The Montgomery advertiser., 1902-07-01
The ROmanticiSm Of Private
 - McQuhirr.
BY l.. E. CAVALIER.

Copyright, 1902, by Daily Story Pub Co) The first time I met Patrick McQuhirr
 was one evening at sundoWn just before parade. My attention was called to nm
 by his captain ordering him under arrest for being drunk on duty. l rememDered him afterward by the way ne sWore as
 two men led him away to the guardhouse after he had left his officers presence.
 Once after that he walked back and
 forth for two hours doing sentry duty in front of the officers club when l nap
 pened to be sitting upon the veranda .n
 a big rocking chair reading new mag
 azine. I looked over the corner of the
 magazine and sized him up, as they
 say in the army. He was rather an old
 man, having served in the cavalry thirty years before he came to us. It was only because he was too old to re-enlist in the cavlry that he had consented to come into an infantry regiment. His race was hard and knotty and cut with the winds of many bitter winters. But if you looked
 into it long enough you would not call
 1t unkind. The eyes were very restless but they were fine eyes for all that; gray with fecks of brown in them. Although he was serving his thirty-fifth year m | the army, he wore no stripes of any kind except the gold service stripes upon the cuff of his dress coat. He was heavy man and the best fighter in the garrison having at different times nearly | murdered the men who had stood up to | him. A heavy drinker he was always, bur | no one had ever heard him speak evil | of woman. The fact is that he never even looked toward them except from dist ance, and so far as any one knew he neV- CT wasted thought upon the best or the worst of them. This was counted strange in soldier. No one knew much about Private M'Quhirr except that he
 was partly educated and had come from somewhere in Scotland many years be- fore and enlisted in the American army | a few days after he had landed in New | Fhf a | the second lieuten3nt of H Company, of | which NJ Quhirr was a member, what he knew about the man.
 Nothing at all" said Winslow except that he won't stand being hit over the
 head with bucket by his tirst-sergeant. | who is a Swede. The last time 1t nap pened MQuhrr nearly killed him. and l
 sent M'Quhirr to the guard house for l striking his superior officer. But called | the sergeant down beautifully all the | same and told him that if 1t ever nap pened again I'd have the stripes, off him. l Can't say that I blame MQuhtrr for | mailing him once in a while. M Quhirr
 is an old man and not such a bad kind' | either, but he drinks like fish.
 1 That Is absolutely all that the officers | Tn the garrison knew of M Quhirr. The | men knew very little more.i
 l But in the long cold winter months this 1 old soldier was not as dissoIute as It | seemingly appeared to his comrades EV- | cry evening that he was not marked Tor l QuIy he would leave tHt IicTEN SAphp tIie | always gathered around the big, red hot | stove in the company room of the bar
 racks, where the men read the papers and | played cards and told stories. Upstairs he would go to the window beside his | bunk. No one was ever there and | MQuhirr had the great. silent sleeping
 room all to himself. He. would sit on
 the side of his bunk and fill his pipe
 slowly and then light it with huge .puns like an engine starting a heavy train or slippery rails. But when he got it wei lighted he would puff away very, gently
 only little pale blue whiffs showing now
 and then. Without anyone knowing il
 Private MQuhirr went back over grea
 many miles of frozen prairie and tossing
 seas to the braes of his ain bonny Scot
 land The old fellow had a memory. Il ] you could have seen the sweet girl face
 that looked out from leather case tha'
 he sometimes opened here alone you would also know that he had touch of romant
 Icism in his makeup.
 It is hard to say just what things came before the eyes of this battered old sol | dier Perhaps he wandered among th'
 white washed cottages of some highland
 villag&sor looked out upon the Firth iron
 some crag along the rocky shore. Or h,
 may have. been picking his way througf purple woods with gray mist reaching ou
 to. meet the shadows on all sides, Some
 times M'Quhirr relapsed into the Scotcf