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ignorant, had no suggestion to make. I ask the question of any highly cultivated modern Staff officer, What should have been done? Frankly, I gave it up, and I believe that, after a long toil with a hatchet, the poor brute's head was cut off, and some of its body was removed for the pot. I draw a veil over the memory of the Idish that afterwards appeared at our table. It certainly had no resemblance to either turtle soup or turtle steaks.

The annual inspections of regiments in old times were very amusing in themselves, and brought the General's A.D.C. in contact with numberless good fellows in every rank of the Service, all of whom were pleasant acquaintances, and some became intimate and dear friends. To think only of the rank-and-file. In after-years, men who had been soldiers turned up in many different places and showed their kindly memories by the most friendly attentions. A gold-laced porter at a restaurant would depart from his dignity and rush to give his personal service. A butler at a country house would by no means allow the officer whom he recognized to be valeted by the first or second footman, but himself attended to the visitor on the chance of a word or two about the time when the old -th lay at Hounslow. The police force was full of old soldiers, who would stop the traffic in a crowded street for the passage of an old friend. I remember, too, being once the victim of an assault at Epsom and grappling with my assailant. I yelled "Police!" and a mounted constable quickly came to my assistance, followed by a couple of plain-clothes men. After I had charged my man at the office in the Grand Stand, and the case was arranged for the next Petty Sessions, my police allies all introduced themselves as men who knew me well while they were serving in various corps, and expressed their delight in

being at hand "when there were a lot of rough customers about who were looking nasty."

The idiosyncrasies of inspecting generals were always of much interest, and, previous to an inspection, even the most swagger colonels often condescended to pump the A.D.C. as to the points to which the General was likely to pay particular attention. As I have told, General Lawrenson looked for equitation, another General would absolutely revel in checking the books and records in the regimental office, a third was an expert in saddlery, while a fourth would not admit that a corps was in proper order unless the barrack rooms were scoured, polished, and whitewashed like dairies Even what were called the "inspection lunches" were often carefully considered, SO that the General might perchance be mollified by the entertainment that was offered to hịm. A story was told of the Duke of Cambridge when he was making a certain tour of inspection. On the table of the first corps that he visited was a dish of homely pork chops, of which H.R.H. partook with approval. The tip was sent on that pork chops were food such as the Commander-in-Chief loved. At his next inspection lunch, therefore, pork chops were duly provided, and again they were appreciated. But when, for the third or fourth time, pork chops appeared as the leading feature of a military menu, it is said that the remark burst forth, "Good God! am I never to see anything but pork chops?"

An inspection of Household Cavalry was always one of the pleasantest duties of the year. Then, as always before and since, the Life Guards and Blues were in tenue, in conduct, in drill, and in all interior economy second to none and equalled by very few of the English cavalry regiments. There was little chance, therefore, of any faultfinding to mar the serenity of temper

on all sides. Generally also some people of light and leading made a point of taking the opportunity to look at a corps in which they had possibly served themselves or had some relations serving so the inspection became a small social function. How magnificent was a charge of these corsleted men-at-arms! The horsemanship and rapid accuracy of movement that they showed were of the highest order, and certainly could not then be equalled by any Continental cavalry. I am re

minded of this particularly, because I attended some French cavalry manœuvres immediately after being present at a Life Guards' inspection. The great feature of the last day of the French manoeuvres was to be a grand charge of Cuirassiers, and it was eagerly awaited. When it came, however, I at least was terribly disappointed. Good as their horses were, the "Gros Frères" never allowed them to be extended beyond a common canter, and, even so, the plain was strewn with men who had lost their saddles. The French Staff were, however, apparently perfectly satisfied with the performance, and one of them said to me with pride, "Maintenant, Monsieur, vous pouvez dire que vous avez vu une charge de Cuirassiers."

