Having given two of the soldiers' stories, it may probably be amusing to my readers to hear one from our side of the wall. It was related by one of our officers, a young Scotchman, who was a native of the place, and while I state that I give it to the best of my recollection, I could have wished, as the tale is a true one, that it had fallen into the hands of the late lamented author of Waverly, who would have done greater justice to its merits.
THE OFFICER'S STORY.
On the banks of the river Carron, near the celebrated village of that name, which shows its glowing fields of fiery furnaces, stirred by ten thousand imps of darkness, as if all the devils from the nether world there held perpetual revels, toasting their red hot irons and twisting them into all manner of fantastic shapes—tea-kettles, ten-pounders, and ten-penny nails—I say, that near that village—not in the upper and romantic region of it, where old Norval of yore fished up his basketful of young Norvals—but about a mile below where the river winds through the low country, in a bight of it there stands a stately two-story house, dashed with pale pink and having a tall chimney at each end, sticking up like a pair of asses' ears. The main building is supported by a brace of wings not large enough to fly away with it, but standing in about the same proportions that the elbows of an easy chair do to its back. The hall door is flanked on each side by a pillar of stone as thick as my leg, and over it there is a niche in the wall which in the days of its glory might have had the honour of lodging Neptune or Nicodemus, but is now devoted exclusively to the loves of the sparrows.
Viewed at a little distance the mansion still wears a certain air of imposing gentility—looking like the substantial retreat of one who had well feathered his nest upon the high seas, or as an adventurer in foreign lands. But a nearer approach shews that the day of its glory has long departed, the winds are howling through the glassless casements, the roof is plastered by the pigeons, the pigs and the poultry are galloping at large over the ruins of the garden-wall, luxuriating in its once costly shrubbery, and a turkey is most likely seen at the hall-door, staring the visitor impertinently in the face, and blustering as if he would say, "if you want me you must down with the dust."
Had that same turkey, however, lived some six score years before, in the life-time, or in the death-time of the last of its lairds, he would have found himself compelled to gabble to another tune, for in place of being allowed to insult his guests in his master's hall, he would have been called upon to share his merry-thought for their amusement at the festive board.
That the last laird of Abbots-Haugh had lived like a right good country gentleman all of the olden days, the manner of his death will testify, for though his living history is lost in the depth of time, his death is still alive in the recollections of our existing great grandfathers. He was, to the best of my belief, wifeless and relationless, nevertheless, when the time approached that "the old man he must die," he did as all prudent men do, made his temporal arrangements previous to the settling of that last debt which he owed to nature.
The laird, it appeared, was not haunted by the fears of most men, which forbid the inspection of their last testaments, until the last shovelful of earth has secured their remains from the wrath of disappointed expectants, and from a conscious dread too that the only tears that would otherwise be shed at their obsequies, would be by the undertaker and his assistants with their six big black horses; but the laird, as before said, was altogether another manner of man, and his last request was, that certain persons should consider themselves his executors, that they should open his will the moment the breath was out of his body, and that they should see his last injunctions faithfully executed as they hoped that he should rest calmly in his grave.
The laird quietly gave up the ghost, and his last wish was complied with; when, to the no small astonishment of the executors, the only bequest which his will decreed was, that every man within a given distance of his residence was to be invited to the funeral, and that they were all to be filled blind drunk before the commencement of the procession!
This was certainly one of the most jovial wills that was ever made by a dying man, and it was acted upon to the letter.