SPANISH JOHN
I
1740
How Angus McDonald of Clanranald and I set out for the Scots College in Rome; how we fell in with Mr. O'Rourke and Manuel the Jew, and with the latter saw strange company in Leghorn; how we were presented to Captain Creach, "of the Regiment Irlandia," at the Inn of Aquapendente, and what befel thereafter.
"Hoot!" snorted my Uncle Scottos, with much contempt, "make a lad like that into a priest! Look at the stuff there is in him for a soldier!"
Without waiting for a reply, he roared: "Here, mogh Radhan dubh! (my little black darling), shew your father how you can say your Pater-noster with a single-stick!" At which he caught up a stout rod for himself, and, throwing me a lighter one, we saluted, and at it we went hammer and tongs.
I suppose my Uncle was a bit discomposed with his argument, for he was one ill to bear contradiction, even in thought, and so forgot I was but a lad, for he pushed me hard, making me fairly wince under his shrewd cuts, and ruffling me with his half-angry shouts of "Mind your guard!" each time he got in at me, until before long the punishment was so severe I was out of breath, my wrist half broken, and I was forced to cry "Pax!" Indeed, I was so ruffled I made but a poor shewing, and my father laughed heartily at my discomfiture.
"Well, well, Donald," he said, in reply to my Uncle's argument, "I'll at least promise you his schooling will not be any harder than that you would put him at."
"Perhaps not," answered my Uncle, still in some little heat, "but mine is at least the schooling of a gentleman! However, thank God, they cannot take that out of him in Rome, whatever else they may stuff into him. Man! man!" he broke out again, after a moment's pause, "but you're wasting the making of a pretty soldier!"
And he looked so gallant as he stood there before the big fireplace, full of scorn for the ignoble fate he dreaded might be in store for me, that my heart swelled with a great pity for myself, and for my father too, who should be so bent on sending me to Rome, so far away from my Uncle, who knew so many pretty turns with the sword I might learn from no other, and so many songs I might never sing now.