“Tell me first,” answered the soldier, “for whom are you?—­the strongest party should speak first.”

“We are for God and King Charles,” answered the first speaker.—­“Now tell your faction, you know ours.”

“I am for God and my standard,” answered the single horseman.

“And for which standard?” replied the chief of the other party—­“Cavalier or Roundhead, King or Convention?”

“By my troth, sir,” answered the soldier, “I would be loath to reply to you with an untruth, as a thing unbecoming a cavalier of fortune and a soldier.  But to answer your query with beseeming veracity, it is necessary I should myself have resolved to whilk of the present divisions of the kingdom I shall ultimately adhere, being a matter whereon my mind is not as yet preceesely ascertained.”

“I should have thought,” answered the gentleman, “that, when loyalty and religion are at stake, no gentleman or man of honour could be long in choosing his party.”

“Truly, sir,” replied the trooper, “if ye speak this in the way of vituperation, as meaning to impugn my honour or genteelity, I would blithely put the same to issue, venturing in that quarrel with my single person against you three.  But if you speak it in the way of logical ratiocination, whilk I have studied in my youth at the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, I am ready to prove to ye LOGICE, that my resolution to defer, for a certain season, the taking upon me either of these quarrels, not only becometh me as a gentleman and a man of honour, but also as a person of sense and prudence, one imbued with humane letters in his early youth, and who, from thenceforward, has followed the wars under the banner of the invincible Gustavus, the Lion of the North, and under many other heroic leaders, both Lutheran and Calvinist, Papist and Arminian.”

After exchanging a word or two with his domestics, the younger gentleman replied, “I should be glad, sir, to have some conversation with you upon so interesting a question, and should be proud if I can determine you in favour of the cause I have myself espoused.  I ride this evening to a friend’s house not three miles distant, whither, if you choose to accompany me, you shall have good quarters for the night, and free permission to take your own road in the morning, if you then feel no inclination to join with us.”

“Whose word am I to take for this?” answered the cautious soldier—­“A man must know his guarantee, or he may fall into an ambuscade.”

“I am called,” answered the younger stranger, “the Earl of Menteith, and, I trust, you will receive my honour as a sufficient security.”

“A worthy nobleman,” answered the soldier, “whose parole is not to be doubted.”  With one motion he replaced his musketoon at his back, and with another made his military salute to the young nobleman, and continuing to talk as he rode forward to join him—­“And, I trust,” said he, “my own assurance, that I will be Bon CAMARADO to your lordship in peace or in peril, during the time we shall abide together, will not be altogether vilipended in these doubtful times, when, as they say, a man’s head is safer in a steel-cap than in a marble palace.”