For I worshipped my Uncle, Donald McDonell of Scottos, but always known as "Scottos," as is our custom; he was called The Younger, not to belittle him, but because my Grandfather, old Æneas of Scottos, was still alive. He had been in France and Spain and Italy, first as a cadet and afterwards as ensign in Colonel Walter Burke's regiment of foot, one of the regiments of the Irish Brigade serving under the Duke of Berwick, and many a night have I been kept awake with his stories of their engagements at Cremona, Alicant, Barcelona, and other places—how they beat, and sometimes how they were beaten—till I knew the different Dillons and Butlers and McDonells and O'Rourkes, and other gentlemen of the regiment, not only by name, but as though I had met with them face to face. He had no great love for the Church, for he hated the sight of a priest, and was continually railing against my being sent to Rome lest they should make a "Black Petticoat" of me.
"That 'a McDonell must be either a soldier or a priest' may be a very good saying in its way," he went on to my father, for there was no interruption in their talk, "but mark you which comes first! If all our forebears had bred but little shavelings, and no soldiers, where would the McDonell family be now, think you? 'Tis not in reason you should give up your one son for the sake of an old saw, like enough made by some priest himself. If one of mine chooses to take to it, he will not be missed out of the flock; but depend upon it, brother, God never gave you this one to waste in this way. Let me train him until he is ready to go abroad into the service, and I'll answer for it to stand him in better stead than all the tingle-fangle whimseys they'll teach him in Rome!"
But my father only smiled in his quiet way, and said in his low, soft voice, so different from my Uncle's:
"Donald, Donald, you witch the lad! You have my word that when the time comes he shall be free in his choice; but, priest or soldier, he'll be no worse the gentleman for a little of the book-learning you make so light of. Now, say good-bye to your Uncle, lad, and we'll be off."
As we rode homewards, I on the saddle before him, my father talked all the way of what my going to Rome would really mean. He told me of the Scots College there, what it looked like, where his room was—"and there, if they have not whitewashed the wall, Shonaidh, which may well be the case, you'll find written near the head of my bed:
"'Half ower, half ower to Aberdour,
'Tis fifty fathoms deep;
And there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,
With the Scots lords at his feet.'
That I wrote one afternoon at the siesta when my heart was big and I was wearying for home, as you may do, and I thought I heard my mother singing, and wrote down the old words for my comfort. Perhaps you'll find them there still," he added, slowly, as if he were back in the old days rather than talking to me.
"And, Shonaidh," he went on, after a little, "just when your heart fails you is the time to play the soldier as truly as if you had a broadsword in your hand. Homesick you'll be—I'd be sorry for you if you were not—but remember, I went through it all before you, and, though I have done nothing for it, my time in the old Scots College was the best gift my father ever gave me. If God wills it, you will be a priest, but neither I nor yet the Rector will force you. You are going under the care of one of the best of men, a nobleman and one whose slightest word you should be proud to treasure; and, remember, the first duty of a gentleman who would some day command is to learn to obey."
And so on as we rode; he told me much, much more than I had ever known, of all he had done and all he had hoped to do as a boy, but he had given up his own plans that his brother Scottos might go to serve under the Duke of Berwick in Spain; how, though he had borne himself therein as a brave and gallant gentleman, the fighting abroad had brought nothing to those at home, and, after the disappointment of 1715, how he had no longer heart for foreign service, for he was committed to the Royal Cause beyond everything, and so remained at home in spite of danger, hoping for the day when the King would come again.
He warned me that I must not make too much of my Uncle's railings against the Church, for he had seen many things in Spain that were in a measure hard to see, and, whatever were his words, he was a good son of the Church, and in his heart did not believe his own sayings—which made me wonder, I remember, why my father should so punish me for lying—and so on until we reached Crowlin, as our house was known.