"Your father! fire and smoke! do you say so? His hand was a heavy one!" cried Wooden-leg, while his eye glowed like the orb of a hyæna. "And your leg?" "I lost at Minden, in Kingsley's Brigade, comrade; aye, my leg--d--n!--that was indeed a loss." "A warning to repentance, I would say." "Then you would say wrong. Ugh! I remember when the shot--a twelve-pounder--took me just as we were rushing with charged bayonets on the French cannoniers. Smash! my leg was gone, and I lay sprawling and bleeding in a ploughed field near the Weser, while my comrades swept over me with a wild hurrah! the colours waving, and drums beating a charge." "And what did you do?" "I lay there and swore, believe me." "That would not restore your limb again." "No; but a few hearty oaths relieve the mind; and the mind relieves the body; you understand me, comrade; so there I lay all night under a storm of rain like this, bleeding and sinking; afraid of the knives of the plundering death-hunters, for my mother had been one, and I remembered well how she looked after the wounded, and cured them of their agony." "Was your mother one of those infer----" began MacEwen. "Don't call her hard names now, comrade; she died on the day after the defeat at Val; with the Provost Marshal's cord round her neck--a cordon less ornamental than that of St. Louis." "And your father?" "Was one of Howard's Regiment; but which the devil only knows, for it was a point on which the old lady, honest woman, had serious doubts herself." "After the loss of your leg, of course you left the service?" "No, I became the company's butcher; but, fire and smoke, get me another glass of grog; take a share yourself, and don't sit staring at me like a Dutch Souterkin conceived of a winter night over a 'pot de feu,' as all the world knows King William was. Dam! let us be merry together--ha, ha, ha! ho, ho, ho! and I'll sing you a song of the old whig times." "'O, brother Sandie, hear ye the news, Lillibulero, bullen a la! An army is coming sans breeches and shoes, Lillibulero, bullen a la! "'To arms! to arms! brave boys to arms! A true British cause for your courage doth ca'; Country and city against a kilted banditti, Lillibulero, bullen a la!'" And while he continued to rant and sing the song (once so obnoxious to the Scottish Cavaliers), he beat time with his wooden leg, and endeavoured to outroar the stormy wind and the hiss of the drenching rain. Even MacEwen, though he was an old soldier, felt some uneasiness, and Meinie trembled in her heart, while the children clung to her skirts and hid their little faces, as if this singing, riot, and jollity were impious at such a time, when the awful thunder was ringing its solemn peals across the midnight sky. CHAPTER XXVII. THE PHANTOM REGIMENT.--THE UNCO' QUEST.