Page:Penelope's Progress.djvu/105

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Penelope's Progress
91

comes to move. It is said that a new officer once gave the command, "Church of Scotland, right about face, quick march! Fancy releegions, stay where ye are!"

Just as we were being told this story by an attendant squire, there was a burst of scarlet and a blare of music, and down Castle Hill and the Lawnmarket into Parliament Square marched hundreds of redcoats, the Highland pipers (otherwise the Olympian gods) swinging in front, leaving the American female heart prostrate beneath their victorious tread. The strains of music that in the distance sounded so martial and triumphant we recognized in a moment as "Abide with me," and never did the fine old tune seem more majestic than when it marked a measure for, the steady tramp, tramp, tramp, of those soldierly feet. As "The March of the Cameron Men," piped from the green steeps of Castle Hill, had aroused in us thoughts of splendid victories on the battlefield, so did this simple hymn awake the spirit of the church militant; a no less stern, but more spiritual soldiership, in which "the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace."

As I fell asleep on that first Sunday night in Edinburgh, after the somewhat unusual experience of three church services in a single day, three separate notes of memory floated in and out of the fabric of my dreams: the sound of the soldiers'