The Royal Regiment, and Other Novelettes

by James Grant

THE ROYAL REGIMENT.

CHAPTER I.
THE RUTHVENS OF ARDGOWRIE.

"Thank Heaven, then I am not too late!" exclaimed Roland Ruthven, as he sprung on the horse that awaited him at the door of the hotel where he had arrived but an hour before; "there is no message for me specially?"

"None, sir," said the mounted groom, touching his hat, and shortening his gathered reins.

"My father——"

"Is living still, Master Roland; but that is all, I fear," replied the old man, with a sigh.

"Come on then, Buckle, old fellow; I think the grey nag knows my voice, though I have not been on his back for four years."

And spurring his horse, "Master Roland," as the grey-haired groom still called him, though he was nearer thirty than twenty years of age, and had held Her Majesty's commission for ten of them, departed at a rasping pace that soon left the stately streets, the spires and shipping of Aberdeen far behind them.

The royal residence at Balmoral had barely as yet been thought of, and railways had not then penetrated into the valley of the Dee; thus, all anxious as Roland Ruthven was to learn details of the perilous illness of the fine old soldier his father—the only kinsman he had in the world—at whose summons he had crossed two thousand miles and more of sea, he could only trust now to the speed of his horse, and without further questioning old Bob Buckle the groom, rode at a hard and furious gallop along the old familiar ways that led towards his home among the mountains, behind which the bright sun of a glorious evening—one of the last in June—was sinking.

Closely rode the old groom behind him, marvelling to find that the little golden-haired boy, whom he had first trained to ride a shaggy Shetlander, had now become a dark-whiskered, tall, and handsome man, well set up by infantry drill, and with all that air and bearing which our officers, beyond those of all other European armies, alone acquire, developed in chest and muscle by every manly sport; and he could recall, but with a sigh, how like "Master Roland" was now, to what the old dying Laird his father had been at the same age, when his regiment, the Royal Scots, was adding to its honours in the Peninsula—more years ago than he cared to reckon now.

And vividly in fancy too, did Roland Ruthven see before him the figure and face of that handsome old man, ere the latter became lined with care and thoughts and even his voice seemed to come distinctly to his ear, as the familiar objects of the well-remembered scenery came to view in quick succession, and at last Ardgowrie, the home of his family, rose before him in the distance, its strong walls shining redly in the setting sun.

Situated among luxuriant woods, in all their summer greenery, Ardgowrie presents the elements common to most of the northern mansions of the same age and kind—a multitude of crow-stepped gables encrusted with coats of arms, conical turrets, and angular dormer windows, giving a general effect extremely rich and picturesque, as their outlines cut the deep blue of the sky.

Notwithstanding its age, Ardgowrie is unconnected with the usual memories of crime and violence which form the general history of an old Scottish feudal fortalice, and yet it stands in the glorious valley of the Dee, between the central highlands and the fruitful lowlands, where in former ages it has been said "that the inhabitants of the two districts, thus joined by a common highway, were as unlike each other in language, manners and character as the French and the Germans, or the Arabs and the Caffres."

"At last!" exclaimed Roland, with a sigh of satisfaction, as he spurred his horse down a long and rather gloomy avenue of genuine old Scottish firs, dignified and magnificent trees, with massive trunks of dusky red, and foliage of bronze-like hue. "Ardgowrie at last!" he added, as he reined up at the stately entrance of his home, for to this moment had he looked forward with intense anxiety during the long voyage from America, while his affectionate heart had beat responsive to every throb of the mighty engines of the great Atlantic steamer.

Home! How much does that word contain to the exile or the wanderer! "What a feeling does that simple word convey to his ears, who knows really the blessings of a home," says an Irish writer, who found his grave in a far and foreign land; "that shelter from the world, its jealousies and its envies, its turmoils and disappointments, where like some land-locked bay the still, calm waters sleep in silence, while the storm and hurricanes are roaring without."

The sound of hoofs in the avenue brought a number of domestics to welcome him home in the kindly old Scottish way, and he had to shake hands with all, especially with Gavin Runlet, the white-haired butler, Elspat Gorm, the old Highland housekeeper, who had donned her best black silk, with the whitest of "mutches," in honour of the occasion: and then, too, came, though last, certainly not the least in his own estimation, with eyes keen as those of an eagle, and massive red beard, a thick-set sturdy figure, and bare limbs brown and hairy as those of a mountain deer, the family piper, Aulay Macaulay, whose boast it was that he came of the Macaulays of Ardencaple, and was a worthier scion of the clan than the historian of the same name.

Aulay had his pipes under his left arm, but no note of triumph or salute could come from them, when the Laird was in his dire extremity, and a great hush seemed over all the household. He had been a piper of the Royal Scots during the campaign in Burmah, and, like Bob Buckle and several others of the grand old regiment, had found a home with their loved Colonel at Ardgowrie.

"Well, Elspat, old friend," said Roland, as he leaped from his foam-flecked horse and tossed the reins to Bob Buckle, "how is my father to-night?"

"The doctor will tell you better than I," replied the old domestic, quietly, and with bated voice; "he has, thank Heaven, fallen asleep after a restless day, and, as sleep is like life to him——"

"Let him not be disturbed. I shall see him when he wakens," said Roland, as the servants fell back at his approach, and the butler and housekeeper led the way to the dining-room, where a repast awaited him, and at which they attended upon him in all the fussiness of affection and reverence as the future head of the house.

"Ewhow! but I am glad to see you here again, Master Roland," exclaimed Elspat, with whom we need not trouble the reader much. "Ewhow!" she continued, stroking his thick dark brown hair, as she had been wont to do in his boyhood, "we have had an eerie time o't wi' the Laird in his illness, and last night I thought the worst was close at hand."

"Why, Elspat? why?" asked Roland, pausing over the liver wing of a chicken, while Runlet filled his glass with sparkling Moselle.

"Because the dogs in the kennel howled fearfully."

"Where was the keeper?"

"A' the keepers in the world wouldna quiet them!" she replied, shaking her old head.

"Why?"

"Dogs can see and ken when death enters a house."

"Death!—is my father's case so bad?" asked Roland, growing very pale, and setting down his glass.

"Bad—it couldna weel be worse," said she, in a broken voice, as she began to weep; "but the doctor—"

"Is in the house, I understand. Tell him that I am here. Oh, Elspat, have I crossed the broad Atlantic only to face death and sorrow?"

"Death and sorrow!" she added, shaking her head, "and I dread the fifth of August—it has aye been a fatal day to the Ruthvens. It was on that day your lady mother died, and on that day your uncle Philip, that should have been Laird, went forth and returned no more!"

Roland started impatiently to his feet, and something of a disdainful smile crossed his handsome face.

There is something grand and noble in the position of such a young man as he was—the descendant and representative of a long line of stainless ancestry, having the sense of carrying out its destiny in the future, and being the transmitter to other times and generations of its lofty traits and distinction.

No gamblers, "legs," or turf transactions ever degraded the line of Ardgowrie (pigeons there may have been, but never hawks), which, in a collateral branch, represented the attainted Earls of Gowrie and Lords of Ruthven, and if Roland had any weakness it was family pride, which he inherited from his father, who had left nothing undone to develop it; and with it grew the idea and conviction, that death were better than for a Ruthven to do aught that was dishonourable.

The second article of Roland's faith, like that of his father, was a profound veneration for the old Royal Scots, in which so many of the Ruthvens had lived and died, that they deemed it quite a family regiment, and many knew of no home out of it, and many, too, in battle or otherwise, had found their graves under its colours in all parts of the world.

As his father's son, Roland was a favourite with both battalions of the Royal Regiment, and he was the life and soul of the mess, and the most popular man in it.

In friendly rivalry with his chief chum and brother-sub, Hector Logan, of Loganbraes and that ilk (of whom more anon), he was the "show man" of the Royals. None occupied the box-seat of the regimental drag, or tooled the team to race-meetings or elsewhere, in a better style than Roland; in the cricket field, when stumps were down, and the runs were growing few, his batting and bowling were the last hope of the regimental eleven; and at hurdle-racing or steeple-chasing he was ever ready to ride any man's horse, however desperate the leaps or wild the animal, if he had not entered one for himself. Moreover, his good figure and social qualities, his known wealth and high spirit, made him a prime favourite with the other sex wherever the regiment went, and none could see any man's wife or daughter more adroitly or gracefully through a crush at the Opera, or anywhere else, than Roland Ruthven of the Royal Scots.

In all this he was exactly what his proud old father had been before him; but the latter indulged in aspirations that never occurred to Roland.

That even at this remote time Queen Victoria might restore the earldom of Gowrie to his family after the lapse of two hundred and forty years, had been the dearest hope of the old Colonel's life, especially in his latter years. It was a child's whim; yet other titles, such as Mar, Perth, and Kellie, had been restored, he was wont to say.

With all his long service he had failed to win great laurels as an officer, and now his hopes were centred on his only son; but as yet the fields of the Crimea had not been fought, and great wars seemed to have become things of the past.

Though ever kind, loving, and affectionate to Roland, the latter found that in his latter years his father had become somewhat of a stern, moody, and morose man, almost repellant to his county neighbours, whom as years went on he seemed to avoid more and more, and of this peculiarity Roland was thinking as the doctor, a spruce and dapper little personage, entered with his professional smile, and warmly welcomed him home, adding,—

"I have but to deplore the occasion of it, my dear sir."

