"Swear and vapor from early morn to dewy eve."
"Ah! thot wad na do, thot wad na do," he replied, horrified at such a suggestion, "The meenister in holy kirk wad discipline a puir body, ond the deil wad be to play. I guess I'll gang hame agen ond do as ilka fauk do in th' auld toon."
The Colonel had not been so happy in many a day as with the plain, matter-of-fact Scotchman, in a sense, a type and representative of his own people, and a man who could speak so eloquently of the fadeless glory of old Scotland.
"Hae ye nae gude wife ond bairns?" he enquired.
"Yes, an invalid wife and an only child, sir," said the Colonel, as tears began to gather in his eyes. "My only son, sir, was slain in battle some years ago."
"Ond was it for sic a goovernment as ye hae noo, that ye gaed up your bonnie lad to dee?" he asked quite innocently.
The old man bowed his head in silent grief. He could not answer, and he walked across the room and looked out upon the murky sky—a funereal coverlid, it appeared, laid over the grave of poor Harry.
"Puir lad," uttered Mr. McAden, half aside, as he drew his handkerchief across his face and gazed abstractedly into the blazing fire. It was quite an interval before the Colonel was able to subdue this paroxysm of grief that had quite overcome him, and, availing himself of the earliest opportunity to excuse himself, withdrew from the room. To Mr. McAden the moment was fraught with sincere sorrow. He had unwittingly opened the sluice-way at the veteran's heart, and great tides, crimsoned, as it seemed, with the blood of poor Harry, were pouring into it. He could find no surcease only in the oft-repeated exclamation of reproach.
"Sic an auld fule! Sic an auld fule! But I thocht the mon was o'er happy in the love of his gude wife ond the bairn. Haed I thocht thot the lad had deed in battle, I wad na gaed him sic a sair thrust in his auld heart."
The Colonel retired to his own chamber to repair the injury that had been done to his feelings, and presently he returned with a smiling face, accompanied by his daughter, and he said, introducing her.