I was thanking her for her offices, but she checked me. “You are well off,” she said, “to be away from here while these foolish manouvrings are on foot. Poor me! I must bide and see them plan the breaking down of my native country. It's a mercy I know in what a fiasco it will end, this planning. Hearken! Do you hear the bugles? That's Soubise going back to the caserne. He and his little men are going back to eat another dinner destined to assist in the destruction of an island where you and I should be this day if we were wiser than we are. Fancy them destroying Britain, Mr. Greig!--Britain, where honest John Walkinshaw is, that never said an ill word in his life, nor owed any man a penny: where the folks are guid and true, and fear God and want nothing but to be left to their crofts and herds. If it was England--if it was the palace of Saint James--no, but it's Scotland, too, and the men you saw marching up and down to-day are to be marching over the moor o' Mearns when the heather's red. Can you think of it?” She stamped her foot. “Where the wee thack hooses are at the foot o' the braes, and the bairns playing under the rowan trees; where the peat is smelling, and the burns are singing in the glens, and the kirk-bells are ringing. Poor Mr. Greig! Are ye no' wae for Scotland? Do ye think Providence will let a man like Thomond ye saw to-day cursing on horseback--do ye think Providence will let him lead a French army among the roads you and I ken so well, affronting the people we ken too, who may be a thought dull in the matter of repartee, but are for ever decent, who may be hard-visaged, but are so brave?” She laughed, herself, half bitterly, half contemptuously, at the picture she drew. Outside, in the sunny air of the afternoon, the bugles of Soubise filled the street with brazen cries, and nearer came the roar of pounding drums. I thought I heard them menacing the sleep of evening valleys far away, shattering the calm of the hearth of Hazel Den. “The cause for which--for which so many are exile here,” I said, looking on this Jacobite so strangely inconsistent, “has no reason to regret that France should plan an attack on Georgius Rex.” She shook her head impatiently. “The cause has nothing to do with it, Mr. Greig,” said she. “The cause will suffer from this madness more than ever it did, but in any case 'tis the most miserable of lost causes.” “Prince Charlie-” “Once it was the cause with me, now I would sooner have it Scotland,” she went on, heedless of my interruption. “Scotland! Scotland! Oh, how the name of her is like a dirge to me, and my heart is sore for her! Where is your heart, Mr. Greig, that it does not feel alarm at the prospect of these _crapauds_ making a single night's sleep uneasy for the folks you know? Where is your heart, I'm asking?” “I wish I knew,” said I impulsively, staring at her, completely bewitched by her manner so variable and intense, and the straying tendrils of her hair.