John Smith was inconsolable for the loss of Morag. For some time he was more like a walking clod than a man. Even the kind attempts of his master and mistress to rouse him were unavailing. When at length he was able to go about his usual duties on the farm, to do which his honest regard for his employer’s interest stimulated him, he suffered so much mental agony from the painful recollections which every object around him suggested to his mind, that he felt he could no longer go rationally about his master’s affairs. Being at last convinced that he was in danger of falling into utter and hopeless despair, he came to the resolution of enlisting in the army, and having once formed this determination, he went through a very touching scene of parting with the kind Pensassenach and her husband, and shouldering his small kitt, he went and joined the gallant Forty-Second, then the Black Watch. He served with distinguished approbation in all the actions in which that brave corps was in his time engaged. He was made a serjeant at Bunker’s Hill; and after time had in some degree assuaged his affliction, he married a very active, intelligent, and economical woman, with whose aid he undertook to keep the regimental mess. John could neither read nor write, and he always spoke English imperfectly. But his clever wife enabled him to carry on the business for so many years, with so much credit to himself, and so successfully, that he ultimately retired with her at an advanced period of life, with the enjoyment of his pension, and such an accumulation of fortune as made him perfectly comfortable.
I knew John well. He was a warm-hearted man, and always remarkable for his uprightness and integrity, and especially for a strict determination to keep his word, whatever it might cost him so to do. As an instance of this, I may mention, that having on one occasion had a serious illness, in which he was given up by the doctor, he made a will, in which he left many small legacies to poor people. John recovered, but he thought it his duty to keep his word, and he paid the legacies. To me, and to my brother, who lived in one of his houses while we were at the school of Nairn, he acted the part of a kind friend and guardian. He was perhaps too kind and indulgent to us, indeed. No one dared to him to impute a fault to us, even when we were guilty. I remember that he had a large garden, well stocked with fruit trees, and gooseberry bushes. Often has the good old man sent me into it, to steal fruit for myself and brother, whilst he watched at the door, lest his wife might surprise and detect me. Many is the time that I have listened to him, with boyish wonder, as, with lightning in his eye, he fought over again his battles of Culloden, Bunker’s Hill, and Ticonderoga.
As John had no children, his intended heir was a nephew. His greatest desire in life was to marry him to a grand-daughter of his old departed benefactress, the Pensassenach. He offered to settle his whole fortune, which was not small, on the young lady, if she would only marry his nephew; and John’s wife did all in her power to back up the proposal. But although the nephew was a good, well-doing lad, he was not the man to take the young woman’s fancy; and so the match never took place.
CRUELTY OF THE DUKE OF CUMBERLAND AFTER THE BATTLE OF CULLODEN.
Clifford.—Is it possible that the Duke of Cumberland could have authorized such atrocities, as the hanging up innocent servants in the way you describe, Mr. Macpherson?
Dominie.—I am afraid that what I have asserted is but too true, sir.
Author.—I am sorry to say, that I am in possession of a document which but too satisfactorily proves, that he did give most cruel orders. It is an orderly book of the thirty-seventh regiment, which was called Cholmondeley’s Regiment; and in that I find, in the general orders, dated “The Camp at Enwerness, Aprill 17th, 1746,” the following entry:—“A captain and fifty foot to march directly, and vizt all the cothidges in the naberhod of the field of batall, and to search for rebbels, the officers and men will take notiss, that the pubilick orders of the rabells yesterday was to give us no quarters.” This, I think, was a pretty broad hint to the men and the officer commanding them, what it was that the Duke expected of them.
Grant.—Very distinct, indeed.
Author.—Not to be mistaken, I think.