"I saw ye the day," he said. "It was just after our forces, heaven help them, had passed. I canna bear to look at them. I feel like a man watching a procession of bairns and dying men..."
"Have you been in another war?" asked Rob.
"War," said he, "this is not war. Man Rob, I've served all over Europe and seen the armies of Frederick advance like the thunder of surf on a western isle. I have seen service in Poland, Austria, and the Netherlands. I have fought under Saxe."
He paused and seemed to draw some pleasure from Rob's flushed face and eager eyes.
"Last year I lay before Tournay under a starlit sky while all around me breathed thousands of men who lay before many hours on the field of Fontenoy. That is war, Rob, not skirling up and down the country with a few hundred puir Hielan' bodies."
"But I am enlisting," he said, considerably chilled by such words.
The stranger sniffed over the pot most audibly. The savour was more than a hungry man could tolerate.
"You would make a rare campaigner, Miss Macpherson," he said, "Rob is surely daft to think of losing such a stew for all the thrones of Europe."
"It is only an ordinary stew," she said, with a faint flush on her cheeks.
"It may be for you, Miss Macpherson—I'll no deny it—but as a man not strange to stews I'd call it by another name..." and he smacked his lips and drew in another draught of it with relish.