“‘Betty,’ said I, ‘I won’t ear a word hagin him: he is the best friend I ever had, but I won’t tell him, if you wish it.’
“‘Well,’ said Betty, and she bust out crying for joy, for she can cry at nothing, amost. ‘Look, Tom, here’s twenty Napoleons, I found them quilted in that officer’s elmet.’ So after all, I got out of that scrape pretty well, didn’t I, Sir?”
“Indeed she did,” said Peter, “but if she had seen as much of wolves as Peter McDonald has she wouldn’t have been much frightened by them. This is the way to scare a whole pack of them;” and stooping down and opening a sack, he took out the bagpipes, and struck up a favourite Highland air. If it was calculated to alarm the animals of the forest, it at all events served now to recall the party, who soon made their appearance from the moose-yard. “Tat,” said Peter, “will make ’em scamper like the tevil. It has saved her life several times.”
“So I should think,” said I. (For of all the awful instruments that ever was heard that is the worst. Pigs in a bag ain’t the smallest part of a circumstance to it, for the way it squeals is a caution to cats.) When the devil was a carpenter, he cut his foot so bad with an adze, he threw it down, and gave up the trade in disgust. And now that Highlanders have given up the trade of barbarism, and become the noblest fellows in Europe, they should follow the devil’s example, and throw away the bagpipes for ever.
“I have never seen M’Clure,” said Jackson, addressing me, “but once since he disputed with the countryman about the plural of moose in the country-market. I met him in the street one day, and says I,
“‘How are you, Rory? Suppose we take a bit of a walk.’
“Well, he held up his ead stiff and straight, and didn’t speak for a minute or two; at last he said:
“‘How do you do, Sargeant Jackson?’
“‘Why, Rory,’ sais I, ‘what hails you to hact that way? What’s the matter with you now, to treat an old comrade in that manner?’
“He stared ard at me in the face hagain, without giving any explanation. At last he said, ‘Sargeant Jackson,’ and then he stopped again. ‘If anybody speers at you where Ensign Roderich M’Clure is to be found, say on the second flat of the officers’ quarters at the North Barracks,’ and he walked on and left me. He had got his commission.”