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In all the hot months of that summer, when parishes were ravaged with fire and sword, and the heat was an excuse for almost any lapse of virtue, McGilveray had not been drunk once not once. It was almost unnatural. Previous to that, McGilveray's career had been chequered.

McGilveray gave the pass-word, and presently he was on the bank saluting the sentry he had left three hours before. "Malbrouk s'en va t'en guerre!" said the girl again with a gay insolence, and pushed the boat out into the stream. "A minnit, a minnit, me darlin'," said McGilveray. "Keep your promise," came back, softly. "Ah, come back wan minnit!" "A flirt!" said the sentry.

They have the same sort of freckles on their faces as had their ancestor, the bandmaster of Anstruther's regiment, and some of them have his taste for music, yet none of them speak his language or with his brogue, and the name of McGilveray has been gallicised to Magille.

"If you'd tie a bit o' pink ribbon round me neck, I'd die wid pride," said McGilveray, spitting on the ground in defiance at the same time. The big soldier laughed, and told his comrades what the bandmaster had said. One of them grinned, but the other frowned sullenly, and said: "Avez vous tabac?" "Havey you to-ba-co?" said the big soldier instantly interpreting.

"'Sh! get in," she said. "Shtrike me crazy, no!" said McGilveray. "Divil a step will I go. Let me that sowed the storm take the whirlwind." He threw out his chest. "What is it you came here for?" she asked, with meaning. "Yourself an' the mockin' bird in yer voice," he answered. "Then that is enough," she said. "You come for me, I go for you. Get in."

But the one witness to McGilveray's adventure was dead, and that was why no man knew wherefore it was that McGilveray took an oath to drink no more till they captured Quebec. From May to September McGilveray kept to his resolution. But for all that time he never saw "the tip-top lass o' the wide world."

The soldier began climbing, and McGilveray caught the oars and was instantly away towards the raft. The General, looking over the ship's side, understood his daring purpose.

Then, all at once, there was a terrible report, and the organ pipes belched their hellish music upon the sea. Within the circle of light that the explosion made, there was no sign of any ship; but, strangely tall in the red glare, stood McGilveray in his boat. An instant he stood so, then he fell, and presently darkness covered the scene. The furious music of death and war was over.

"He says he'll give each of us three pounds of tobacco, if we let him go," answered the corporal. McGilveray knew by the corporal's voice that he was lying, and he also knew that, somehow, he had made a friend. "Y'are lyin', me darlin', me bloody beauty!" interposed McGilveray.

"Sing a song a-sixpence," said he, "what sort's that for a gintleman an' a corporal, too? Feel in me trousies pocket," said he, "which is fur me frinds for iver." McGilveray had now hopes of getting free, but if he had not taken a fancy to "me baby corporal," as he called the Frenchman, he would have made escape or release impossible, by insulting him and every one of them as quick as winking.