'Indeed!'
'Tyne heart, tyne all, as we say at home.'
'In old Scotland, yes—and before the enemy, that is well enough; but anent a woman—go—go—or I shall lose my temper again. Besides, Lewie, there is a cloud on the horizon—the political horizon, I mean—which, though as yet no bigger than a man's hand, may expand into a dark and mighty one of storm and bloodshed. A revolution is at hand in France, and a time is coming when we—the Scots Brigade—will have other work than love-making cut out for us, and we shall have to choose between casting our lot forever with the States-General or with his Majesty George III.; for there is not a tavern and not a caserne in Holland in which the matter is not debated keenly and hotly now.'
Though the steady opposition and hostility of his uncle and patron, on whom all his hopes depended, left the young man depressed in spirit and heavy in heart, and inspired by no small dread of separation from the object of his love, he quitted the General's house, and set forth to visit her.
CHAPTER II.
THE COLONEL-COMMANDANT.
The General refilled his glass and his meerschaum, and remained sunk in thought after the departure of his nephew, and more than once he sighed heavily, knit his brows, and shook his head.
He was not drinking schiedam with water, but good Farintosh whisky, kegs of which were regularly sent to him by a Scottish merchant from the Scotsch Dyk at Rotterdam—Farintosh which was then free from all Excise duty, and remained so till five years after the period of our story.
We have said that General Kinloch was a handsome man and in the flower of manhood; and a fine picture he would have made as he sat there, in his graceful old-fashioned uniform, with heavily-laced lapels and skirts, his hair powdered and queued, with a Khevenhüller hat (not unlike that of Napoleon I.) close by, adorned with a stiff upright feather and Dutch cockade, and his silk sash worn crossways in the old Scottish fashion.
The old Scottish officer who took a turn of service in France was jaunty in air, tone, and bearing, as Scott describes his Baron of Bradwardin to have been; but his countryman who served the States of Holland became, under the influence of his flat, stale and stolid surroundings, rather another style of man—equally brave and gallant in war, but less gallant in the ball-room or the boudoir—often grave, grim, and starched amid the influence of Dutch society and Presbyterianism.