OUR discourse from less to more went on at last into particulars, but without coming to any regular issue till we had reached Dumbarton Castle, at the sight of which my fellow-traveller gave a deep sigh, saying, "It was a strange thing for her, a woman, but she could not tell how it was, that the sight of soldiers, and other implements of this deadly traffic of war warmed her heart, even while they made it sorrowful. I have been," said she, "as I was telling you, o'er the sea, by my leevin lane, for nae ither end or purpose but to see the place where the great battle was fought and won. Naebody at hame kens where I have been, nor what took me there; but now I can lay down my head in thankfulness, for the wish of the mother's heart with in me has been satisfied.

"My gudeman has friens in East Lothian, and upon a notion of visiting them between haytime and har'st, I set out frae hame, about three weeks syne, taking my passage in the steamboat at Ardrossan for Glasgow, where I staid with my cousin, Mrs Treddles, the manufacturer's wife, and next day went to Port-Dundas, whence I sailed on the canal in the trackboat to Falkirk, with this bundle in my hand.

Being a lanely widow-woman, I was blate amang strangers in the boat; but there was a drummer-laddie, with a Waterloo crown hinging at his bosom, and I made up to him, or rather I should say, he made up to me, for he was a gleg and birky callan, no to be set down by a look or a word. I was no only a widow-woman, but a bairnless mother, which made mekindly to a rampler weans; for my ain were laddies, stout and stirring, though only ane of them came to manhood. But it was no because I was a forlorn widow that no ither noticed, nor because I was gladdened with the bold and free spirit of the drummer-laddie that I gave him a share, no unasked, its true, of the store in my bundle. I had a far deeper reason: For my only surviving son had many a year before gone off with the soldiers, and I could never hear aught concerning him. He was a braw and brave lad, a sightlier was not to be met with in a Carrick, Coil, or Cunningham; but he

was of a wild roving disposition, and wou'd never settle to the plough. It is his bastard bairn that I am bringing up for the mailing. Many a sore heart he gave me; but there was a winsome way about him, that soon made me forgive and forget his faults. Perhaps in that I was overly lenient; but it was a sin that I hope the Lord, in his mercy, will remember in gentleness; for in the wisdom of his dispensations, he had taken from me all his other gifts the four elder brothers of my gallant and light-hearted prodigal.

But what mother can remember the errors of her fatherless bairn?—I have forgotten a' those of my roving Willy, for he was no man's enemy, but his own. He gaed to the Ayr races in the year fourteen; and forgathering there with some other free-natured lads like himself, they sat lang singing the sangs of Robin Burns, and dipping o'er deep in the barley bree. In coming out to gang to their lodgings, they happened to fall in with some of the ne'erdoweel gentlemen that was at the races, whether it was in a house or the crown of the causeway, I never heard the rights o't; but they fell out and fought, and my unlucky bairn, being at the time kindled with drink, and of a natural spirit that wou'd na brook the weight of the king's hand, far less a blow in the face from Sir Patrick Malice; he struck this poor divor with such a dreadful arm, that he made his head dash against the stanes of the causeway. Every body thought Sir Patrick was killed outright. He lay lang senseless, and the fright caused sobriety to a' present; both sides cried to Willy to flee, for the gentlemen were as convinced of their error as the farming lads. My Willie fled straight to Glasgow, which he reached in the morning. We had credit with our friends the Treddles; there they supplied him with siller, and he went off to London the same day. Pursued by his own conscience, thinking he had committed a murder, and fearing to let any body know where he was, we never had a scrape of a pen from him, till he was on the eve of embarking as a dragoon soldier at Portsmouth for Flanders. Nor would he have written then, but he happened to see

as it were a ghost,-Sir Patrick alive and weel, in the Isle of Wight, where he was for the benefit of mild air, having run through with his health and his fortune.

This was the last and only letter I I had ever from him, for he was slain in the great day of Waterloo; and as one of his comrades wrote to me, died, not leaving a braver heart, or a better friend in the British army.-It was a strange thing; but instead of sorrow, this letter made my heart triumph; and from that day, though the king may boast the victory, and the duke of the fame, there's no a breast in a' the three kingdoms that thinks of Waterloo with more pride than mine. I put on mournings, its true, but they were to me as garments of praise, and I thanked the Lord for the manner in which he had rewarded me for the cares and anxieties of being a mother.

"This was the chief cause of my discoursing with the drummer-laddie, who I saw had been at Waterloo; and from him I learnt it was neither so far off, nor in a pagan lan' that the battle was fought, as I fancied. He said I had only to take the smack at Leith for London, and then the coach there for Dover, and I would be in no time at Brussels, where every body could shew me the road to the field of battle.

"After getting into the coach, at Lock No. 16, for Edinburgh, I thought of what the laddie had said, and I felt it would be a satisfaction to my heart to visit the grave of my brave Willy. As I had come provided with siller to buy some articles on my return at Glasgow, I was in want of nothing for the journey, so instead of going to our cousins in East Lothian, I want directly to Leith, and embarked in a Smack, that was to sail the next morning for London.

