On the right of the host sat the regimental minister, the Reverend Doctor Jonadab Joram (who by the courtesy of the Scottish service had the rank of Major), a bluff and jovial personage, whose merry eyes twinkled on each side of a bottle-nose, and who could stride and swagger, drink and play with any man—one who winked knowingly at landladies, kissed their daughters, and, if he chose, could have out-bullied a Mohock. He was brimful of jocularity, which had cost him a duel or two in Flanders, and was known to be "up to" a great many things not very consonant to the dignity of his cloth.
On the left of the host sat the Chevalier Laird of Drumquhasel, a tall, stark, and sunburned soldier, on whose breast sparkled several French orders; and near him was the chirurgeon, who was the very counterpart of the divine, a laughing, bullet-headed, merry-faced little man, about sixty years of age. Like his clerical brother, he was in the habit of averring that he had been broiled at Tangier, half-drowned at Bergen-op-zoom, and wholly frozen in the Zuider Zee; blown up in Flanders, and trod down in Alsace, for he always charged in the line-of-battle, and consequently neglected his professional duties; or, like many sons of the healing god, was wont to introduce its topics at unseasonable times; and he was then, in the style of a lecturer of the old College of Physic at the Cowgate Port, employed in tracing the spinal marrow of a hare, for his own amusement and the edification of Jerry Smith, a gay fellow, with a curly perriwig and thick mustache, the same who afterwards entered the English service and became so famous for his gallantries at Halifax in Yorkshire.
There were present many handsome young sparks, whose first fields had been Sedgemoor in the south, or Muirdykes in the north; and their smooth chins and fair faces contrasted well with those war-worn cavaliers, whose service included the Scottish battles of Dunbar and Inverkeithing, the sack of Dundee, and the fight at Kerbister, and whose sparkling stars and crosses attested the good deeds they had performed under Henri d'Avergne, le Mareschal Turenne, and the great Condé of glorious memory, especially old Drumquhasel.
When the Duc d'Enghien charged the Mareschal de l'Hôpital so successfully that the Spanish infantry, till then deemed the finest in the world, were swept before the victorious French, there was not a chevalier of St. Louis who distinguished himself more than old John of Drumquhasel, who with his own hand cut down the famous Count de Fuentes, for which he was thanked by Monsieur of France at Versailles, and had a chaplet placed upon his head by Mademoiselle la Fleur, the reigning favourite of the time.
Douglas was joyous and gay; but Walter was somewhat reserved and abstracted; he foresaw that this great military reunion would interfere with his evening visit to the Napiers, and he was bored by the gaiety of the young, as much as by the prosing of the older soldiers around him.
"Hector Gavin, harkee," said the divine to a tall officer whose looped doublet and black corslet announced him Lieutenant of the Grenadiers, a species of force introduced about ten years before,—"Master Gibbie, our right honourable host informs me that there are some excellent pigeons in the casemates of that same castle of Tangier before you; and if you will so far favour me——"
"With pleasure, Joram. By my faith, I should know something of the mode of attacking the place! It wants the lower cavalier, with its thirty brass culverins, that swept the gorge of that avant-fosse. Ha! I have breached the upper parapet," said Gavin laughing, as he cut down the pastry.
"Ay, Hector, odsbodikins!" replied the divine. "I saw thee push on at the head of our pikemen, like a true Scottish cavalier, when the old Tangier regiment of England were thrown into confusion by the shower of petards. Demme! Hector, the recollection of that hot work makes me thirsty as dry sand."
"Is the sack tankard empty, Doctor?" asked Douglas.
"Drained to the lowest peg, laird."