Now I do not mean to vindicate that which my hero has done—quite the reverse. Obedience to the wishes of his parents is a boy’s first duty.
Still, I cannot help thinking that my young hero had a bold heart in his breast.
See him now, with the sun glinting down on his ruddy face, on which is a smile, and on his stalwart figure; he is more like a boy of fifteen than a child under twelve. How firm his tread on the crisp and dazzling snow, how square his shoulders, how springy and lithe his gait and movement! No, I’m not ashamed of my hero. Hear him. He is singing—
“There is many a man of the Cameron clan
That has followed his chief to the field,
And sworn to support him or die by his side,
For a Cameron never can yield.
“The moon has arisen, it shines on that path,
Now trod by the gallant and true—
High, high are their hopes, for their chieftain has said,
That whatever men dare they can do.
I hear the pibroch, sounding, sounding,
Deep o’er the mountains and glens,
While light-springing footsteps are trampling the heath—
’Tis the march of the Cameron men.”
Poor brave, but rather wayward, boy! the gallant ship is even now lying in Lerwick Bay that soon shall bear him far o’er Arctic seas.