"But what is his ailment, doctor?"

"I can scarcely say—it seems to be a general break up of the whole system."

"At his years that can scarcely be."

"He has been sorely changed since you were last at Ardgowrie, my dear sir; and there seems—there seems——"

The doctor paused, and played nervously with his watch-chain.

"There seems what?" asked Roland, bluntly.

"Something that I scarcely like to hint at."

"How, sir?"

"Well, if you will pardon my saying so, he seems to suffer more from illness of the mind than of the body."

"Of the mind?" asked Roland, haughtily.

"Yes; as if some secret preyed upon him. I have watched him closely from time to time, for the last few years, and such, my dear sir, is my firm conviction."

"Your idea seems to me incomprehensible, doctor."

"There is a skeleton in every house," said the other with a simper.

"Sir, you forget yourself," exclaimed Roland, with haughty surprise. "What skeleton could be in ours?"

"Pardon me—I used but a proverb. Your father is awake now," he added, as a distant bell rang. And Roland, considerably agitated and ruffled by what had passed, repaired at once to the sick chamber.

CHAPTER II.
THE FATAL DAY OF THE RUTHVENS.

The affectionate and filial heart of Roland was wrung by the wan and haggard aspect of his father, who looked as grim and pale as that other Patrick Ruthven, whose ghastly visage in his helmet had so appalled the luckless Mary on the night that Rizzio was slain; but the old man's eyes brightened, his colour came back for a time, and his strength even seemed to rally as his son embraced him.

"You have lost no time in attending my summons, Roland," said he, retaining the latter's hand within his own.

"I left Montreal by the first steamer, my dear father, but I got away with difficulty."

"Why?"

"A revolt among the colonists is daily expected; but when I mentioned your illness, the Colonel at once obtained leave for me from the General at Halifax."

"Dear old Geordie Wetherall! I remember him a sub in his first red coat, when we were ensigns together, in the "rookery," as we called it, in Edinburgh Castle. Ah, few of the Royals of that day are surviving now. They have nearly all gone before me to the Land o' the Leal! But in fancy I can see them all yet."

Then, though ailing nigh unto death, true to his old instincts, almost the first questions he asked of Roland were about their old regiment, its strength and appearance, of the officers and rank and file; and then he sighed again, to think that none remembered him save old Geordie Wetherall, a veteran of the conquest of Java; and all these questions Roland had to answer, ere he could lure his father to speak of himself, and when the latter did so, his spirit fell, his colour faded, and the momentary lustre died out of his eyes, though the glassy glare of illness still remained.

"I hope the alleged danger of this mysterious illness is exaggerated," said Roland, tenderly and anxiously; "and that ere I return to the regiment, I shall see you well and strong—ay, perhaps taking your fences as of old with Bob Buckle at your back."

The old Laird of Ardgowrie smiled sadly, and turned restlessly on his pillow—and a handsome man he was, even in age, with a wonderful likeness to his son, having the same straight nose and mouth clean cut and chiselled, "the prerogative of the highly born," as Lever has it—for Patrick Ruthven belonged to the untitled noblesse of Scotland, the lineage of some of whom stretches far back into the shadowy past.

"I am lying in my last bed save one, Roland," said the sufferer, in low concentrated voice; "we have not all died in our beds, we Ruthvens of that ilk, but it shall be said that all have died with honour except——"

"Except who, father?"

The old man trembled as if with ague, and closed his eyes, as he said hoarsely—

"I cannot tell you—in time you will know all!"

"You have been a good soldier to the Queen, father."

"But a bad servant to her Master."

"Do not speak thus!" said Roland, imploringly.

"The heart knoweth its own bitterness; and I have been bad, evil, wicked—false!"

"This is some fancy."

"It is not!" said Patrick Ruthven, emphatically.

"Then can I make amends?"

"You may, if it is not too late, my poor Roland. Oh, my God!"

These mysterious words filled the listener with genuine grief and alarm. Was it all some hallucination? What did they import or refer to? For much in his father's moody and wayward life, in his latter years especially, seemed to corroborate them, and to hint that there was "a skeleton in the house," as the doctor had ventured to say.

"I will have no clergyman about me," said the sufferer, petulantly and almost passionately, in reply to some remark of Roland's.

"Why?"

"I hope to make my peace with God alone. The Reverend Ephraim Howie, to whom I gave the living of Ardgowrie! What can he, or such as he, do for me now?"

"Oh, father!"

"No one ever prospered who grew rich by fraud, it has been said—yet have I, in a manner, prospered," added the old man, as if communing with himself.

"You, father?" exclaimed Roland, whose blood seemed to grow very cold.

"Yes—I."

"How—how?"

"I cannot—dare not tell you. Hush!" he added, glancing stealthily about, as Mr. Runlet, the butler, placed two shaded candles, in massive antique silver holders, on the toilet table, and withdrew, and Roland thought—

"Poor old man—his mind wanders!"

"My mind is not wandering."

"I never said so, father."

"But you seem to think so—I can read it in your eyes. I have been successful in life, and leave at death a handsome fortune to one who has no right to it—you, my son—you whom I love better than my own soul!" he exclaimed, in a broken voice that seemed full of tears, and a great horror began to possess the heart of the listener.

"Oh heaven—heaven! he is mad!"

"Would that I had died at the head of the Royals, when I led them at Nagpore!"

Intense perplexity mingled with the natural grief of Roland, for the whole tenor of this interview was so utterly beyond all that he could have anticipated.

In a half fatuous manner, the patient was muttering to himself, and in great agony of mind, Roland listened intently.

"Live it down, people say—I have lived it down—it was never known indeed! Poor Philip—poor Philip! One may live down a lie, but not the truth—it is the truth that hurts—that never may be lived down. I ever thought a day of retribution would come, and it is coming—fast!"

"Retribution for what?" asked Roland, in a low but passionate voice.

"Could I face the malevolence of the vulgar on one hand, and the scorn of my equals on the other?—no—oh no!" continued his father, speaking in a low voice, and at long gasping intervals, as if to himself. "It has been truly said, that 'manner and tone of voice may be made to give stabs, only less sharp and cowardly than vile and baseless calumny.... There is no insolence like the insolence of the well-born and well-bred; and the most vulgar and purse-proud wife of the most purse-proud plutocrat is altogether inferior in her capacity to inflict pain and give offence to the patrician lady of title.' I have been spared all that—for I cast the die in secret!"

"What die?" asked Roland imploringly.

The old man regarded him wildly, as if for a time he had forgotten his presence.

"When I am dead and gone—dead and gone, dear Roland, you will know all."

"Why not now?"

"Because I—even hovering on the brink of eternity—blush to tell you. Oh, what a thing it is for a father to cower like a very craven before his only son, and yet, Roland, you know how I have loved you. When I am gone and buried, Roland, open the old Indian cabinet that I found on the day when the Royals stormed Scindia's fortress of Neembolah—read the sealed packet you will find there—and—and pray for me."

These were almost the last coherent words his father spoke; and he uttered them with the veins in his temples throbbing, and as if the most bitter of all emotions, self scorn, wrung his heart, and then he seemed to sink fast. But he lingered for some days after this, and though his words, manner, and injunction, filled Roland with grief and intense curiosity, he resolved to obey him to the letter and not open the cabinet till end came, and the doctor assured him it was near now.

"Under what hallucination can the poor old man be labouring?" thought Roland, as he sat alone in the stately dining-room—a veritable hall—and thought how proud he who was about to pass away to a dark and narrow home, had been of Ardgowrie and all its details and surroundings—its stately park where the deer made their lair among the green ferns, its dark blue loch full of pike, and the pine plantations where the pheasant pea-fowl were thick as the cones that lay around them.

Daily by the sun, nightly by the moon, for many centuries, had the same shadows of the quaint old house been cast on the same places, and it was now an epitome of a proud historic past. It had entertained more than one king of Scotland, and everything in the old mansion was on a grand scale, from the portraits by Jamesone and Vandyck (who married a Ruthven of Gowrie, by the way) to the massive cups won in many a race that glittered on the sideboard. Above the latter, a splendid full-length of the "bonnie Earl" who was wont to flirt with Anne of Denmark in Falkland Woods, and who on the 5th of August, 1600, perished in the famous conspiracy, had its place of honour; and among other portraits of later times, was one by Sir Watson Gordon of the present proprietor, in his uniform as a field officer of the Royal Scots.

The massive mantelpiece of the early Stuart times ascended to the ceiling. It was an exact copy of the famous one in Gowrie House at Perth, and over it in Gothic letters was the same remarkable and apposite legend borne by the former:—

"Truths long concealed at length emerge to light,
And controverted facts are rendered bright."

But Roland now perceived with genuine wonder, that the couplet had been chiselled completely away, and the stone frieze was now smooth and bare.

"By whose orders was this done, Runlet?" he asked with angry surprise.

"Those of the Laird, your father," replied the butler.

"When?"

"Just before his last illness."

"Why?"

"I cannot say, Mr. Roland, but he has done some queer things of late," he added with diffidence.

On that mantelpiece were cut the Ruthven arms, bars and lozenges, within a border flowered and counter-flowered, crested with a goat's head, and above them hung the tattered colours of Ruthven's battalion of the 1st Royal Scots—one of four—which had borne them in triumph from the plains of Corunna to the gates of Paris, covered with trophies, among which are still the cross of St. Andrew and the crowned thistle of James VI.

