place at Bowden.
At this time, Archie, who had been long attacked by a liver-complaint, was in
the very last stage of that disease. Yet he prepared himself to accompany the
body of the master whom he had so long and so faithfully waited upon. The
medical persons assured him he could not survive the journey. It signified
nothing, he said, whether he died in England or Scotland; he was resolved to
assist in rendering the last honours to the kind master from whom he had been
inseparable for so many years, even if he should expire in the attempt. The poor
invalid was permitted to attend the Duke's body to Scotland; but when they
reached Fleurs he was totally exhausted, and obliged to keep his bed, in a sort
of stupor which announced speedy dissolution. On the morning of the day fixed
for removing the dead body of the Duke to the place of burial, the private bell
by which he was wont to summon his attendant to his study was rung violently.
This might easily happen in the confusion of such a scene, although the people
of the neighbourhood prefer believing that the bell sounded of its own accord.
Ring, however, it did; and Archie, roused by the well-known summons, rose up in
his bed, and faltered, in broken accents, »Yes, my Lord Duke - yes - I will wait
on your Grace instantly;« and with these words on his lips he is said to have
fallen back and expired.
 
29 The story of the false alarm at Fairport, and the consequences, are taken
from a real incident. Those who witnessed the state of Britain, and of Scotland
in particular, from the period that succeeded the war which commenced in 1803 to
the battle of Trafalgar, must recollect those times with feelings which we can
hardly hope to make the rising generation comprehend. Almost every individual
was enrolled either in a military or civil capacity, for the purpose of
contributing to resist the long-suspended threats of invasion, which were echoed
from every quarter. Beacons were erected along the coast, and all through the
country, to give the signal for every one to repair to the post where his
peculiar duty called him, and men of every description fit to serve held
themselves in readiness on the shortest summons. During this agitating period,
and on the evening of the 2d February 1804, the person who kept watch on the
commanding station of Home Castle, being deceived by some accidental fire in the
county of Northumberland, which he took for the corresponding signal-light in
that county with which his