He smiled with so ghastly an expression that the Duke of Dorset grew pale with anger and compassion. He had gleaned from White the story of his life, and discovered in a moment that the countess was the Lucy Fleming of his early love; and that the count, on discovering the wounded and long-missing major to be in Paris in 1761, to preclude all chance of the lovers ever meeting again, had consigned him to the Bastille, there to be detained for life, as it was termed "IN SECRET."
"Monseigneur," said he, sternly, "I see a clue to this dark story; and believe me, that the king, whom I have the honour to represent, will take sure vengeance for this act of more than Italian jealousy, and for an atrocity which cannot be surpassed in the annals of yonder accursed edifice, which the mob of yesterday have happily hurled to the earth."
With these words he retired, taking with him Adam White, who seemed reduced to mere childhood, for recollection and animation came upon him only by gleams and at unexpected times. As they withdrew, the countess turned away in horror from her husband, and fainted in the arms of her terrified daughters.
The inquiry threatened by our ambassador was never made. Paris was then convulsed, and France was trembling on the brink of anarchy, even as the weak Louis trembled on his crumbling throne. The exertions of his Grace of Dorset to unravel more of the mystery, and the fears of the Comte de Montmorin, were alike futile, for next morning the poor major was found dead in his bed. He had expired in the night. The sudden revulsion of feeling produced by a release, after so many years of blank captivity, had proved too much for his weak frame and shattered constitution. He was buried in the church of St. Germain de Prez; and when Oswald's sans-culottes lifted the dead man from the bed, to lay him in the humble shell provided by the curé of the parish, there dropped from his breast a locket It contained a miniature and a withered tress of black hair—the last mementoes left to him of all that he had loved in the pleasant days of youth and hope, and prized beyond even blessed hope itself, in the solitude and horror of the long years that had followed Ticonderoga. The ruffians who had desecrated the regal sepulchres of St. Denis respected the heritage of the dead soldier, so that the locket was buried with him; and there, in the ancient church of St. Germain, Oswald, the political enthusiast, interred his old and long-lost comrade with all the honours of war.
The stone which was erected in the church, and of which I have given the brief inscription, is said, traditionally, to have been the gift of a lady—who, need scarcely be mentioned. How long this lady and the count her husband survived the disclosures consequent to the destruction of the Bastille, I have no means of knowing; but French history has recorded the fate of Jack Oswald.
His two sons left Edinburgh and joined him at Paris, where, to illustrate the complete system of equality and fraternity, he made them both drummers in his regiment, among the soldiers of which his severe discipline soon rendered him unpopular; and on his attempting to substitute pikes for muskets, the whole battalion refused to obey, and then officers and men broke out into open mutiny.
"Colonel Oswald's corps," continues the editor of the "Scottish Biographical Dictionary," "was one of the first employed against the royalists in La Vendée, where he was killed in battle. It is said that his men took advantage of the occasion to rid themselves of their obnoxious commander, and to despatch also his two sons, and an English gentleman who was serving in his regiment."
And thus ends another legend of the Black Watch.