"'I shall never forget your kindness to me,' said I; 'and I value it all the more, because you are one of those who are in arms against the king.' "'It is maybe not the first time I have been so,' said he, with a deep smile puckering all his eyelids. "'And you saved my life simply because I was a 25th man?' "'Yes--because one of your regiment--it was Lord Leven's--no, Lord Semple's then--saved mine, at a harder pinch, some thirty years ago,' said he, gravely, as he marched on before me through the snow, with his long rifle sloped on his shoulder. "'You have been a soldier, then?' "'Like yourself, Lowlander, for I know you are southland bred by your tongue.' "'In what regiment?' I asked. "'In the clan regiment of Macdonald of Keppoch. Rest him, God!' he exclaimed, taking off his cap and looking upward, while his keen grey eyes glistened, it might be in the frosty wind, under his bushy eyebrows. "'When was this--and where?' "Can you be so dull as not to guess? It was in the ever-memorable and ever-glorious campaign under His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, whom heaven long preserve! It was in 1746, just thirty years ago. Look at these scars,' he added, showing me several sword wounds that were visible among his thick white hair. 'I got these at Culloden, from Bland's dragoons, when fighting for Scotland and King James VIII.' "'You must be an old man?' said I. "'Old,' he exclaimed; 'I am barely fifty--young enough to fight and ripe enough to die for my new home, this land of America, to which I was banished as a slave with many more of my clan and kindred.' He was now warming with his subject and the recollections of the past. 'There is,' he resumed, 'a pass in the hills here that reminds me of my native glen in Croy. Often I go there and sit on the 16th April, as the fatal day comes round, when outnumbered, three to one, by British and Hanoverians, the Highland swordsmen went down like grass on Culloden moor, before the withering fire of grape and musketry! Then the river that flows into Lake George seems the Nairn--the water of Alders; yonder open moorland seems the plain of Drummossie, and the distant farm among the pine-trees passes for Culloden House. Afar off in the distance the bastions of Ticonderoga become those of Fort George, that jut into the Moray Firth, and yonder wooded mountain, as yet without a name, seems to me like wild Dun-daviot; and then as with the eyes of a seer, it all comes before me again, that April day, with its terrible memories! Then,' he continued, with flashing eyes, as he pointed across the plain, 'then I seem to see the white battle-smoke rolling over the purple heather, and the far extended lines of the hell-doomed Cumberland reaching from Bland's scarlet horse on the right to the false Lord Ancrum's blue dragoons upon the left--these long and steady lines of infantry, Barrel's, Munro's, the Fusiliers, the Royals, and all the rest, in