Erect in his stirrups, with toes pointed upwards and baton depressed, the old cavalier made a profound obeisance, and notwithstanding his great age dashed at full gallop through the crowd, amidst an ill-repressed shout of hatred and execration from amongst it.
"An auld ill-faured persecuting devil!" said Elsie Elshender, shaking her withered hand after him; "a tormentor o' God's worthiest servants, a Cain among the sons o' men--a fearfu' tyrant, and suited to fearfu' times. Gude keep us! look at the doken blade he spat on; there is a hole brunt clean through it."
"His horse's hoofs mak' runnin' water boil," added Syme the Baillie's wife in a low voice.
"Silence, Cummers!" said Juden Stenton; "or you'll hae the steel jougs locked round your jaws the morn, and may be get a het tar-barrelling after for speaking sae freely o' your betters."
Sir Thomas reined up alongside of the three generals, whom for several miles he bored with musty maxims, obsolete tactics, and strange advice, anent the superiority of Sweyn's feathers over the screwed dagger (or bayonet), and furiously condemned the slinging of carbines in budgets in lieu of shoulderbelts, as in the days of Montrose--expatiated on the method of forming square with the grenadiers covering the angles, and making the bringers-up (or third rank) entirely of musqueteers. He particularly impressed upon General Douglas the method of posting musqueteers among the horse and dragoons in alternate regiments--a tactique of that Star of the North, the great Gustavus of Sweden, and used by Prince Rupert at Long Marstonmoor--and after a fierce tirade against Sir James Wemys's leather cannon for field service, and a few words about the Muscovites, this veteran soldier of fortune bade them adieu near the Balm Well of St. Catherine, which lay yet a ruin, just as Cromwell's puritans had left it thirty-eight years before, when 16,000 of them encamped on the Gallaehlawhill. There Dalyel parted with "bluidy Dunbarton, Douglas, and Dundee," never to meet again; for though he saw it not, the hand of death was already stretched over the venerable "persecutor" and exile--war, wounds, and death were the portion of the others.
Long, long remained the fair young Countess watching the glittering columns as they wound over the Burghmuir, and ascended the hills of Braid, and until the faintest tap of the drums died away on the wind, and the helmets of the rearguard flashed a farewell ray in the evening sun, as they disappeared over the distant hills.