Gilian The Dreamer | Page 5

the Indies I think that this same brother the General,
parading his command before a battle, came upon John, an ensign
newly to the front with a draft from the sea.
"Who sent you here, brother John?" said he, when the parade was over.

"You would be better at home in the Highlands feeding your mother's
hens."
In one way it might have been better, in another way it was well
enough for John Campbell to be there. He might have had the luck to
see more battles in busier parts of the world, as General Dugald did, or
Colin, who led the Royal Scots at Salamanca, Vittoria, and Waterloo;
but he might have done worse, for he of all those gallants came home at
the end a hale man, with neither sabre-cut nor bullet. To give him his
due he was willing enough to risk them all. It bittered his life at the last,
that behind his back his townspeople should call him "Old Mars," in an
irony he was keen enough to feel the thrust of.
"Captain Mars, Captain Mars, Who never saw wars,"
said Evan MacColl, the bard of the parish, and the name stuck as the
bye-names of that wonderful town have a way of doing.
"Old Mars," Paymaster, sat among the pensioners in the change-house
of the Sergeant More when Gilian came to the door. His neck
overflowed in waves of fat upon a silk stock that might have throttled a
man who had not worn the king's stock in hot lands over sea; his
stockings fitted tightly on as neat a leg as ever a kilt displayed, though
the kilt was not nowadays John Campbell's wear but kerseymore
knee-breeches. He had a figured vest strewn deep with snuff that he
kept loose in a pocket (the regiment's gold mull was his purse), and a
scratch wig of brown sat askew on his bullet head, raking with a
soldier's swagger. He had his long rattan on the table before him, and
now and then he would lift its tasseled head and beat time lightly to the
chorus of Dugald MacNicol's song. Dugald was Major once of the 1st
Royals; he had carried the sword in the Indies, East and West, and in
the bloody Peninsula, and came home with a sabre-slash on the side of
the head, so that he was a little weak-witted. When he would be leaving
his sister's door to go for the meridian dram at the quay-head he would
dart for cover to the Cross, then creep from close to close, and round
the church, and up the Ferry Land, in a dread of lurking enemies; yet no
one jeered at his want, no boy failed to touch his bonnet to him, for he
was the gentleman in the very weakest moment of his disease. He had

but one song in his budget:
"O come and gather round me, lads, and help the chorus through, When
I tell you how we fought the French on the plains of Waterloo."
He sang it in a high quavering voice with curious lapses in the vigour
of his singing and cloudings in the fire of his eyes, so that now and then
the company would have to jolt him awake to give the air more lustily.
Colonel Hall was there (of St John's) and Captain Sandy Campbell of
the Marines, Bob MacGibbon, old Lochgair, the Fiscal with a ruffled
shirt, and Doctor Anderson. The Paymaster's brothers were not there,
for though he was the brother with the money they were field-officers
and they never forgot it.
The chorus was ringing, the glasses and the Paymaster's stick were
rapping on the table, the Sergeant More, with a blue brattie tied tight
across his paunch to lessen its unsoldierly amplitude, went out and in
with the gill-stoups, pausing now and then on the errand to lean against
the door of the room with the empty tray in his hand, drumming on it
with his finger-tips and joining in the officers' owercome.
He turned in the middle of a chorus, for the boy was standing abashed
in the entry, his natural fears at meeting the Paymaster greatly
increased by the sound of revelry.
"Well, little hero," said the Sergeant More, in friendly Gaelic, "are you
seeking any one?"
"I was sent to see the Paymaster, if it's your will," said Gilian, with his
eyes falling below the scrutiny of this swarthy old sergeant.
"The Paymaster!" cried the landlord, shutting the door of the room ere
he said it, and uplifting farmed hands, "God's grace! do not talk of the
Paymaster here! He is Captain Campbell, mind, late of his Majesty's
46th Foot, with a pension of £4 a week, and a great deal of money it is
for the