minutes the guns were silenced, and the Spanish gunners cut to pieces.
War must be learned, my young friend, just the same as the farming of
sheep."

"Pooh!" said I, not to be out-crowed by a foreigner. "If we had thirty
thousand men on the line of the hill yonder, you would come to be very
glad that you had your boats behind you."

"On the line of the hill?" said he, with a flash of his eyes along the
ridge. "Yes, if your man knew his business he would have his left about
your house, his centre on Corriemuir, and his right over near the
doctor's house, with his tirailleurs pushed out thickly in front.
His horse, of course, would try to cut us up as we deployed on the
beach. But once let us form, and we should soon know what to do.
There's the weak point, there at the gap. I would sweep it with my
guns, then roll in my cavalry, push the infantry on in grand columns,
and that wing would find itself up in the air. Eh, Jack, where would
your volunteers be?"

"Close at the heels of your hindmost man," said I; and we both burst out
into the hearty laugh with which such discussions usually ended.

Sometimes when he talked I thought he was joking, and at other times it
was not quite so easy to say. I well remember one evening that summer,
when he was sitting in the kitchen with my father, Jim, and me, after
the women had gone to bed, he began about Scotland and its relation to
England.

"You used to have your own king and your own laws made at Edinburgh,"
said he. "Does it not fill you with rage and despair when you think