I don't know whether it is true that modern generals have not the same prestige as their predecessors in my young days, when they were very aweinspiring personages before whom everybody quailed. A story was current in my old regiment about Lord Cardigan when he was Inspector-General of Cavalry. If any man ever asThe Cornhill Magazine.

serted the dignity and importance of his position, he did, and one unfortunate sergeant, to whom he somewhat brusquely addressed a question, was so dumbfounded that he could hardly articulate. The Colonel tried to shield him, and hoped that his Lordship would excuse the man, as he was rather nervous. "Good God!" replied Cardigan, "who ever heard of a nervous hussar?" Curiously enough, it was often the case that men, who had shown over and over again that they were full of pluck, quite lost their heads when they suddenly found themselves confronted with a live general, particularly if he was a little peremptory. They did not perhaps generally carry their deference for high rank quite so far as the sternly drilled Russians in the Crimean war, who, when one of the Allied Generals blundered into their lines, were so taken aback by the apparition that, instead of securing him as a prisoner, they at once presented arms. It may possibly be well in some ways, if it is the case that the non-commissioned officers and privates of to-day have not the same blind reverence for the heads of the military hierarchy as had their predecessors, but there is no doubt that, on occasions without number in our history, the most marvellous deeds have been accomplished by the command and leading of a general, simply because in the eyes of the rank-and-file he was so tremendous an individual that he must be implicity and unhesitatingly obeyed.

I dare say I have been garrulous enough for the present.

A CRIMINAL CASE.

Murdo, the son of the Catechist, was taking home the cows on a summer evening. His mind was disturbed, and his anger was a good deal roused, because of a dispute on Church questions he had just been having with a man on the road. In particular, he was roused against his two neighbors, Alastair Mackenzie and Neil Maclean, and against Neil's brother, the shoemaker. Not only had these men left the minister and set up a tabernacle of their own, sacred to pure doctrine, but they had such a large following in the parish that they contrived to make things very unpleasant for those who, like Murdo, preferred the ministrations of the old minister to the Sabbath homilies of the shoemaker, for he it was who generally officiated in the building most recently dedicated to dissent.

Now Murdo, being the son of the catechist, -a notable good man,—was one the new party would fain have counted among their number. True, he was a simple man, without sharpness or ability, and he was an oldish man, and on occasions like the New Year he was apt to partake over freely of spirits; yet despite these drawbacks and although his father, the good catechist, had been twenty years in his grave, he had the name, and belonged to a country where to be the son of a good man is to have a certain position. Popular feeling then was against him, because he had not been as zealous for certain ecclesiastical formulas called "Principles" as had been expected of him.

The clear light of the summer evening was melting into dusk as Murdo and the cows left the highroad and made their slow way over a rough newly-made path that, when completed, was to lead past Murdo's house and

down through the township of Brae to the sea. The red cow and the black cow and the little brown calf seemed in the half-light all one vague dark color, akin to the clumps of birch bushes here and there, or to the patches of heather that broke up the cultivated ground. Murdo felt the soil and gravel of the newly-made road difficult to walk on. He did not feel kindly towards the road, perhaps because the men who had the contract for it were those two neighbors of his -Alastair Mackenzie and Neil Maclean-with whom he was so much at variance. He could not leave his house in these days without meeting the two, carting and gravelling, breaking down and building up, and when they met they never failed to have sharp words with one another.

Murdo burned with indignation to think of what the man on the road had been telling him, which was nothing less than that the minister was to be turned off the school board at the next election. The people who were against him in the place were strong enough, the man had said boastingly, to put in one of their own number instead of him. Murdo breathed a Gaelic remark that was not particularly suitable to a church dispute. Had not the rainister served the people on the school board since these people were themselves children at school?

Murdo was so taken up with the thought of all this that he almost overbalanced himself, and narrowly escaped falling into the burn that, through a narrow rocky channel, rippled down to the sea near his own house. He stood still and glared at it. Here was cause for anger indeed! Alastair and Neil had removed the rough bridge over which he and the cows had been wont to go,-they had

done that since he left home in the afternoon. The poor dumb beasts were cropping the grass beside the path and waiting for something to be done. Murdo's thoughts and ejaculations were somewhat violent. It is perhaps best not to record them.

It was true that the little old bridge had to come down sometime, since the new road was to be built over the burn, but what Murdo took as a piece of personal malice was that the bridge had been removed in the evening, without any warning having been given him, and that nothing in the way of a temporary make-shift had been put in its place.

He was now forced to make one himself, and he bethought him at the moment of a large piece of old wood with which Alastair and Neil had made a way across a drain for their wheelbarrow. It was about half the size of a barn door, and would bridge the gap very well. He went back along the road till he found it; then he raised it and dragged it along to the burn, saying to himself that at all events Alastair and Neil would not "have the face" to remove it in the morning without putting some other temporary arrangement in its stead. The device succeeded very well, and Murdo drove the cows across it, put them into the byre, and went in to his supper.

