Page 122 - A Jacobite Exile

"I was well nigh my wits' end as to what to do for a living, and had just
spent my last shilling, when I met an English captain, who told me that

across at Gottenburg there were a good many Irish and Scotchmen who
had, like myself, been in trouble at home. He gave me a passage across, and

took me to the house of a man he knew. Of course, it was no use my trying
to doctor people, when they could not tell me what was the matter with
them, and I worked at one thing and another, doing anything I could turn

my hands to, for four or five months. That is how I got to pick up Swedish.
Then some people told me that Russia was a place where a doctor might get

on, for that they had got no doctors for their army who knew anything of
surgery, and the czar was always ready to take on foreigners who could
teach them anything. I had got my diploma with me, and some of my

friends came forward and subscribed enough to rig me out in clothes and
pay my passage. What was better, one of them happened to have made the

acquaintance of Le Ford, who was, as you may have heard, the czar's most
intimate friend.

"I wished myself back a hundred times before I reached Moscow, but when
I did, everything was easy for me. Le Ford introduced me to the czar, and I

was appointed surgeon of a newly-raised regiment, of which Le Ford was
colonel. That was eight years ago, and I am now a sort of surgeon general
of a division, and am at the head of the hospitals about here. Till the war

began I had not, for five years, done any military work, but had been at the
head of a college the czar has established for training surgeons for the

army. I was only sent down here after that business at Narva.

"So, you see, I have fallen on my feet. The czar's is a good service, and we

employ a score or two of Scotchmen, most of them in good posts. He took
to them because a Scotchman, General Gordon, and other foreign officers,

rescued him from his sister Sophia, who intended to assassinate him, and
established him firmly on the throne of his father.

"It is a pity you are not on this side. Perhaps it isn't too late to change, eh?"

Charlie laughed.