Edward could not help smiling
at the costume, and at the odd resemblance between the round, smooth,
red-cheeked, staring visage in the portrait, and the gaunt, bearded,
hollow-eyed, swarthy features, which travelling, fatigues of war, and
advanced age, had bestowed on the original. The Baron joined in the
laugh. 'Truly,' he said,'that picture was a woman's fantasy of my good
mother's (a daughter of the Laird of Tulliellum, Captain Waverley; I
indicated the house to you when we were on the top of the Shinnyheuch; it
was burnt by the Dutch auxiliaries brought in by the Government in 1715);
I never sate for my pourtraicture but once since that was painted, and it
was at the special and reiterated request of the Marechal Duke of
Berwick.'
The good old gentleman did not mention what Mr. Rubrick afterwards told
Edward, that the Duke had done him this honour on account of his being
the first to mount the breach of a fort in Savoy during the memorable
campaign of 1709, and his having there defended himself with his
half-pike for nearly ten minutes before any support reached him. To do
the Baron justice, although sufficiently prone to dwell upon, and even to
exaggerate, his family dignity and consequence, he was too much a man of
real courage ever to allude to such personal acts of merit as he had
himself manifested.
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