"Who was in command here, Wolfe or Amherst?"
"General Amherst was in command, and got the credit of it, too; but Wolfe did the fighting—so grandfather used to say."
"What was the name of his leddy in the old country?" said Bruce.
"I do not remember," replied the ancient, "but I've heard it. You know he was to be married, when he got back to England. And when the first shot struck him in the wrist, at Quebec, he took out her handkerchief from his breast-pocket, smiled, wrapped it about the place, and went on with the battle as if nothing had happened. But, soon after he got another wound, and yet he wasn't disheartened, but waved his ratan over his head, for none of the officers carried swords there, and kept on, until the third bullet went through and through his breast, when he fell back, and just breathed like, till word was brought that the French were retreating, when he said, then 'I am content,' and so closed his eyes and died."
Here there was a pause. Our entertainer, waving his hand towards our mugs of Glenlivet, by way of invitation, lifted his own to his mouth by the handle, and with a dexterous tilt that showed practice, turned its bottom towards the beams of the hutch.
"Do you remember any farther particulars of the siege of Louisburgh?" I asked.
"Oh, yes," replied the old man, "I remember grandfather telling us how he saw the bodies of fifteen or sixteen deserters hanging over the walls; they were Germans that had been sold to the French, four years before the war, by a Prussian colonel. Some of them got away, and came over to our side. He used to say, the old town looked like a big ship when they came up to it; it had two tiers of guns, one above the other, on the south—that is towards Gabarus bay, where our troops landed. And now I mind me of his telling that when they landed at Gabarus, they had a hard fight with the French and Indians, until Col. Fraser's regiment of Highlanders jumped overboard, and swam to a point on the rocks, and drove the enemy away with their broad-swords."
"That was the 63d Highlanders," said Bruce, with immense gravity.
"Among the Indians killed at Gabarus," continued our host, "they say there was one Micmac chief, who was six feet nine inches high. The French soldiers were very much frightened when the Highland men climbed up on the rocks; they called them English savages."
"That showed," said Bruce, "what a dommed ignorant set they were!"