The second in command was "The Dandy Major," a rollicking squire who owned broad acres and big cellars. A bit of a Beau Brummell, too. He was measured for his socks, pyjamas, and ties. There was a touch about his waist-line which suggested the "Nut," and a look in his eye which was deadly. The subalterns said that he had kissed everything human, from a Geisha girl to an Eskimo. He had done everything from killing a tiger to sticking a Hun, and had crowned his career with the capture of a famous beauty of the land. Major Tartan was the junior major. He was chief of a clan possessing numerous castles and miles of heather. He looked a ghillie, and was very proud of his calves. These never required the Sassenach stuffing of cotton wool. And in his bedroom he hung a painted scroll of his lineage. That was his weakness. He could recite his descent from Macdonald M’Tartan, who ran away with the wife of Dugald M’Phail, once chief of the thieves on Benmore. He loved the kilt and he lived in it. It greatly distressed him to think that his regiment had the awful trews. But this owner of Highland homes and grouse moors hadn’t a bean to call his own. Everything was mortgaged, even his kilt, and that was a sore strait for a true Highland gentleman. So he lived in a cottage on the shore of a lonely loch. There he read the ’Spectator,’ drank Scotch, and cursed the Government, as every Tory is expected to do. Yet he was as proud as Cæsar. He was content to accept the little dole left when his lawyers paid the interests on his heavily mortgaged bonds. He was glad of this war. It gave him something to do. And he had the dour, grim, hacking qualities which always distinguish the Highland soldier. If he was as surly as a Highland bull, he was also as kind as a little child. His last shilling had often gone into the beer-pot of a scheming Militiaman. Militiamen, I can assure you, are like Chinamen—as deep as the seas and as canny as the snakes. They can squeeze blood out of a stone, and so this kind old major was frequently their prey.