to Sempil’s Regiment, amongst whom it chanced that a group of men, more quiet and well-behaved than the general run, sat around a fire, cleaning their arms or cooking rations, and discussing the battle and the heavy losses of the regiment.  It was not difficult to guess that the majority of the group were men bred among the great, sweeping, round-backed hills of the Scottish Border—­from “up the watters” in Selkirk or Peeblesshires, some of them, others again perhaps from Liddesdale, Eskdale, or Annandale, or one of the many dales famous in Border history; you could hear it in their tongue.  But also there was in those quiet, strongly-built men something that spoke of the old, dour, unconquerable, fighting Border stock that for so many centuries lived at feud with English neighbours.  Many of them had joined the regiment four years earlier, when it had passed through the Border on its march from Fort William to Buckinghamshire.

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.