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But if they had seen much service since then, never had they seen anything to approach this famous day of Minden, and as the long casualty list was discussed, many were the good Border names mentioned that belonged to men now lying stiff and cold in death, who that morning when the sun rose were hale and well.

“Rob Scott’s gane,” said one.

“Ay, and Tam Elliot,” said a grizzled veteran. “I kenned, and he kenned, he wad never win through this day. He telled me that his deid faither, him that was killed at Prestonpans, had twice appeared tae him. And we a’ ken what that aye means. Some o’ you dragoon lads maybe saw as muckle as ye cared for o’ auld Scotland that day o’ Prestonpans?”

“And if we did, Scottie, we made up for it later,” bawled one of the two dragoon non-commissioned officers.

“Ay? And whan was that, lad? At Falkirk, belike!”

“No, it wasn’t at Falkirk, Scottie. But fine sport we had when we went huntin’ down them rebels about your Border country, after Culloden had settled their business. By G—-! I mind once I starved an old Scotch witch that lived up there among your cursed hills. She was preaching, and psalm-singing, and bragging about how the Lord would provide for the widowed and fatherless, or some cant of that sort. But I soon put her to the test.”

“Ay?” said a stern-faced, youngish man, dressed in the uniform of a private of Sempil’s Regiment, jumping up hurriedly in front of the dragoon, “ay? And what did ye do?”

“Do?” replied the cavalryman; “why, I just sliced the throat of the old witch’s cow, and I cut all her garden stuff and threw it into the burn. I’m thinking it would take a deal o’ prayer to get the better o’ that! But, oh! no doubt the Lord would provide, as she said,” sneered the man.

“And was that in Nithsdale?” asked the young Borderer.

“It was,” said the dragoon.

“An’ ye did that, an’ ye hae nae thocht o’ repentance?”

“Repentance! What’s there to repent? D—- you, I tell you she was a witch, and I gave her no more than a witch deserves,” roared the half-tipsy dragoon.

“Then, by God! I tell you it was my mother that you mishandled that day. Draw! you bloody dog! Draw!” shouted the now thoroughly roused Borderer, snatching from its scabbard the sabre of a dragoon who stood close at hand.

It was no great fight. The cavalryman had doubtless by far the greater skill with the sabre; but drink muddled his brain and hampered his movements, and the whirlwind attack of the younger man gave no rest to his opponent nor opportunity to steady himself. In little more than a minute the dragoon lay gasping out his life.

“Had ye rued what ye did, ye should hae been dealt wi’ only by your Maker,” muttered the Borderer as the dead man’s comrades bore away the body. “Little did I look to see you this day after a’ they years, or to have your bluid on my hands. It was an ill chance that brought us thegither again, and an ill day for me an’ mine that lang syne brought you into our quiet glen.”

But the incident did not end here. The private soldier had slain his superior in rank, and but for the strenuous representations of his company commander and sure friend, a native of his own part of the Border, it had gone hard with Private Maxwell.

The story, as told to his captain, was this. Maxwell, then a half-grown boy, lived with his mother in a lonely cottage in a quiet Dumfriesshire glen. They came of decent folk, but were very poor, sometimes in the winter being even hard put to it to find sufficient food. The father, and all the family but this one boy, were dead; the former had perished on the hill during a great snowstorm, and the sons, long after, had all died, swept off by an outbreak of smallpox. Thus the widow and her one remaining boy were left almost in destitution; but by the exercise of severe economy and by hard work, they managed to cling to their little cottage.