Off the dining hall opened a long and lofty corridor hung with moth-eaten tapestries of russet and green hues and with trophies of arms, each having its history; such as the helmet of Sir Walter Ruthven who died by the side of King David at the battle of Durham; the sword of Sir William who became hostage for King James I.; the pennon of the Master of Ruthven who fell at Flodden, and weapons of later wars, with trophies of the chase, heads and skulls of lions shot in Africa, tigers in Bengal, bears in Russia, of elephants from the miasmatic Terrai of Nepaul—spoils wherever his father had served; and of noble deer from the forests of the adjacent hills.

From all these objects and the drooping colours of the grand old regiment, Roland's eyes would wander again and again to settle on the cabinet of Scindia, and he would marvel what it contained—if indeed it contained any secret whatever!

With a fond, proud and yet sad smile he looked at the portrait of more than one fair ancestress, and thought,

"The girl I left behind me is fairer than them all!"

For in Montreal he had left Aurelia Darnel de St. Eustache, whom we shall meet in time. A kind of half-flirtation—something even more tender and taking had subsisted between them, and but for his sudden summons home, it would have assumed greater proportions and had a firmer basis; he would have explained to her the nature and extent of his love for her, and obtained some pledge or promise from her, with the consent of her mother, for father she had none now; and when Elspat Gorm spoke apprehensively of the 5th of August, as being "the fatal day of the Ruthvens," he would think, with a smile,

"I hope not, as it was on the evening of that day, I first met Aurelia at our ball in Montreal! Would that I could tell the poor old man who is passing away, of my love, and gain his permission to address her; for she must know of my love for her and will await my return; but I would that he could see her, even as I in memory see her now!"

And before him came a mental vision of a very beautiful girl, whose dark hair and long black lashes contrasted with the pale delicacy of her skin, her pencilled eyebrows rather straight than arched, a calm loveliness in her face when, in repose, but a brightness over it all, when she was animated, when her soft eyes lighted up and her lips became tremulous.

"Aurelia!" he whispered to himself, and marvelled if the time would ever come, when he would bring her hither to be the queen of his life, and of beautiful Ardgowrie.

Day by day, his father was sinking, and all the powers of medicine could do nothing for him; his ailment was not old age but a passing away of the powers of life. The old Highland housekeeper, Elspat, had much contempt for the nostrums of the doctor, and believing her master to be under the spell of a gipsy-woman whom he had sent to prison for theft, maintained that he would never be cured, until the parings of his finger nails and a lock of his hair were buried in the earth with a live cock, a remnant of ancient Paganrie, which the reign of Victoria still finds prevailing in some parts of the Highlands.

So, as she fully expected, the morning of the 5th of August, saw the old Laird expire peacefully, after playing fatuously with the coverlet, and muttering that he could "hear the drums of the Royal beating the old Scots March," and the lamenting wail of Macaulay's pipe was heard on the terrace without, as Roland closed his father's eyes, and, crushed with natural grief, knelt by the side of his bed, and Elspat placed a plate containing a little salt on his breast.

In due time, amid the lamentations of his tenantry, and while the pipes woke the echoes of the glen, by the March of Gilliechriost (or of the Follower of Christ), one of the oldest airs in existence, he was laid in his last home, in the Ruthven aisle of Ardgowrie kirk, and Roland found himself alone in the world.

CHAPTER III.
THE CABINET OF SCINDIA.

Yes, Roland felt himself, most terribly alone now—far from the merry mess and the daily companionship of his brother officers, in that great old mansion, wherein for centuries generations of his ancestors were born and had died, and which stood amid such wild and desolate, yet beautiful scenery.

Expected though his father's death had been, by Roland, the shock of the event when it did occur, was so great, that it was not until two days after the funeral, and when his legal agents and advisers, Messrs. Hook and Crook, writers to Her Majesty's Signet, came to consult him on certain matters concerning the estate, that he bethought him of the old cabinet found by the Royals in Scindia's fortress, and he sprang up with a start to execute the last commands of his father the old Colonel.

In the latter's desk he found the key—one of very curious workmanship, and as he put it into the lock a singular sense of some great and impending evil—a sense which had never impressed itself upon him so vividly before—came over him, and seemed to whisper to him to be prepared!

Prepared for what?

He had seen the old cabinet years ago; it was about four feet square, formed of ebony inlaid with the finest ivory and mother-of-pearl with many elaborate ornaments, and even some precious stones, and it had been a gift from old Patrick Ruthven to his bride.

With vivid painfulness too, there came before Roland, the last expression of his father's face, and more than all, his eyes with their restless feverish expression, and strangely lustrous glare.

The doors of the beautiful cabinet unfolded and displayed two rows of drawers, the handles of which were chased silver, and with nervous haste, Roland opened these in quick succession.

Therein he found old muster-rolls, reports and memoranda connected with the First Royal Scots; letters and orders from brother-officers who had found their graves in every quarter of the globe; complimentary addresses from generals and magistrates, and all his father's medals and orders. There too were letters from his mother in their lover-days, faded and brown; letters of the lost uncle Philip, and letters from Roland himself, even those he had written as a schoolboy, with the now withered and dry locks of hair belonging to those who had been loved and had long since departed.

All the little relics and souvenirs that the poor old man had treasured most in life were there; but what could the secret be, that he had so strangely and with such evident emotion and pain referred to, thought Roland, as in nervous haste and sorrow he drew out each tiny drawer in succession—sorrow, for the hands that had touched and the eyes that had seen them last were cold and still now in yonder dark old vault.

At last he found a packet carefully sealed with his father's crest, a goat's-head embossed; but directed to no one.

He tore it open, and found within the cover, a legal document tied with red tape, and a page or two written by the hand of his father, and bearing the latter's signature.

Both these papers Roland read quickly, but he had to do so again and again ere his startled mind could take in their contents.

The first was the last will and testament of his grandfather General Roland Ruthven, and the latter was a confession written by his father concerning it.

"My God—oh that this could ever be the case!" exclaimed Roland in a broken and hollow voice, as he read them. Philip, the elder brother, had in some mysterious manner incurred the high displeasure of the general, who bequeathed his entire estate and fortune to Patrick, the younger; but, repenting, had executed a second will superseding the first; and this will, Roland's father had found and suppressed, while, with a curse upon their father's name and memory, Philip believing himself to be disinherited, went forth into the world and was heard of no more!

Philip who had never loved him, continued the old man's tremulously written confession, was gone he knew not where, beyond all trace, so that rumour even said he was dead; and to denounce himself then as the possessor of the second will, was to cut away the ground from under his own feet, when on the very eve of marriage with a girl, whose family would not permit her to marry a penniless younger son—so he had deemed himself thus not intentionally guilty, and that no one's interests suffered by his silence.

If he had followed the dictates of the highest principles, he would at once have made the document known; but where was Philip? As time went on Patrick Ruthven became conscience-struck, and he now charged Roland with the task of making some amends if possible, by discovering the lost man or his heirs, if lie had any.

A bitter bequest indeed!

With a painfully throbbing heart, and hands that trembled, Roland laid the documents down and strove to collect his thoughts. The first dull and stunning emotion, of confusion and unreality past, he looked dreamily around him to see if he was not undergoing a species of nightmare; but no! There was the stately old dining-hall, the spacious Scottish fireplace with its silver fire-dogs, and here were the ebony cabinet of Scindia, with the suppressed will, and the signed confession of his father.

It was a terrible shock to Roland Ruthven to find that his father—his father of all men in the world!—whom through all the years of his life he had looked up to with love and reverence, and who seemed ever to him and to all who knew him, the model of chivalrous honour, should have acted thus, and he actually wept over the event!

Again and again he read the confession that on one hand Philip had never loved him, had exasperated the general; and on the other, there was the chance—nay, the certainty—of a marriage being marred by the production of the will which was now dated nearly forty years back.

"Justice must be done, at all risks and hazards—but justice to whom?" thought Roland.

Ardgowrie seemed no longer his; as if touched by an enchanter's wand, it seemed already to have passed away, wood, wold, and mountain, by this cruel discovery. He felt homeless in a splendid home, his worldly prospects ruined, and Aurelia Darnel, the only girl he had ever loved, utterly lost to him!

Why not destroy the will?

But no—oh no! Roland felt his cheek crimson, as something seemed to whisper of this in his ear, and then he recalled his dead father's remorseful injunctions to himself.

He looked up at the portrait of the lost and disinherited Philip—the outcast son of a patrician race, as limned by the President of the Scottish Academy.

It represented a handsome young man, in a red hunting coat and cap, with regular but rather pale features, dark blue eyes and well defined eyebrows, with a pleasant smile that actually, to Roland's then distempered fancy, seemed to light up, as he looked on the portrait.

Roland wiped the beady perspiration from his brow, and a moan as if of pain escaped him, but again and again he muttered—

"Justice shall be done—justice if it be not too late—oh Heaven—too late!"

He stepped to the sideboard, filled a silver hunting cup with sherry, drained it at a draught, and taking up the two fatal documents, locked the Indian cabinet, and prepared to join Messrs. Hook and Crook, who were busy with certain accounts and papers in the library.

Of lawyers, Roland, as a soldier, had ever a wholesome dread, and he shrank from the horror of disclosing this trickery on the part of his father even to them, whose lives were too probably but one long and tangled yarn of trickery and deceit; but again, he muttered that justice must be done.

