And yet the gossiping Smellie, whose nose had tracked out the history of many people in the parish of Drumsylie, was in this, as in most cases, accurately informed. The Sergeant of whom he spoke had been a poacher some thirty years before, in a district several miles off. The wonder was how Smellie had discovered the fact, or how, if true, it could affect the present character or position of one of the best men in the parish. Yet true it was, and it is as well to confess it, not with the view of excusing it, but only to account for Mercer’s having become a soldier, and to show how one who became "meek as a sheathed sword" in his later years, had once been possessed of a very keen and ardent temperament, whose ruling passion was the love of excitement, in the shape of battle with game and keepers. I accidentally heard the whole story, which, on account of other circumstances in the Sergeant’s later history, interested me more than I fear it may my readers. Mercer did not care for money, nor seek to make a trade of the unlawful pleasure of shooting without a licence. Nor in the district in which he lived was the offence then looked upon in a light so very disreputable as it is now; neither was it pursued by the same disreputable class. The sport itself was what Mercer loved for its own sake, and it had become to him quite a passion. For two or three years he had frequently transgressed, but he was at last caught on the early dawn of a summer’s morning by John Spence, the gamekeeper of Lord Bennock. John had often received reports from the underkeeper and watchers, of some unknown and mysterious poacher who had hitherto eluded every attempt to seize him. Though rather too old for very active service, Spence resolved to concentrate all his experience--for, like many a thoroughbred keeper, he had himself been a poacher in his youth--to discover and secure the transgressor; but how he did so it would take pages to tell. Adam never suspected John of troubling himself about such details as that of watching poachers, and John never suspected that Adam was the poacher. The keeper, we may add, was cousin-german to Mercer’s mother. The capture itself was not difficult; for John, having lain in wait, suddenly confronted Adam, who, scorning the idea of flying, much more of struggling with his old cousin, quietly accosted him with, "Weel, John, ye hae catched me at last." "Adam Mercer!" exclaimed the keeper, with a look of horror. "It canna be you! It’s no’ possible!" "It’s just me, John, and no mistak’," said Adam, quietly throwing himself down on the heather, and twisting a bit about his finger. "For better or waur, I’m in yer power; but had I been a ne’er-do-weel, like Willy Steel, or Tam M’Grath, I’d hae blackened my face, and whammel’d ye ower and pit yer head in a wallee afore ye could cheep as loud as a stane-chucker; but when I saw wha ye war, I gied in."