he went down-stairs. "I am Walter Gordon, of Lochinvar, and though that be for the nonce but a barren heritage, I am also a gentleman-private in the prince's Scots Dragoons, and I count not the Earl of Barra more than a buzzard-kite." "I see well that ye are but a wee innocent lammie after all," retorted Sergeant Dunbar; "little ye ken about the regimen of war if at the outset of a campaign ye begin by belittling your enemy. I tell you, Murdo of Barra has more brains under his Highland bonnet than all your gay Douglas dragoons, from your swearing colonel to the suckling drummer-boy--who no sooner leaves his mother's breast than he learns to mouth curses and lisp strange oaths." Wat Gordon shook his head with a certain unconvinced and dour determination. "I have been in wild places and my sword has brought me through, but though I own that, I like not this commission--yet feared of Barra I am not." And he handed Davie Dunbar the paper. The sergeant read it aloud: "Walter Gordon, some time of Lochinvar, of the Prince's Scottish Dragoon Guards, you are ordered to obtain the true numeration of each regiment in the camp and city of Amersfort--their officering, the numbers of each company, and of those that cannot be passed by the muster officers, the tally of those sick with fever, and of those still recovering from it, the number of cannon on the works and where they are posted. These lists you are to transmit with your own hand to an officer appointed to receive them by His Highness the Prince at the Inn of Brederode by the Northern Sanddunes, who will furnish you with a receipt for them. This receipt you will preserve and return to me in token that you have fulfilled your mission. The officers of the regiments and the commanders of batteries have hereby orders to render you a correct and instant accompt. "(Signed) For the Stadtholder and the States-General, "BARRA, "_Provost-Marshal of the City and Camp_." William Gordon had come into the room while the sergeant was reading the paper, and now stood looking at Walter's unusual commission. "There will be murder done when you come to our colonel," he said, "and ask him to tell you that the most part of his regiment is already in hospital, and also how many of the rest are sickening for it."