Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 10.djvu/371

Rh while they gaped at his long beard and antique habit; requesting him, at the same time (as Dalziel used to express it) to shave and dress like other Christians, to keep the poor bairns out of danger. All this could never prevail on him to part with his beard, but yet in compliance to his majesty, he went once to court in the very height of the fashion: but as soon as the king and those about him had laughed sufficiently at the strange figure he made, he reassumed his usual habit, to the great joy of the boys, who had not discovered him in his fashionable dress.

When the duke of York succeeded to the crown, general Dalziel was resolved still to retain his loyalty, although, at the same time, he often told his friends, that all things were going wrong at court; but death came very seasonably, to rescue him from the difficulties he was likely to be under, between the notions he had of duty to his prince on one side, and true zeal for his religion on the other.

I must now resume a little my discourse upon captain Steele. Some time before the action in which he was killed, general Drummond, who was then newly made commander in chief, sent for me in haste, to attend him in Edinburgh: my way lay through a very strong pass, hard by Airs-moss, and within a mile of Cumlock: as I was going through Cumlock, a friend there told me, that Steele, with a party, waited for me at the pass. I had with me only one dragoon and a drummer: I ordered the latter to gallop on straight to the pass, and when he got thither, to beat a dragoon march, while I with the dragoon should ride along the by-path, on the edge of the moss. When Steele and his men heard the drum, they scoured cross the by-path, into the moss, prehending