His assumed coolness deserted him, his face became livid, and his eyes sparkled with a strange light, when he spoke to them of the papers he had found, and laid them before their legal eyes.

Then his proud pale face flushed scarlet, his dark eyebrows were knitted nearly into one, and his nether lip quivered with suppressed emotion and intense mortification, and in some degree the lawyers were also excited, but amazement was what they chiefly felt.

"What did Mr. Ruthven intend to do?"

"Justice," said he hoarsely.

"But to whom?"

"That is precisely what I have been asking of myself."

"This will revoking the former disposition, is fully forty years old; but it has never been recorded," said Mr. Hook.

"And none know of its existence, save ourselves," added Mr. Crook suggestively; "and it is a dreadful thing to lose so fine an estate—so noble a heritage—by one stroke of a pen!"

"But I quite agree with the young Laird, that some attempt should be made to do justice, and endeavour to trace out Mr. Philip or his heirs," said Mr. Hook, seeing in futurity a pyramid of three-and-fourpences and six-and-eightpences.

"To advertise for the lost one would degrade my father's name!" exclaimed Roland passionately.

"How else are we to go about it, my dear sir?" asked Mr. Hook, pulling his nether lip reflectively; "but enquiries might be made——"

"Where?"

"Well—a rumour did go about at one time that your uncle had married in Jamaica, Mexico, or somewhere."

"I never heard of it."

Neither had Mr. Hook, but he only threw out the hint to suggest difficulty and complication, and in his simplicity Roland rapidly adopted it.

"Prosecute enquiries in both places," said he; "spare no money—collect and pay in the rents as usual—though not a penny of them shall come to me! You understand me, gentlemen?"

They could better have understood his quietly putting alike the will and confession into the fire.

Why had not his father done so, and spared Roland this season of shame and humiliation, of disappointment and sudden poverty?

But his plans were adopted with decision and rapidity.

"All the old servants will be retained as usual, gentlemen," said he, after a painful pause, during which a swelling seemed to have risen in his throat, "but no new ones will be engaged, and the whole revenue of the estate shall be paid into the bank for the benefit of the real heir, or of his children, if they can be found. I leave all in your hands."

"But you must have some little income out of the estate!" said the astounded lawyers simultaneously.

"Not a penny until I am proved to be indubitably the last and only Ruthven of Ardgowrie and that ilk!" exclaimed Roland with emotion.

"My dear sir, you can't live on your pay," suggested Mr. Hook.

"I will try."

"No one does now-a-days. Nor will you be able to marry."

"I do not mean to marry," said Roland, whose voice fairly broke as he thought of Aurelia Darnel; "but perhaps you may help me with a few pounds till I get exchanged into a regiment in India, for meantime I must rejoin the Royals."

By this discovery in the Indian cabinet, Roland now learned bitterly why the old legend above the mantel-piece had become obnoxious to his father's eye, and been obliterated by his order!

He looked at his family motto—the strongly apposite and ancient motto of the Ruthvens—Facta Probant, and muttered—

"That of Argyle would suit me better now!"

He felt that under pressure of the sudden change in his circumstances, that to avoid surmises and explanations which it would be impossible to make, his wisest mode of action would be to effect an exchange into some other regiment where he was unknown; but his own honour at that time of expected peril required that he should rejoin the Scots Royals, and he could not yet bring his heart to quit them, for the corps had been the home of his family for many generations, quite as much as their ancestral abode of Ardgowrie.

Moreover, he was well up the list of lieutenants now. He could recall the emotions with which he first joined them in all the freshness of boyhood, and felt, as a writer says, how "the first burst of life is a glorious thing; youth, health, hope and confidence, and all the vigour they lose in after years: life is then like a splendid river, and we are swimming with the stream—no adverse waves to weary, no billows to buffet us, we hold on our course rejoicing."

But all pride of birth, of race, and name had gone completely out of Roland Ruthven for the time.

Cards of condolence poured in upon him from the county people, but he returned none; neither did he pay any visits; he felt himself a species of usurper.

"A morose fellow he has become," some said; "just like his father in his latter years—moping and melancholy."

A letter from his friend Hector Logan roused him a little, and made him think of returning at once to the regiment. It was full of the mess gossip and barrack news generally, and about a ball "where la belle Aurelia had appeared with a new and very remarkable admirer, a Colonel Ithuriel Smash, of the United States army. If the row with the colonists comes off," continued Logan, "some of us may lose our chance of picking up a handsome heiress—for heiresses here are to be had for the asking, some think; I don't. But a girl like Aurelia Darnel, with a stray forty thousand pounds, and having also the frankness and good taste to accept a nice fellow with whom to spend it, is just the kind of girl for my complexion. Logan Braes and that ilk, sound very well; but my pedigree is a powersight longer than my rent-roll."

The letter concluded by urging him to rejoin, as an outbreak among the colonists was daily expected.

Apart from Aurelia Darnel, concerning whom a change had come over his future now, he felt in every way the necessity for action, and for returning to America, and he felt, too, as if he would go mad, if he lingered longer in Ardgowrie.

Aurelia! could he go back to the charm of her society again, with that horrible secret in his mind—the secret the cabinet had contained, and which made him a penniless man! Yet, his thoughts would wander again and again to the girl he had left beyond the broad Atlantic, and doubts rather than hopes, fear rather than joy, crowded upon him, all born of recent events.

Perhaps absence might already have erased all memory of him, and he was forgotten; and who was this new dangler—"admirer," Logan called him, with the atrociously grotesque name? He had left her, without any declaration of his love, and dared he make one now? Left her, at that period, when, as Lever says, "love has as many stages as a fever; when the feeling of devotion, growing every moment stronger, is chequered by a doubt lest the object of your affections should really be indifferent to you—thus suggesting all the torturing agonies of jealousy to your distracted mind. At such times as these a man can scarcely be very agreeable to the girl he loves; but he is a confounded bore to a chance acquaintance."

Aurelia Darnel was one of the wealthiest girls in Montreal. Could he speak to her of love now? No—no! It was not to be thought of, and in going back, he would avoid her, and devoutly hoped that the expected "row" would come off, and the Royal Scots would have to take the field.

The two last days of his residence at Ardgowrie he spent in solitude beside the Linn of Dee. There was something soothing to his soul in the wild turmoil of the rushing torrent, from whence, the body of any living thing that finds its way into it, can never be recovered.

What a change had come over Roland Ruthven, since last, in boyhood, and just before he joined the Royals, he had gazed into those black and surgy depths which fascinate the eye and render the brain giddy, where the dead white of the foam contrasts so strongly with the sombre tints of the turbulent cauldron, and the still blacker uncertainties of the caverns beneath the rocks, as the Dee, there terrible, yet beautiful thunders over the Linn on its passage to the German Ocean.

Roland felt keenly the change that had come over him, since last he heard the familiar roar of his native stream; a new life, with the regiment had been opened to him; but a blight had fallen upon it now. Out of many a passing flirtation, his love for Aurelia stood prominently forth on one hand; on the other was his father's sore temptation (he could scarcely give it a harder name); yonder grand old house, with all its turrets amid the stately woods, no longer his; his future wasted, his love denied him, and his inheritance lost!

It was a conviction hard to adopt and bear, yet Roland adopted and bore it bravely, and turning his back, as he certainly believed, for ever on Ardgowrie, departed to rejoin his regiment.

CHAPTER IV.
"PONTIUS PILATE'S GUARDS."

"Welcome back Ruthven!" cried Hector Logan.

"Ruthven, my hearty, how goes it with you?"

"Glad to see you with us again, though regret that you have crape on your arm."

Such were the greetings of Roland on his first appearance at mess, when he rejoined, warmly welcomed by all; even the usually stolid visages of the mess-waiters brightened as he took his seat.

"A fresh cooper of wine to drink the health of Roland Ruthven," exclaimed the President, who, though a young sub, had seen powder burned with the Royals in Burmah. "Welcome back to the Guards of Pontius Pilate!"

He had not been very long absent, but after all he had undergone at Ardgowrie it was a relief to Roland to hear the old "shop" talk again—the old regimental jokes and news, who was for guard to-morrow, who was on detachment; a moose-hunting party bound for the shore of the St. Lawrence; how the last time "the Darnel's phaeton was tooled by Logan, the horses "come home with devil a thing but the splinter bar at their heels; the expected "row" with the colonists; the ball or race that was coming off; the buttons of this corps, the facings or epaulettes of that corps, and so forth.

His old chum, Hector Logan, a tall and very handsome fellow, and some others, could see by the deepened lines between Roland's dark eyebrows, that something even more than his father's death affected him; and also, that his old flow of brilliant conversation was gone. They could detect that "something was wrong—a screw loose somewhere," but could not conceive what it was.

Ere he rejoined he had commissioned Logan to sell his horses—even to Royal Scot, with whom he was wont to ride over the raspers everywhere; to withdraw his name from several races and subscription lists; and he had every way curtailed his expenses—shorn down everything to the great surprise of more than one heedless young fellow, and of the mess in general.

"What the deuce does it all mean?" they asked of one another.

"What is up, Ruthven?" asked Logan seriously; "is there anything wrong? Your father dies, leaving you a fine old estate totally unencumbered—a deuced deal more than we can say for many old estates—and you sell off your horses, dogs, and so forth——"

"How do you know it is unencumbered?" asked Roland, with some sharpness of manner. "It is loaded—heavily loaded, indeed!" he added, bitterly, as he thought of the long-hidden will.

