A vague shadow flickered across the niche.
The young Highlander was a fine man physically, although there was no
great beauty in his long, thin, frank, freckled face, with its
dare-devil expression and bantering blue eyes. But he was tall, heavily
muscled, clean-limbed, of an admirable symmetry, and the smartest of
smart soldiers. His kilt and plaid swung and fluttered with martial
grace in his free, alert, military gait as he stepped about the
restricted space of the cavity, bestowing his bounty on all three women.
His "bonnet cocked fu' sprash" revealed certain intimations in his
countenance of gentle nurture, no great pretensions truly, but
betokening a higher grade of man than is usually found in the rank and
file of an army. This fact resulted from the peculiar situation of the
Scotch insurgents toward government after the "Forty-Five," and the
consequent breaking up of the resources of many well-to-do middle-class
families as well as the leaders of great clans.
The Highlander hesitated after the first round of distribution, for
there would be no means of revictualing that haversack until the next
issuance of rations, and he was himself a "very valiant trencher-man.
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