The other event, of equal--may we not safely say of greater importance to him?--was his marriage! We need not tell the reader how this came about; or unfold all the subtle magic ways by which a woman worthy to be loved loosed the cords that had hitherto tied up the Sergeant's heart; or how she tapped the deep well of his affections into which the purest drops had for years been falling, until it gushed out with a freshness, fulness, and strength, which are, perhaps, oftenest to be found in an old heart, when it is touched by one whom it dares to love, as that old heart of Adam Mercer's must do if it loved at all.
Katie Mitchell was out of her teens when Adam, in a happy moment of his life, met her in the house of her widowed mother, who had been confined to a bed of feebleness and pain for years, and whom she had tended with a patience, cheerfulness, and unwearied goodness which makes many a humble and unknown home a very Eden of beauty and peace. Her father had been a leading member of a very strict Presbyterian body, called the "Old Light", in which he shone with a brightness which no Church on earth could of itself either kindle or extinguish, and which, when it passed out of the earthly dwelling, left a subdued glory behind it which never passed away. "Faither" was always an authority with Katie and her mother, his ways a constant teaching, and his words were to them as echoes from the Rock of Ages.
The marriage took place after the death of Kate's mother, and soon after Adam had been ordained to the eldership.
A boy was born to the worthy couple, and named Charles, after the Sergeant's father.
It was a sight to banish bachelorship from the world, to watch the joy of the Sergeant with Charlie from the day he experienced the new and indescribable feelings of being a father, until the flaxen-haired blue-eyed boy was able to toddle to his waiting arms, and then be mounted on his shoulders, while he stepped round the room to the tune of the old familiar regimental march, performed by him with half-whistle half-trumpet tones, which vainly expressed the roll of the band that crashed harmoniously in memory's ear. Katie "didna let on" her motherly pride and delight at the spectacle, which never became stale or common-place.
Adam had a weakness for pets. Dare we call such tastes a weakness, and not rather a minor part of his religion, which included within its wide embrace a love of domestic animals, in which he saw, in their willing dependence on himself, a reflection of more than they could know, or himself even fully understand? At the time we write a starling was his special friend. It had been caught and tamed for his boy Charlie. Adam had taught the creature with greatest care to speak with precision. Its first and most important lesson, was, "I'm Charlie's bairn". And one can picture the delight with which the child heard this innocent confession, as the bird put his head askance, looked at him with his round full eye, and in clear accents acknowledged his parentage: "I'm Charlie's bairn!" The boy fully appreciated his feathered confidant, and soon began to look upon him as essential to his daily enjoyment. The Sergeant had also taught the starling to repeat the words, "A man's a man for a' that", and to whistle a bar or two of the ditty, "Wha'll be king but Charlie!"
Katie had more than once confessed that she "wasna unco' fond o' this kind o' diversion". She pronounced it to be "neither natural nor canny", and had often remonstrated with the Sergeant for what she called his "idle, foolish, and even profane" painstaking in teaching the bird. But one night, when the Sergeant announced that the education of the starling was complete, she became more vehement than usual on this assumed perversion of the will of Providence.
"Nothing," said the Sergeant, "can be more beautiful than his 'A man's a man for a' that'."
"The mair's the pity, Adam!" said Katie. "It's wrang--clean wrang--I tell ye; and ye'll live tae rue't. What right has he to speak? cock him up wi' his impudence! There's mony a bairn aulder than him canna speak sae weel. It's no' a safe business, I can tell you, Adam."
"Gi' ower, gi' ower, woman," said the Sergeant; "the cratur' has its ain gifts, as we hae oors, and I'm thankfu' for them. It does me mair gude than ye ken whan I tak' the boy on my lap, and see hoo his e'e blinks, and his bit feet gang, and hoo he laughs when he hears the bird say, 'I'm Charlie's bairn'. And whan I'm cuttin', and stitchin', and hammerin', at the window, and dreamin' o' auld langsyne, and fechtin' my battles ower again, and when I think o' that awfu' time that I hae seen wi' brave comrades noo lying in some neuk in Spain; and when I hear the roar o' the big guns, and the splutterin' crackle o' the wee anes, and see the crood o' red coats, and the flashin' o' bagnets, and the awfu' hell--excuse me--o' the fecht, I tell you it's like a sermon to me when the cratur' says 'A man's a man for a' that!'" The Sergeant would say this, standing up, and erect, with one foot forward as if at the first step of the scaling ladder. "Mind ye, Katie, that it's no' every man that's 'a man for a' that'; but mair than ye wad believe are a set o' fushionless, water-gruel, useless cloots, cauld sooans, when it comes to the real bit--the grip atween life and death! O ye wad wunner, woman, hoo mony men when on parade, or when singin' sangs aboot the war, are gran' hands, but wha lie flat as scones on the grass when they see the cauld iron! Gie me the man that does his duty, whether he meets man or deevil--that's the man for me in war or peace; and that's the reason I teached the bird thae words. It's a testimony for auld freends that I focht wi', and that I'll never forget--no, never! Dinna be sair, gudewife, on the puir bird."--"Eh, Katie," he added, one night, when the bird had retired to roost, "just look at the cratur'! Is'na he beautifu'? There he sits on his bawk as roon' as a clew, wi' his bit head under his wing, dreamin' aboot the wuds maybe--or aboot wee Charlie--or aiblins aboot naething. But he is God's ain bird, wonderfu' and fearfully made."