"Bravo!" cried another voice, which seemed to be that of the officer of the watch; "sheer alongside, and let us see what like you are. Stand by with the man ropes—look alive there!"

Grant shook the hard hand of Raoul Senebier, gave him five more gold Napoleons, and, in a moment after, found himself upon the solid oak deck of a spanking British frigate. Now he was all but at home, and his Proteus-like transformations and disguises were at an end. A single paragraph from the "History of the War in the Peninsula" will suffice to close this brief story of Colquhoun Grant's adventures, of which I could with ease have spun three orthodox volumes, octavo.

"When he reached England, he obtained permission to choose a French officer of equal rank with himself to send to France, that no doubt might remain about the propriety of his escape. In the first prison he visited for this purpose, great was his astonishment to find the old fisherman (Raoul Senebier of Paimboeuff) and his real son, who had meanwhile been captured, notwithstanding a protection given to them for their services. But Grant's generosity and benevolence were as remarkable as the qualities of his understanding; he soon obtained their release, and sent them with a sum of money to France. He then returned to the Peninsula, and within four months from the date of his first capture, was again on the Tormes, watching Marmont's army! Other strange incidents of his life could be told," continues General Napier, "were it not more fitting to quit a digression already too wide; yet I was unwilling to pass unnoticed this generous, spirited, and gentle-minded man, who, having served his country nobly and ably in every climate, died not long since, exhausted by the continual hardships he had endured."

But his name is still remembered in the regiment by which he was beloved; and his adventures, his daring, and presence of mind, were long the theme of the old Black Watch at the mess-table, the bivouac, and the guard-room fire.

IX.
THE STORY OF DICK DUFF.

Dick Duff, the lieutenant of our light company in 1812, was one of the happiest and most lively fellows in the British service. He sang and was merry from morning till night, and was occasionally uproarious from night till morning; and not even all the horrors of the retreat from Burgos could repress his flow of spirits. Moreover, he was the terror of innkeepers, and made the lazy hostaleros and keepers of posadas attend to his various commands with a celerity that astonished themselves; for Dick Duff could swear with marvellous fluency in Spanish and five other foreign languages; he had served at Malta, in Egypt, and Holland; and was wont to boast that he had acquired the whole vocabulary of oaths. This was highly necessary, Dick was wont to allege, "lest in a casual war of words with any ragamuffin on whom one might chance to be billeted, an officer and gentleman should have the disgrace of being put down by the sauce piquant of a rascally foreigner."

Dick had joined the service as a full private in the year 1800, having been forced into the ranks by his chief or landlord.

He was the second son of a respectable sheep farmer on the mountains of Mull, where his forefathers had resided for ages. His elder brother, Hamish, when a child, had been swept out to sea (while playing among the fisher-boats on the beach), and was drowned, to the grief and dismay of his parents, to whom a wandering Scottish priest, Father John of Douay, had foretold his birth, and predicted his future usefulness and greatness in the church. His mother, an old Catholic of the house of Keppoch, looked upon this elder child as blessed by Heaven, and in the fulness of her heart she gladly dedicated it to the then oppressed church of her forefathers, in token of which she had unavailingly tied to his neck a valuable amulet.

Their landlord, like many other Scottish feudatories in the year 1800, became desirous of appearing a person of importance in the eyes of the Government; to this end he resolved to raise a kilted regiment among his tenants, and on procuring a letter of service, immediately called upon them for their sons.