"Are you going in for a new excitement—that of being poor?"

"Oh, Hector, you don't know who it is you chaff! Are the Darnels in Montreal?" he asked, after a pause.

"Yes;" I saw la belle Aurelia yesterday in busy Paul Street, close to the Hôtel-Dieu; I knew her at once by the long glossy ringlet, the suivez-moi—come-follow-me-lads—that hung down her back."

"How your tongue runs on, Hector!"

"Pardon me; I forgot that you were hit in that quarter."

"Positively, Hector, I'll punch your head."

"A fellow always makes a fool of himself about some girl or woman at some time, and it is your case now, though I must admit that Aurelia Darnel is one of the most attractive girls I have seen, and does credit to your taste, Roland. Now that you are Laird of Ardgowrie you'll make great running in that quarter."

"Aurelia is too rich to care a straw even about Ardgowrie."

"I don't know that, Ruthven."

But the latter was in no mood for jesting, especially on such a subject, and abruptly spoke of something else; for now, with all his intense longing to see Aurelia once more, he actually dreaded the thought of meeting her.

"Better that I should avoid her, but in doing so, what will she think of me?" he pondered, while manipulating a cigar (we had not yet fought in the Crimea, thus cigarettes were as yet unknown among us). "To see her again will be but torture. What course ought I to follow—must I pursue, when, penniless as I know myself to be now, her love is denied me! I must quit even the dear old regiment in time, and begin a life of exile in India."

The latter conviction, which had come strongly home to the heart of Roland Ruthven, filled him with sincere regret, for he loved the Royals, and was proud of them. A regiment, old in history, is, says some one (Kinglake, we think), like the immortal gods, ever young and ever glorious.

And great, indeed, in fame, rich in glory, and old in history, are the First Royal Scots—the most ancient regiment in the world, for their traditions go back in an unbroken line to the twenty-four Scottish Guards of Charles III. of France; thence to the Scottish Garde du Corps which saved the life of St. Louis in 1254 in Palestine, and fought in all the wars of France, at Agincourt, the conquest of Naples, and at Pavia, where they were nearly cut to pieces; even Francis was taken prisoner.

In after years there were engrafted on them the remains of those gallant Scottish bands which served in Bohemia under Sir Andrew Gray, and under Sir John Hepburn in all the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, and as the regiment of the Lords Douglas and Dunbarton—Dunbarton of "the druns"—they returned to Scotland after the Restoration, and now at this day their standards are so loaded by embroidered trophies, that the blue silk—the national colour of Scotland—is nearly hidden, while the mere list of the battles and sieges in which they have been engaged—ever with glory and honour—occupy ten closely printed pages of the War Office Records. Even their rivals for three hundred years, the famous Regiment de Picardie, could not equal this, though in the French service they were wont to quiz the Royals as having been "the Guards of Pontius Pilate who slept upon their posts."

In all the armies of Europe we can find no parallel to their annals, for there is nothing like it in the military history of any other country.

Among all our noble British Infantry—that infantry which, as Bonaparte said, "never knew when it was beaten," and which, as Green tells us in his "History of the English People" was first created when William Wallace of Elderslie, drew up his Scottish spearmen, in those solid squares before which the united chivalry of England and Aquitaine went down: Amid all our "unconquerable British Infantry," we say, none have such a brilliant inheritance of glory as the old Royal Regiment.

Hence it was that Roland Ruthven, whose family had served with it for three or four generations, looked forward with extreme reluctance and regret to the coming time when, by exchange or otherwise, he would be compelled to serve in the ranks of another; and that the time was not a distant one was rendered fully evident by letters which he had received from his legal agents, Messrs. Hook and Crook, W.S., Edinburgh.

These assured him that they had obtained some certain knowledge of the movements and marriage of his uncle Philip, and of his having left heirs. They had traced him to Jamaica, and would ere long send proofs of the said marriage, and of there being an heir to Ardgowrie.

"An heir to Ardgowrie!" muttered Roland, through his clenched teeth. Half expected though the tidings were, they sounded like a species of death-knell to him now.

"You look disturbed, old fellow," said Hector Logan, as Roland crushed up and then tore the letter to pieces.

"I am disturbed!" said he.

"What are these—lawyer's letters?"

"Yes, Hector."

"Hah—a lawyer I always look upon as a species of rook with a devil of a long bill. You'll get over it, I hope," he added, rolling the leaf of his cigar round his finger.

"I have got over it already," replied Roland; but his looks belied his words; "but it is hard to have one's first and dearest hopes blighted," he continued, thinking of Aurelia Darnel; "disappointments, however, I suppose we get used to, like the eels to the skinning."

"Can I help you, Ruthven? Logan Braes are not exactly like the Bank of England; but if a few hundreds——"

"You cannot help me, old fellow—thanks."

"Why?"

"I cannot, and may not, tell you; it is a family trouble—a secret, and a sore one."

Some days elapsed before—under the alteration of his circumstances—he could summon up courage to visit the Darnels; but he felt the imperative necessity of doing so, after all the hospitality he had received; and then, he would gradually cease to go near them, whatever view might be taken of his changed conduct; but after all that had passed between himself and Aurelia one visit was necessary, and then—what next?

He shivered as he thought of it with sorrow and shame.

CHAPTER V.
AURELIA DARNEL.

At the usual hour for an afternoon visit Roland Ruthven, in his blue undress uniform, with the handsome gilt shoulder scales then worn (mufti was forbidden), left his sword in the entrance hall, and was duly ushered into the handsome and spacious drawing-room of the Chateau de St. Eustache, as Mrs., or rather Madame, Darnel's abode was named, for she was a French Canadian, a widow and the heiress of one of those seigneuries which are in so many instances in possession of the families endowed with them by the kings of France.

Over these seigneuries they formerly exercised the rights of haute, moyenne, et basse justice; but these have become obsolete since Wolfe carried the British colours up the heights of Abraham, and they are now reduced to the right of building a mill, at which the vassal must grind his corn at a fixed rate, and a fine if he desires to sell the load which he holds from his overlord.

Much of the reserve and pride of the old noblesse of France still hover about these Canadian seigneurs, and Madame Darnel possessed these characteristics in a very high degree.

Neither she nor Aurelia were in the room, so Roland had a little time to collect his thoughts.

How much had happened—how altered were all his views and hopes of life—since last he had sat on that particular sofa, and beheld the view from these windows!

He had come hither from the barracks on foot, as he had sold off all his horses now, and he thought sadly—could it be otherwise—of the stable court at Ardgowrie, with all its excellent stalls fitted with enamelled mangers and encaustic tiles, and the artistic devices on the iron heel posts, and for holding the pillar reins.

This visit over, he thought he would go moose-hunting with Logan and some others: activity out of doors being the best cure for love according to certain writers. "Men try wine and cards," says Yates, "both of which are instantaneous but fleeting remedies, and leave them in a state of reaction, when they are doubly vulnerable; but shooting or hunting, properly pursued, are thoroughly engrossing while they last, and when they are over necessitate an immediate recourse to slumber from the fatigue which they have induced."

But while making these resolutions Roland, like one in a dream, watched the view from Madame Darnel's windows: Montreal, the largest of the three elevations near the city so named—its base surrounded by country houses, with orchards and gardens, and its summit covered with foliage; the city itself, with its lofty edifices of dark limestone or of painted wood, its churches, monasteries, its glittering spire, its shipping, and the St. Lawrence winding far away in the distance, till he was roused by the rustle of a silk dress, and Aurelia Darnel stood before him, and her hand was in his.

"Miss Darnel!"

"Mr. Ruthven!"

The latter was the less self-possessed of the two.

"I knew, Mr. Ruthven, that you would come to Montreal again," said Aurelia, with one of her brightest smiles.

"Were it but for a moment like this, I should have come," said Roland, under the charm of her presence, forgetting the rôle he intended to adopt; "and your mamma?"

"Is, unfortunately, from home; need I say how sorry we were for the sad occasion which hurried you away."

Roland coloured with pain, vexation, and sorrow; and before him seemed to stand that horrible "last will and testament," which beggared him! Aurelia Darnel, who had occupied his entire thoughts since he left Montreal, was beside him now; but he had only common places, the merest platidudes to offer her. His innate pride, tenacity, and over-sensitiveness, now that he was poor, and she was rich—he little knew how rich—tied up his tongue, and the love, he trembled to avow, remained unspoken.

We have already partially described Aurelia Darnel and the character of her beauty. She was a girl of talent, with many accomplishments. Her French, of course, was perfect, as she inherited it from her mother; she played brilliantly, with a soft yet dashing touch; she could sing little chansons in the most seductive way, and was full of those pretty graces and mannerisms which are peculiar to continental girls; she had, too, a way of looking down, drooping her long dark eyelashes, that was often the cause of more tenderness and admiration in those she meant to dazzle, than when she looked up, or straight forward.

Offers she had had in plenty, and for two seasons she had been the reigning belle of Montreal. By a subtile perception, Roland had been distinctly conscious that she preferred him to any other man of her acquaintance, and that her eye brightened and her smile sweetened at his approach.

