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CHAPTER XVIII.

The wars are o'er, and I'm come hame.

BURNS.

IT was on the Sunday after St. Clyde left Bute, that almost all the families of the parish were assembled in the kirk, and Mr. Thornhill had just given out the psalm at the close of the afternoon service, when there was heard by the congregation a thump, thump, but still louder and quicker, thump, thump, upon the pavement that led from the church-yard gate to the kirk; at last, the door was opened, and thump, thump, which an arch school-boy termed "Dot-and-go-one," now turned the eyes of the audience to the main door of the church, and the minister himself looked that way.

It was only Fergus Maclean coming to the kirk before he went to his father's house. He had just landed that morning," a poor but honest soldier," docked of a limb, but furnished with a wooden leg; it was that leg that played thump, thump. His knapsack he still wore, and his bonnet and red coat indicated much service.

But the hero did not offer to sit down; he pushed his back against the wall directly before the pulpit, laying down on the floor at the same time his bonnet, and pulling from his pocket a small Bible," to find the place," for somebody had offered him a psalmbook, but Fergus did not need it. The Bible his father had given him when he went away, had gone through all dangers with him, and had been his companion in the tented field, on the deep, and after the battle's roar. Fergus would read over one of the trium

phant songs of David, or the song of Moses and the people of Israel, after they had made the passage of the RedSea; the conduct of Abram in the battle of the kings; and the unshaken faith of Daniel, Shadrech, Mesech, and Abednego, his father had taught him to follow, as he would that of Paul in the ship on his voyage to Rome.

The poor dominie was precentor, and when the minister had read the psalm, Mr. Maclean could not raise the tune. Indeed, he did not seem to know that the psalm had been read out, for he kept gazing on his son, and yet he would not leave the desk to run and embrace him; it was nearly ten minutes before any one offered to assist Mr. Maclean, for when he tried to sing, he had the book open at the proper place, but his spectacles were so dim he could not see the words he was going to sing. He wiped with his

pocket-handkerchief these dim spectacles; he put them on his nose, he looked at the book, and still he could not see. He rubbed them with the sleeve of his coat and a corner of his cravat, then put them on his nose and looked at the book, still the words were so many spots or daubs to him.

"It's a gude maut that comes a will, Mr. Maclean," said Mr. Gillies, who was one of the elders that sat beside the precentor's desk: "dight your een; sorrow and ill weather comes unsent for:" and Mr. Maclean did so; it was the big drop in either eye that beclouded vision, and put the good man to the trouble of twice wiping his spectacles.

The song of Zion was sung with impatient but pious breasts; and the pastor had scarcely given his flock his orison, when Sandy Glass, Rab Roy, the dominie and his wife, pressed

through the aisle to get up to Fergus, who was by this time surrounded by the people of these pews that were next the door, and the door was shut, and nobody for seven minutes offered to open it. it. When the door was opened, and the people got out into the churchyard, as Fergus was the only one of the young men who had gone for St. Clyde, and survived the hardships of four years' incessant campaigning, and the murderous effects of several grand battles, besides "plenty of skirmishing, and lots of out-post duty," as Macbean termed it, all the parents, and brothers, and sisters, among whom time had made little alteration, assembled around young Maclean in mournful mood, each father asking for his son, and every mother lamenting the "hap o' her ain bairn;" and little Davie Grahame, and his little sister; somebody lifted the pretty little maid from the

VOL. III.

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