Page 162 - A Jacobite Exile

"I know nothing of the Frenchmen, and less of the Jews," the colonel said,
taking the list; "but I ought to know some of the Scotchmen. They will hail

from Dundee and Glasgow, and, it may be, Dumfries."

He ran his eye down the list.

"Aha! Here is one, and we need go no further. Allan Ramsay; we were lads

together at the High School of Glasgow, and were classmates at the
College. His father was a member of the city council, and was one of the

leading traders in the city. Allan was a wild lad, as I was myself, and many
a scrape did we get into together, and had many a skirmish with the watch.
Allan had two or three half brothers, men from ten to twenty years older

than himself, and, a year or two after I came out to Sweden and entered the
army as an ensign, who should I meet in the streets of Gottenburg, but

Allan Ramsay.

"We were delighted to see each other, and he stopped with me nearly a

week. He had, after leaving the College, gone into his father's business, but
when the old man died he could not get on with his half brothers, who were

dour men, and had little patience with Allan's restlessness and love of
pleasure. So, after a final quarrel, they had given him so much money for
his share of the business, and a letter of introduction to a trader in Poland,

who had written to them saying that he wanted a partner with some capital;
and Allan was willing enough to try the life in a strange country, for he was

a shrewd fellow, with all his love of fun.

"Five years afterwards, he came through Gottenburg again. I did not see

him, for my regiment was at Stockholm at the time, but he wrote me a letter
saying that he had been in Scotland to marry and bring back one Janet

Black, the daughter of a mercer, whom I remember well enough as an old
flame of his.

"He reported that he was doing well, and that the Poles were not bad
fellows to live among, though less punctual in their payments than might be

wished. He said he did not suppose that, as a Swedish officer, I should ever
be in Poland, unless Sweden produced another Gustavus Adolphus; but if I