Chapter 20 - Page 2

steed, whom I have taken the freedom to name 'LOYALTY'S REWARD,' in memory of this celebrated occasion."

"I hope," said the Marquis, "you'll find Loyalty's Reward, since you call him so, practised in all the duties of the field,--but I must just hint to you, that at this time, in Scotland, loyalty is more frequently rewarded with a halter than with a horse."

"Ahem! your Excellency is pleased to be facetious. Loyalty's Reward is as perfect as Gustavus in all his exercises, and of a far finer figure. Marry! his social qualities are less cultivated, in respect he has kept till now inferior company."

"Not meaning his Excellency the General, I hope," said Lord Menteith. "For shame, Sir Dugald!"

"My lord," answered the knight gravely, "I am incapable to mean anything so utterly unbecoming. What I asseverate is, that his Excellency, having the same intercourse with his horse during his exercise, that he hath with his soldiers when training them, may form and break either to every feat of war which he chooses to practise, and accordingly that this noble charger is admirably managed. But as it is the intercourse of private life that formeth the social character, so I do not apprehend that of the single soldier to be much polished by the conversation of the corporal or the sergeant, or that of Loyalty's Reward to have been much dulcified, or ameliorated, by the society of his Excellency's grooms, who bestow more oaths, and kicks, and thumps, than kindness or caresses, upon the animals intrusted to their charge; whereby many a generous quadruped, rendered as it were misanthropic, manifests during the rest of his life a greater desire to kick and bite his master, than to love and to honour him."

"Spoken like an oracle," said Montrose. "Were there an academy for the education of horses to be annexed to the Mareschal-College of Aberdeen, Sir Dugald Dalgetty alone should fill the chair."

"Because, being an ass," said Menteith, aside to the General, "there would be some distant relation between the professor and the students."

"And now, with your Excellency's permission," said the new-made knight, "I am going to pay my last visit to the remains of my old companion in arms."

"Not with the purpose of going through the ceremonial of interment?" said the Marquis, who did not know how far Sir Dugald's enthusiasm might lead him; "consider our brave fellows themselves will have but a hasty burial."

"Your Excellency will pardon me," said Dalgetty; "my purpose is less romantic. I go to divide poor Gustavus's legacy with the fowls of heaven, leaving the flesh to them, and reserving to myself his hide; which, in token of affectionate remembrance, I purpose to form into a cassock and trowsers, after the Tartar