Canada -- History -- To 1763 (New France) -- Fiction; United States -- History -- French and Indian War, 1754-1763 -- Fiction
"My father liked Sir John greatly, and they grew exceedingly
friendly, walking forth in the streets of Glasgow, Sir John's
hand upon my father's arm. One day they came to the school in High
Street, where I learned Latin and other accomplishments, together
with fencing from an excellent master, Sergeant Dowie of the One
Hundredth Foot. They found me with my regiment at drill; for I
had got full thirty of my school-fellows under arms, and spent
all leisure hours in mustering, marching, and drum-beating, and
practising all manner of discipline and evolution which I had been
taught by my grandfather and Sergeant Dowie.
"Those were the days soon after which came Dettingen and Fontenoy
and Charles Edward the Pretender, and the ardour of arms ran high.
Sir John was a follower of the Stuarts, and this was the one point
at which he and my father paused in their good friendship. When
Sir John saw me with my thirty lads marching in fine order, all
fired with the little sport of battle--for to me it was all real,
and our sham fights often saw broken heads and bruised shoulders--he
stamped his cane upon the ground, and said in a big voice, 'Well
done! well done! For that you shall have a hundred pounds next
birthday, and as fine a suit of scarlet as you please, and a sword
from London too.'
"Then he came to me and caught me by both shoulders. 'But alack,
alack! there needs some blood and flesh here, Robert Moray,' said
he. 'You have more heart than muscle.'
"This was true. I had ever been more eager than my strength--thank
God, that day is gone!--and sometimes, after Latin and the drill of
my Lightfoots, as I called them, I could have cried for weakness
and weariness, had I been a girl and not a proud lad. And Sir John
kept his word, liking me better from that day forth, and coming
now and again to see me at the school,--though he was much abroad
in France--giving many a pound to my Lightfoots, who were no worse
soldiers for that. His eye ran us over sharply, and his head nodded,
as we marched past him; and once I heard him say, 'If they had had
but ten years each on their heads, my Prince!'
"About this time my father died--that is, when I was fourteen years
old. Sir John became one of the executors with my mother, and
at my wish, a year afterwards, I was sent to the university, where
at least fifteen of my Lightfoots went also; and there I formed a
new battalion of them, though we were watched at first, and even
held in suspicion, because of the known friendship of Sir John for
me; and he himself had twice been under arrest for his friendship
to the Stuart cause. That he helped Prince Charles was clear: his
estates were mortgaged to the hilt.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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