He had ever felt a strange joy in her society, and a pride in being seen with her, for is it not something to excite envy and jealousy by being the favoured partner of the acknowledged belle of every ball! In attractiveness her tone and manner were quite different to all that Roland had met before, and yet he had moved in the best society everywhere.

Though but a few months had elapsed since he saw Aurelia last, her figure seemed to have attained more roundness than before, and her soft features a more decided character; most winning and shy was her smile, most graceful her carriage, and sweet was her voice when she welcomed him to Montreal again.

"It is eight whole months since I had the pleasure of seeing you last, Miss Darnel," said he, after a rather awkward pause.

"Eight months—yes, true."

"A gap in life—in my life at least."

"Filled up by sadness?"

"Exceeding sadness, and much mortification," said he.

"I was but a little girl when papa died, yet I can remember what a wrench it was. In losing your father—"

"I lost more than him."

"More!"

She looked up at him inquiringly; could he tell her all he had lost—his heritage—his grand old baronial home, a princely estate—even honour itself, for thus, in his over-sensitiveness, did Roland view the matter of the long-hidden will!

"If matters remain quiet here among the colonists, Miss Darnell, I mean to leave the regiment."

"Leave the Scots Royals—the Royal Regiment!" she exclaimed with surprise; "I thought it was the second home of your family; I have often heard you say so."

"It can no longer be mine."

"Why?"

"For reasons that I cannot tell—even to you."

"Ah, pardon me; but what do you mean to do?"

"Soldier still—of course."

"But where?"

"In India."

"In India!" she exclaimed, with a depth of interest that made Roland's heart beat wildly; "oh, how far, far away!"

"Far away from you;—oh, Miss Darnel—Aurelia!" His heart was rushing to his head.

At that moment a visitor, Colonel Smash, of U.S. army, was announced, and Roland withdrew, leaving unsaid all that he ought to have said—that she expected him to say, and what he would have said, but for the secret of that accursed cabinet of Scindia.

Could she have looked into his heart and read his thoughts, through the window which Vulcan wished had been placed in every human breast!

Both Aurelia and Madame Darnel had a right to expect something more to develop itself from the visit of Roland; but he felt himself a very craven, and retired, leaving her with the most absurd of her many admirers, Colonel Ithurial Smash, a long-legged, hard-featured, and most ungainly New Yorker, whose rivalry was too contemptible for Roland's consideration, though he did marvel whether one could "possibly parade a fellow," for interrupting one's conversation with his cousin—for in this degree of relationship the "Colonel" somehow stood to Aurelia Darnel.

CHAPTER VI.
COLONEL SMASH.

After this, many days elapsed, and Roland, having ever before him the last crushing communication of Messrs. Hook and Crook, never went near the Chateau de St. Eustache, much to the surprise of Logan, whose mind was sorely exercised on that subject, and on some new and unwonted peculiarities of temper and system which he discovered in his old friend and once jolly comrade.

Aurelia, too, felt some surprise at his protracted absence, and that she never saw him at the promenades and public places where she had been wont to see him before.

She was thinking could he have fallen in love with some one else—she always thought he loved her—some one in Scotland where he had been? If so, what business had he to come to her and talk, and act, and look, too, as if he were free and fetterless? Could he have been playing with her, making a fool of her all along? How coldly and quietly he had talked about going to India, too.

Ah no! could she have seen Roland Ruthven at that very time! He was kissing, looking at, smoothing out, and caressing a tiny kid glove, which he had begged from her at that very ball where they first met, on the 5th of August—the fatal day of the Ruthvens, as Elspat Gorm was wont to call it.

"Roland, old fellow," said Logan, dropping into his quarters one evening when he was dressing for mess, "what is up—you look like the ace of spades? Never saw a fellow so changed in all my life."

"One day you may know all, Hector—meantime, don't worry me," replied Roland, with the hair brushes suspended in action above his thick head of dark brown hair, while Logan smoked and talked. His toilet table bespoke taste and that wealth which he no longer possessed, with its ivory-handled brushes having on them the Ruthven arms; his dressing-case of silver-gilt, with gold-topped essence bottles in nests of blue velvet; rings, jewelled studs, and sleeve-links, lay there scattered about, with pipe heads of rare fashion and costly material.

"You are not using that girl well, Roland—you know what I mean; before you went on leave you were like her shadow, and now——"

"I can't get over my scruples about—about——"

"What, in the name of heaven?"

"Well, about making up to a girl who has a fortune—a very handsome income, at all events—when I am so out at the elbows."

"Out at the elbows—are you mad?"

"The thing would look ill—yet I could make a little running with her," said Roland, with a dreary attempt to be lively.

"I should think so. Ruthven of Ardgowrie out at the elbows—why, man alive, what the devil has come to you? You could marry Miss Darnel without exciting anybody but her special admirers. There is no 'establishment' to break up; no fair denizen of such a villa as is proverbial at St. John's Wood to tear her dyed locks, and demand a monetary kind of 'loot'—so I say again, what the deuce has come to you?" asked Logan, with genuine surprise.

"That which I cannot tell."

"Even to me?" asked the other reproachfully.

"Even to you, old fellow, just yet."

"This passes my comprehension."

"The misfortune that has befallen me passes mine."

"She is a delightful girl, Roland," said Logan, after a pause, during which he had been reflectively preparing another cigar; "she never misses fire in the way of a repartee or a brilliant rejoinder."

"In that I agree with you," replied Roland, quietly.

"How cold you are."

"I am far from feeling so, any way," said Roland, with a sigh.

"Can't make you out, by Jove! In the Chateau de St. Eustache, unless I am very much mistaken, you have gone in for some very effective bits of flirtation, in which the inconstant moon played no inconsiderable part."

"Flirtation, Logan? I never could flirt with Aurelia Darnell."

"Indeed!" said the other incredulously; "why?"

"Because I love her too sincerely."

"Yet you never go near that house where you have often acted almost as host to the whole garrison, and where that horrible Yankee Colonel has the field all to himself."

"Oh! he is a cousin of some sort—but what the devil is he to me?"

"Well—he is a good shot I hear."

"A shot—d—n him!" said Ronald, with considerable irritation of manner; "I would think very little of parading him on the other side of the Canadian frontier."

"I don't doubt that, Ronald, old man; but he has fought several duels, and successfully I hear."

"With double-barrelled rifles, at two hundred yards' distance, each man posted behind a tree, and dodging every way to dodge the other's fire. Well, I would meet him that way if he wished it. I have asked the Colonel to mess."

"To mess?"

"Yes."

"That fellow! What will the Colonel and others think? Your reason is, I suppose, to keep up a connecting link with the Chateau?"

"Perhaps so," said Roland, wearily; and, sooth to say, that was his sole reason.

"Well, if with the rental of Ardgowrie, you can't——"

"Please not to speak of Ardgowrie," said Roland impatiently, as he thrust himself into his shell-jacket; "there go the drums for mess."

It was impossible that Aurelia could have any regard, even, amenity, for this horrible American cousin, the Colonel; yet if she had, Roland felt that the changed circumstances of his own fortune tied up his tongue and would render his attentions an interference; yet it was scarcely possible for him to look on such a dangler or admirer with total indifference.

The Colonel, of whom we shall have more to relate anon, came duly to mess, where his appearance and bearing caused some speculation, and not a little secret mirth among Roland's brother officers, who were all men of a very good style and tone.

Lean, wiry, and powerfully made, he was above the middle height, had sharp aquiline features of an exaggerated type, that might not have been bad but for a chronic expression of vulgar suspicion and 'cuteness that played about his eyes, giving him a rather hangdog look; moreover, he had lost three front teeth in a row in Arkansas. He was closely shaven all save a long square goatee imperial that quivered when he spoke. Then he had a nervous way of clutching his hat and banging it against his thigh, with a curious but unmeaning energy. His clothes were loosely made, and he wore enormous cuffs, collar and studs. Every way, he looked, as Logan said, "like a man you would rather drink with than fight with, any day."

The Colonel had of course the usual American ideas about equality, and "the sovereign people," with considerable contempt for the little island, from whence "the Britishers came."

Doubtless he had never seen such a dinner-table us the mess of the Royals before, with all its massive and magnificent silver trophies, epergnes, and goblets—even the White House could not equal it; thus his utter bewilderment excited as much amusement as his gaucherie, for he picked his teeth with a silver fork, rinsed his mouth with the contents of his finger-glass, and so forth; but he made good use of his time in more ways than one, as we shall show.

"Strike me ugly, but this is a fine set of fixings! and that one in particular," he added, tapping with his knife a magnificent vase presented to the corps by its colonel, the late Duke of Kent.

As a friend of the Darnels, Roland was very attentive to "the Colonel," who was very loquacious on the subject of the local excitement among the Canadians of the Lower Province, then agitated by factious men who sought to dictate to the Government measures which were not deemed conducive to the welfare of the State, were actually preparing to rise in arms, and counted on the sympathy and support of American filibusters and all manner of desperate and broken fellows from beyond the frontier.

During the summer of that year, and while Roland had been in Scotland, the House of Assembly had refused to proceed in its deliberations until the demand for a total alteration of the legislative powers was complied with; and this was followed by the appearance of many of the colonists in arms, and by serious violations of the law.