We had a pleasant voyage, and the captain, who was a most discreet man, saw me safe in a coach for Dover. I did not tell him where I was going, but on my coming back, when I said where I had been, he thought it for me a wonderful undertaking, I having no guide nor knowledge of the language. But I followed the drummer laddie's direction, for after passing the sea in the packet at Dover, I just point

ed to the folk that came round me, and said Waterloo, which they all understood. A grand English gentleman

came up to me on the shore, as I was standing inquiring my way, and he told me, that I ought to have had a passport; but when I said that I was the mother of a Scotch Grey, going to see my son's grave at Waterloo, he was wonderful affected, and said, that neither money nor interest would be wanting to help me on. I told him, however, that I stood in no need of money; and that it was an old saying, that a woman with a Scotch tongue in her head, was fit to gang over the world. It was surprising the attention he paid me; for being obligated, on account of coming without a pass ticket, to go before a magistrate, he went there with me, and told the magistrate in French all about me, and where I was going, by which he got the magistrate, not only to give me a pass, but likewise he gave me himself a letter to a friend of his own, a high man that was living about the Court at Brussels. Thus did I experience, that it was only necessary for me to say, I was going to Waterloo, in order to be well treated.

By the advice of the English gentleman, I went with some French ladies in a coach, to a canal where we embarked in a schuyt, as they called the trackboat; and, after stopping and changing at various places, and ancient grand towns, which, however, I did not look much at, we came to the city of Brussels, where one of the ladies kept a bookselling shop, who very civilly invited me to stay at her house, and would take nothing for the trouble, saying only, for she could speak no English," Waterloo"-meaning as I thought, that she was paid already by what the bravery of my Willy had helped to do there.

"On the next day, she went with me herself to the house of the English gentleman's friend, who was likewise from London, with his lady seated among a nest of bonny bairns with fair curly heads, that were far more beautiful than clusters of pearls. They read the letter, and treated me as if I was a warld's wonder, saying they would take me in their coach to Waterloo. But I told them I would not put them to that trouble, for my thought was to go alone, but it was a proud thing for me, that gentry in their station of life could be so civil, because I had a son lying at Waterloo. They insisted, however, that I should take a refreshment of wine, and wait

until they could procure a proper person to go with me to the place.

"That day I staid at Brussels, and they sent one of their servant lasses, a French maiden that could speak some English, round the town with me, and she described to me the panic that was in the time of the battle, and how the waggons, horses, and cannon, and wounded soldiers, filled the streets. It was indeed such a thing to hear of, that the like is not to be met with in any book out of the Bible.

"The English family got a man to go with me, who had been a Highland soldier, from Moidiart, in Lochaber. He lost an arm at Waterloo, and afterwards married a Dutchwoman that keeps a tobacconist's shop in the market, forenent the town-house, and was settled with his pension at Brussels. Him and me set out on our feet soon in the morning, and as we were walking along, he told me many particulars, but he said overly mickle anent the Highlanders, as if he would have given to them all the glory of the day, although it is well known the Scotch Greys were in the front and foremost with the victory. Except in this, Corporal Macdonald was a sensible man, and shewed me both far and near where the fray was bloodiest, and where the Duke fought, and Bonaparte began to run away. But the last place he took me to was a field of strong wheat. There," said he, "it was that the Scotch Greys suffered most. Their brave blood has fattened the sod that the corn springs here so greenly."-I looked around with the tear in my e'e, but I could see no hillock to mark where the buried lay, and my heart filled fu', and I sat down on the ground and Macdonald beside me, and he said nothing but continued for a time silent, till I had poured out my sorrow.

"As we were sitting, communing with the dead and gone, he happened to notice a bit of a soldier's coat, and pulling it out of the yird drew with it an old rusty gully knife. "This," said Mac donald, as he lifted it, "has belonged to some brave fellow." But think what I felt when in that same identical knife, I beheld a proof and testimony that my poor Willy could no be far from the spot where we then were. It was a knife that his father bought, and I knew it by the letters of his name, burnt out upon the horn of the heft. I seized upon it in the hands of

the corporal, as if it had been a precious relic of a great price, and I have it now in my bundle. But I would weary you to sleep, were I to recount only the half of what I saw and felt on the field of battle, at Waterloo.

"It was far in the afternoon, indeed gloaming, before we returned to Brussels, and the English family had sent three times to inquire if I had come back. I was fatigued and my heart was heavy, so I did not go to them that night, but took a dish of tea with Mrs Macdonald, the corporal's Dutch wife, who was a remarkable civil woman, but having no knowledge of one another's tongue we could hold but small discourse. At night I went back to the house of Madam Bukenbacht, the bookselling lady that had been so discreet to me, and there found the servant lass that gaed round the town with me, to interpret between us. By her, I heard that the day following, a French millender lady of her acquaintance, was going to London to buy goons, and meaning to take Mechlin in her way, it would be a fine opportunity for me to go with her, which I was glad to hear of, so Madam Vaurien and me came off by break of day in a schuyt on the canal; but, although she could speak but little English, and me no French, I soon saw that she was a pawkie carlin, the true end and intent of her journey being to take over a cargo of laces to the London market. For after dark, in the public house at Mechlin, where we sleeped that night, she persuaded me to sew to my sark tail, and other canny places, mony an ell of fine Flanders' lace; and it was well for her I did so, for when we got to the English coast at Harwich, by which round about gaet she brought me, the custom house officers, like so many ravens, turned Madam Vaurien with all her bags and bundles, as it were inside out, calling her an old stager; in the doing of which they seized upon all she had, but having no jealousy of me, I escaped untouched and brought safe to hand in London, all the lace about me. At first, Madam Vaurien made a dreadful cry, and when the men were handling her, declared she was a ruined woman, but when she got me and herself safe out of the coach, and into her lodgings in London, she said that she did not care for what had been taken, the same being of no value, compaird with what