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and was born with his nose in the trough right enough. He will follow our father into the law, I have no doubt, and while I do not envy him that sedentary life, I would wish that mine were not so uncertain. The family is trying to decide what to do with me. Perhaps my solemnity comes from the uncertainty of my future, for I knew my childhood to be nearly over, exchanged for I knew not what.
    I was called Patrick after my other grandfather Lord Elibank, but that is all I am likely to get, for a second son is only a spare, not an heir, and unless Jamie breaks his thick neck, I will have to shift for myself in this life. I tell Jamie that it’s a blessing to have the freedom of the world from which to choose one’s path, but he only smiles as if he knows that choosing is the greatest burden of all.
    I had just turned fourteen in June, and the shape of my life had begun to occupy my thoughts for I was no longer a child, and the future seemed to be coming upon me in a great rush—unlike Jamie’s fate, which would sit square in the road years ahead of him like a great braw hound, only waiting for him to reach it.
    â€œAt least no one has to die to give me a foothold,” I told him.
    My brother did not trouble to reply because as soon as I said it, I knew it to be a lie. Uncle James Murray, who assumed command in Canada after General Wolfe died at Quebec, had surely reached his new eminence through someone else’s demise, and it was he who proposed that I should follow him into the army. Uncle James had seen me playing with my wee tin soldiers a year or two ago, and he told my mother that they ought to think of buying me a commission in a good regiment. The idea pleased me, not least because I was a frail child, the very antipode of a great warrior. All the more reason to prove myself.
    When I was twelve, and Uncle Jamie was lieutenant colonel of the 15th Foot, he prevailed upon my father to buy me a commission in the regiment so that he might shepherd me into his profession. It came to naught, though, for I was such a wee, frail lad at twelve that the regiment, looking ahead to war in Canada, had no choice but to throw me back, and to refund to my father the purchase price of my ensigncy, for I’d have been no use to them on a battlefield.
    For now, there was little to do besides my lessons and to go for country walks with my sisters. I fancied myself protecting them on our rambles, though I was no bigger or stronger than they.
    *   *   *
    â€œPattie, how shilpit you look,” said Betty, peering into my face. “Are you taken ill?”
    I shook my head. “Mortal thoughts, Betty,” I said, trying to make light of it. “Consider our surroundings.”
    My sister Betty and I had gone walking in the kirkyard, threading our way among the tombstones, stopping now and again to examine the mossy carving or to read a weathered inscription.
    â€œYou’re not afraid of a graveyard, are you?” The voice was all tender concern, but Betty’s gray eyes mocked me from beneath her prim blue bonnet.
    â€œI am not. But I’m not a child to go larking about among the dead, either. Show a bit of respect, Betty.”
    She tossed her head. “Perhaps Father should train you up for a parson instead of a soldier,” she said. “I wish I had come with Jean instead of ye, dour old man of fourteen!”
    Jean is our youngest sister, and normally Betty thinks herself too grand and grown to consort with a bairn like Jean. She only wished for her now to taunt me, but my black mood and a dearth of other society in the neighborhood had combined to make the pair of them allies if not friends in the few days we had been in Pitfour, so that any excursion planned for an afternoon would necessarily have included wee Jean as well, but today she was taken ill with a summer cold, and Mother deemed it best not to let her go out walking in the damp mist of a drizzly day. Jean