On these matters, and the prospects of a row with the authorities, "the Colonel" was more loquacious than became a guest at a regimental mess; but more than once his phraseology excited the risibility of even the waiters. When offered wine, he asked if he "couldn't get some egg-nogg." He described the dry goods store he had once kept at Baltimore, and of the two clubs there, of which he was chairman, the "black snakes" and the "plug uglies," and Roland's bewilderment grew very great to think that such a man as this could be even an acquaintance, far less some remote kinsman of Aurelia Darnel.

Like all Americans, he boasted a good deal and had a sovereign contempt for every other constitution in the world save that of the United States, draining all kinds of wine in quick succession, and ever and anon announcing that he "was dry as thunder," till Roland felt as one in a fever for having such a guest, and saw the commanding officer regarding him with a rather mingled expression of face.

In short, it proved in the end that Colonel Smash was a spy of the intended insurgents, and contrived to glean up a considerable amount of information as to the positions and strength of the Queen's troops in Lower Canada, all of which he duly committed to his notebook.

He sat late, or early rather, and never left the mess table till the sweet, low notes of the old Scottish reveille were waking the echoes of the lonely barrack-square when he went forth, as Logan said, "like an inveterate soaker, without a hair of his coat being turned."

Assisted by Roland, through the medium of cigars and brandy-and-water, Logan was going over the books of his company, to wit, the ledger, day-book, and the acquittance roll, which is rendered every month to the commanding officer—an investigation to Hector of a very solemn nature, whereat there was much occasional anathematising, twisting of the moustache, appealing glances cast to the ceiling, a secret totting off of sums under the table, much rubbing of the chin, and many references to a ready-reckoner—when they were interrupted by the adjutant, who came clattering in with sword and belt on, and his face full of importance.

"What's the row?" asked Logan, looking up.

"Row enough!" replied the adjutant, laughing; "these colonial beggars are up in arms, and four companies of ours have to take the field to-morrow in the direction of Chambly, with some cavalry, a howitzer, and two six-pounders!"

"Bravo—anything is better than this sort of work!" exclaimed Logan, tossing the books aside. "At what hour do we fall-in?"

"Immediately after the men have breakfasted."

Roland looked at his watch; the November evening was darkening fast; he borrowed the adjutant's horse, gave a few instructions rapidly to his servant, and in a few minutes more was spurring in the direction of the Chateau de St. Eustache.

Come what might of it, he had resolved to see once more Aurelia Darnel, and bid her farewell.

CHAPTER VII.
"LOVE WAS YET THE LORD OF ALL."

Many mails had come to headquarters without any fresh intelligence from Messrs. Hook and Crook concerning the lost or rival heir to Ardgowrie, and Roland Ruthven had gathered a little courage from that circumstance, and with it even love strengthened in his heart as he rode on.

What a credit such a wife, such a girl, such a brilliant young matron, as Aurelia would be, representing at balls, dinners, and everything, the married ladies of the regiment! She would be the veritable Queen of the Scots Royals! But that could not—might not be, so far as Roland was concerned if the heir of his uncle were actually found; and in this mingled mood of mind he spurred onward the adjutant's horse, in a mode that must rather have surprised that quiet quadruped, to bid Aurelia, it might be, a last farewell.

With all the advantages of a highly cultivated mind, trained in one of the best West End educational establishments, she possessed all the attractive manners of a French girl, with the honest fearlessness of an English one, innocent of worldly trickery and the deceits of society, and yet she was a girl well calculated to shine amidst that charmed circle.

Roland had shown her innumerable attentions, but, as we have elsewhere said, till he could arrange with his father as to his future he had spoken no word distinctly of love to her yet; and now he dared not!

The polite or politic coldness he had displayed of late, was thus very different to the bearing towards her which the girl, from his past conduct, had every right to expect. She was piqued and rather prepared for a flirtation with Logan or any one else; and thus at balls or elsewhere a lot of men were always hovering about her, among whom was too often the obnoxious Colonel Smash, the low state of whose exchequer would have made an alliance with the heiress of St. Eustache a very pleasant speculation.

Roland, with his pay only, or little more—the sum he accorded to himself out of the rents of Ardgowrie, and meant to refund—felt that he had no right to ask her hand, or seek to lure her from amid objects and associations endeared to her by taste and her earlier years, and, more than all, from the luxuries by which she was surrounded.

And yet it was with him, as it is with some others, barriers to his hopes and wishes only made these wishes and hopes all the more keen; and thus whenever he left her he would pause and commune with himself from time to time, conning over her words and her glances, as if to glean therefrom whether he was indifferent to her or not.

The doubts and fears that agitated Roland's heart were painful and poignant; had he been as he ought to have been, Laird of Ardgowrie, fortalice and manor, wood and mountain, with what honest confidence would he have told her of the love he dared not speak of now!

Yet it was so sweet to dream on; for the artless simplicity of Aurelia's manner, and the freshness of her untutored heart, had led him to know and feel that the greatest personal attractions may be second to excelling qualities in the girl one loves.

When he entered the familiar drawing-room, with its air of culture and wealth, pictures, statuettes, and bronzes, and saw from the windows the familiar view he might now be looking upon for the last time, Aurelia did not hear him announced. She was alone, seated at the piano, and singing one of those Chansons Canadiennes, as they are named, which she had learned from her mother, for among the French Canadians of all ranks there linger yet the chansons, refrains, and barcarolles, brought from Brittany and La Vendée by their ancestors three hundred years ago; and when Roland suddenly appeared by her side, she started, and arose, surprise mingling with her smile of pleasure, as the hour was an unusual one for a visit.

"I do not ask you to resume your singing, Miss Darnel," said Roland, in a voice that lacked all firmness, "as I have but a few minutes to remain with you, and these may, perhaps, be the last we shall ever spend together."

Her glance drooped, then she lifted her long, silky and most killing lashes, and Roland gazed with unconcealed tenderness into her eyes, which were of that deeply dark blue, which at times and in some lights, especially by night, seem almost black.

"You are, then, going to India?" she asked, in a breathless voice.

"No, Miss Darnel; and yet I am come to say good-bye."

"Good-bye?"

"We take the field to-morrow."

"Against whom?" she asked, growing very pale; "the Insurgents?"

"Yes—the French malcontents and others, I am sorry to say."

"And to-morrow—oh, that is sudden indeed—mamma is from home—and—and——"

Roland could see how her bosom heaved; his heart was rushing to his head, and he drew nearer to her. A black velvet riband, that hung down her back from her delicate white neck, was awry; he put it straight, and then trembled. No one surpassed Roland Ruthven in confidence with women, or at a little bout of persiflage with a jolly flirting girl; but now he was very silent and sad.

The frill of lace that encircled her neck was ruffled in one place, and by a delicate and almost caressing touch he smoothed it as her own brother might have done; then his hands stole softly downward and took each, of hers, while his heart beat like lightning.

"Miss Darnel."

She was trembling now, and her sweet face quivered.

"Aurelia."

"Well, Mr. Ruthven."

"I am about to leave, it may be for ever."

"Do not say so!" she said, almost imploringly, while her eyes filled with tears.

"If anything in this world could make me feel like the Roland Ruthven of a year ago, hopeful, trustful, and happy, it is to see that I am not indifferent to you. Aurelia—my love—my darling!"

She looked at him wistfully for a moment, and ere her white eyelids drooped, a long kiss came, and then a silence, full of happiness most strangely blended with an emotion of intense gratitude, while his arm went round her, and her face was nestled in his neck, and he began, at broken intervals, much that was soft nonsense; but "it was the nonsense which every woman loves to hear from one man (at least) during her life-time."

Then suddenly, while still retaining her hands, and looking at her with infinite tenderness, he told of his great love for her, but how poverty had tied his tongue—poverty brought upon him through a will executed by his grandfather, which deprived him of all he possessed in the world, save his sword, for now the lost heir of Ardgowrie had been found, and no doubt by this time knew of his good fortune.

Roland had to repeat this more than once ere she quite understood him, for Aurelia felt as one in a dream—but a dream of happiness, for "is there any other time," says some one, "like that, when the knowledge comes upon you, that you are singled out, that you are admired most, that one other person is happy only when near you, that eyes are watching for your eyes, that a hand is waiting to touch your hand, when every speech has a new meaning, every word a bewildering significance."

"And you do love me?" she asked, in a low cooing whisper that filled his heart with rapture; he could only utter a deep sigh, and kiss her again.

"And you are poor—Roland?"

"As I have told you," he replied, his heart thrilling again at her utterance of his Christian name for the first time.

"Well—I am rich—all I have is yours; I am my own mistress, and mamma loves me too well, and you also, to thwart our wishes."

"Darling Aurelia—it is incredible—that—that——"

Roland knew not what he was about to say, so solved the difficulty with a long caress, from which Aurelia suddenly started back, as she now perceived they had a listener.

Unseen by both, Colonel Ithuriel Smash had been standing in the archway of the outer drawing-room, with a curiously malignant expression on his very marked visage, for he had evidently overheard and overseen the whole interview. His presence occasionally at the Château de St. Eustache was only tolerated by Madame Darnel because he was penniless, his store in 75th Avenue having been sold up; and now he was fostering, on the strength of a very remote relationship, some very bold views with regard to Aurelia.

"Jerusalem, apple-sauce, and earthquakes, my young Britisher, but you make yourself quite at home in the house of my kinsman!" exclaimed the Colonel, who had concocted an effervescing drink in a long tumbler, and was leisurely stirring it with the jack-knife used by him for cutting his pig-tail tobacco; "I wonder blood has not been shed about you before this, Miss Aurelia Darnel."