Next day no one came to work at the road. The men who had the contract were both too busy with their harvest work to attend to anything else, and for two or three weeks the son of the catechist saw nothing of them, but drove his cows in peace over the temporary bridge he had made. Then one evening he came home with the thought in his mind that the people he had met that day had behaved strangely to him. He could not tell what it was, but he felt there was something peculiar about them.

When he came in his sister was cry

ing. She was in such grief that he could not find out from her what was the matter; but presently his eye fell upon a strange-looking paper lying upon the meal-chest. He lifted it, and being a poor scholar he took some little time to find out what was in it.

When at last he deciphered it, it made him tremble all over, for it was a summons requiring him to appear on a certain day at the court at Aldarn, on the criminal charge of having stolen a piece of wood from Alastair Mackenzie and Neil Maclean.

His sister began sobbing out loud. "Oh, Murdo, Murdo!" said she. "To think that the name of thief would be attached to one of the children of our father!"

Murdo sat on the meal-chest and stared at the summons. He was slowwitted, and at first he did not grasp the thing very well. Presently, however, the blood mounted to his forehead. He clenched his fist and brought it down full force upon the table in front of him.

"This is the work of the followers of the shoemaker," said he in a loud voice.

case.

He sat on the meal-chest all the evening thinking what was to be done, and the more he thought the more he saw the terrible position he was in. Whatever might be said of the men who brought him into it, he saw at once that there was a weak point in his own He had taken the wood,-it was impossible to deny that. If Alastair and Neil, who had been to school with him fifty years before, who had been his neighbors all their days, and ceilidhed at his fireside,-if they chose to put an unfriendly construction on his simple action, what defence could he make? How would the sheriff look at it? If he-Murdo-were to explain that he required the wood, and that he couldn't very well get home the cows

From a Gaelic word pronounced kailie, meaning a friendly visit.

without it, would the law be satisfied with that? He doubted it.

"It is a poor thing," he said bitterly to his sister, "when there is law among friends."

But the poor woman was inconsolable. Never in her memory, she said, was any man or woman from the parish taken to court on such a charge. Since the days of her great-grandmother, indeed, when the famous murder took place, there had been no real criminal charge against the parish. Young lads were taken to court for rows and assaults at New Year time, or for poaching and such things, but never for breaking one of the commandments. The serving of such a summons in the house of Murdo, the son of the catechist, was as much an affront as it would be on the breakfasttable of a respectable clergyman.

Murdo did not sleep much that night, and next day he put the summons in his pocket and went to see the minister. Now the minister was a man who was fond of a joke, and not only that, but he had been a good deal annoyed on several occasions by the habit in the place of making common property, as it were, of certain things. Often when he or his household were in need of the manse barrow or spade or whitewash brush, it was found that these things were doing duty at the house of a neighbor. It was true that the "lad" or "girl" had usually been informed of their whereabouts, and requested to "send word" when they were needed, and it was true also that they borrowed other things in return; but, at the same time, the thing was inconvenient occasionally, and now when the old gentleman heard Murdo's story he was, though very indignant, not quite so lavish with his sympathy as Murdo had expected.

"It is a serious matter," he said, after they had talked it over. "There is no doubt of that. I am sure you had

no evil intention, but as you say you took the wood, and ‘a criminal charge' He paused and took snuff.

He

"At the same time," he continued, "I wouldn't be too down-hearted over the matter, Murdo. I have a young friend at Aldarn-a lawyer-to whom I shall write at once about you. will do his best for you, and I am sure the sheriff will be made to understand how the thing happened. I will write a character for you myself.

"It was most unfeeling of Alastair and Neil to act in this way," he added, his indignation getting the better of him.

He wrote an excellent character for Murdo, which he said he would enclose in the letter to the lawyer, and with this and such comfort as he could get from the thought of the able defence he was likely to have, the anxious old man was forced to content himself. He went home still very down-hearted.

As the days passed, however, Murdo received a good deal of sympathysome of it from very unexpected quarters. Many of the followers of the shoemaker felt that Alastair and Neil had brought disgrace upon the parish by laying such a charge against one of themselves. They ought to have remembered, it was said, that Murdo was the son of the catechist, and should never have been brought in any disgraceful fashion before the law courts. As for the people who were not followers of the shoemaker, they were of course furious.

One day the minister had a visit from the two plaintiffs in the case. They said they felt they had been hasty, being annoyed about the wood, which they had found useful, and they wished to know whether it was possible to "take back" the case.

The minister told them that being a criminal case it could not be withdrawn, but must go on to the end. He

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