"Blood!" exclaimed Roland, swelling with indignation.

"Jerusalem! but it may be shed soon."

"But, that I am under orders for Chambly to-morrow, I might condescend to punish your insolence and your daring intrusion!"

Roland pressed the hand of Aurelia again, and in doing so deftly slipped a ring upon her engaged finger; he then kissed her deliberately and withdrew (just as the servants came in with lights), exchanging with Smash one of those unmistakable glances that is expressive of—and rivets for life—a hate that dies not, fired by the secret instinct of mutual enmity; yet Roland despised himself for having a foe so ignoble.

That night, without delaying an hour, Colonel Ithuriel Smash took his departure in the direction of Chambly!

Of so little importance had his presence been, that Aurelia never missed him as she sat alone, in a dream of joy that was not unclouded with anxiety for the cause of Roland's departure, and yet it was that event which brought the joy to pass, by laying bare the secret heart of each.

So the girl smiled fondly to herself, as she gazed at and kissed again and again her engagement-ring; and it seemed as if her former life had passed away and a new one of greater sunshine and brightness had begun; and long she sat there looking dreamily at the lovely moon (shining over the spires of Montreal), round as the shield of Fingal, her sweet face wreathed with smiles that no eyes could see, unless they were those of the old man who dwelleth therein.

CHAPTER VIII.
THE INSURRECTION.

Roland's heart was brimming with happiness and gratitude for the love and generosity of Aurelia Darnel, and it seemed actually to dance in his breast joyously, when, next morning, the four companies detailed for service marched from Montreal, with the colours flying, the bayonets fixed, and the band playing the old regimental quick-step of the pre-Revolution days, varied by the pipes,—

"Dumbarton's drums beat bonnie O,"

in memory of the Colonel, that loyal and gallant Earl, who followed his royal master into exile and died at St. Germains.

A hundred times Roland asked himself, why had he not tested the great love of Aurelia before? why had he lost so much time and so much happiness? A little time—the insurrection ended, and he would be by her side again, as he had somewhat needlessly assured her in a passionate little farewell note, dispatched that morning.

A little time? Alas, the first day of absence seemed to consist of at least seventy-two hours!

The force which now took the field by order of Lieutenant General Sir John Colborne (afterwards Lord Seaton), G.C.B., Colonel of the Cameronians, a wounded veteran of the Peninsular war, consisted of detachments of the 24th, 32nd, and 66th Regiments, with one howitzer, under the Hon. Colonel Charles Gore, son of the Earl of Arran, and afterwards Deputy Quartermaster-General in Canada, who marched towards St. Denis and St. Charles, with orders to arrest certain armed traitors who were alleged to be in these villages.

At the same time, Colonel Wetherall, with his four companies of the Royal Scots Regiment, Captain David's troop of Montreal Cavalry, a detachment of the 66th, and two six-pounders, was to move on the last-named village to assist a magistrate in executing the warrants.

The month was November, the weather severe, and the roads bad; the men were in heavy marching order, with knapsacks, great coats and blankets, camp-kettles, and with the arms and ammunition of the day, making up a load of seventy-five pounds twelve ounces per man; but all were in the highest spirits. Anything seemed better than moping in barracks, and when the music ceased as they marched "at ease," they made the forests resound to their merry choruses.

All parts of the country thereabout which have not been cleared for cultivation are covered with timber, and he alone, says a traveller, who has visited these regions of interminable forest can form an adequate idea of their dreariness, yet there the red oak, the white pine, the beech, elm, cedar, and maple mingle their branches ad infinitum.

Here and there a lonely clearing was passed, where, amid lofty trees devoid of lateral branches, their stems or stumps scorched and blackened by fire, stood the log hut of a settler, who, with his wild-looking brood, came forth to gaze with wonder, perhaps hostility, at the passing troops.

In autumn these magnificent forests assume hues of every shade—yellow, brown, and red—under sunsets which present the most glorious assemblages of clouds. But winter was the season now; the leaves had fallen; the humming-birds and fire-flies had departed, and the wild fowl had taken refuge on the lakes or the St. Lawrence.

The force under Colonel Wetherall crossed the Richelieu River by the upper ferry at the village of Chambly, where, in the days of the monarchy, the French had a strong palisaded fort; but the nature of the roads and the unfavourable weather seriously impeded his march, while information having reached him that the rebels in arms at St. Charles had been greatly increased in numbers, and had with them a number of lawless American or Yankee "sympathisers," under his late guest, Colonel Smash, whom he remembered at the mess, eating peas with his knife and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand; so he made a halt at St. Hilaire, until he could be joined by a fifth company of the 1st Royal Scots under Hector Logan.

On that night it was evident that the country was alarmed. Instead of the stillness usual to the time, the clanging of church bells was heard at intervals, with the barking of dogs, the report of firearms occasionally, the blowing of conches and horns, red alarm-fires blazed up on the dark summits of the distant hills; and more than once horsemen in hot haste dashed past the advanced sentinels without responding to their challenge, and as the troops, as yet, were only acting in support of the civil power, they could not fire upon these strangers.

This was the night of the 24th November, and to Roland, like many others, it was a sleepless one, as he commanded an out-picket and had to visit his sentinels every hour.

On one side of his post rolled the mighty river, reflecting in its ripples the star-spangled sky; on the other, stretched away into darkness and utter obscurity the vast dingles of an American forest, planted and grown by nature.

His mind was full of that last evening with Aurelia and all its sweet details. On his odious rival he scarcely bestowed a thought, and he felt happier than an emperor in his palace, as he lay there, with his cloak around him, his sword and pistols at hand, his head pillowed on a pine-log, and all oblivious of the rattlesnakes, which there are six feet long. Near him was Robert Bruce, one of his sentinels, treading softly to and fro, with bayonet fixed, and singing to himself the old Scottish barrackroom ditty:—

"Poor Willie was landed at bonnie Dumbarton,
Where the stream from Loch Lomond runs into the sea,
While at home in sweet Ireland, he left Mary Martin,
With a babe at her breast and a child at her knee."

The night passed in quietude, apart from the alarming sounds mentioned; on the 25th November the march was resumed, and on coming within a mile of St. Charles, puffs of white smoke spirted out of the dark jungly brushwood on the opposite side of the river, as the rebels daringly opened a straggling fire upon Her Majesty's troops. A Royal Scot was struck down by Roland's side, and several were wounded.

Rifle shots were also fired from a barn in front.

"Push on, Logan!" exclaimed Colonel Wetherall; "push on and storm that place at the point of the bayonet!"

Logan advanced with his company at a rush; his powerful arm burst in the door; the place was taken, all in it bayoneted or put to flight, and then it was set in flames, the whole affair occupying little more than the time we take to narrate the episode.

Near St. Charles were more than fifteen hundred insurrectionists under Papineau and Colonel Smash, posted in a strong and closely stockaded work from which they opened a sharp and serious fire, the echoes of which the adjacent forest repeated with a thousand reverberations, while the whole place seemed enveloped in white smoke, streaked with flashes of red fire.

The Royals responded with several rounds well thrown in; but they had stormed too many such, works in Burmah, the land of stockades, to linger in attacking this one.

A breach was beaten in by axe and hammer, and cannon shot together. In three minutes the place was carried by storm and its occupants bayoneted, shot down, or put to flight; but not before seventeen of the Royals, and four of the 66th were killed, and a great number wounded, while Colonel Wetherall and Major Warde had their horses shot under them, and Roland's cheek was grazed by a rifle shot.

The mingled curses and imprecations, yells of agony and rage, seemed to fill the air, when the roar of the firing died away, and the prisoners were disarmed and secured. "Every officer and man behaved nobly," says the dispatch of Colonel Wetherall. "Major Warde carried the right of the position in good style, and Captain George Mark Glasgow's Artillery did good execution; he is a most zealous officer; and Captain David's troop of Montreal Cavalry rendered essential service during the charge."

The murder of stray soldiers from time to time, and particularly that of George Weir, a young lieutenant of the 32nd Cornish Light Infantry, who was bound to a cart, and hacked to pieces with his own sword, by certain miscreants (among whom Ithuriel Smash was supposed to be one), now began to infuse in the minds of the troops much of that rancour which adds to the severity of a civil strife.

After the stockade had been uprooted and destroyed, the troops returned to St. Hilaire and remained in cantonments for three days. There a dragoon of the Montreal Cavalry arrived with the mail, which brought from Aurelia Darnel the first letter she had ever addressed him, and the sight of her hand-writing raised Roland at once to the seventh heaven of delight. We know not whether he kissed it, but think it extremely probable that he did, if no one was near.

As the contents of love-letters are of interest to the recipients thereof alone, and the said contents, with all their half-fatuous endearments and double diminutives, are at times rather grotesque, the reader need not be troubled with that of Aurelia, save in one part thereof.

"I told dearest mamma of all that had passed between us, shewed her our engagement ring, and added, that as soon as leisure permitted, you would write to her on that subject. She was agitated, the dear old soul, and tearful at the fear of losing me; but kissed me many times, and said she was certain we would be happy together, and that she loved you with all her heart. Oh, think of that, Roland! But we shall have mamma to live with us, won't we dearest, when I am your own—your very own? She will be a comfort to us both, and not at all like the proverbial 'mother-in-law' of the novel and play. But I must now conclude, as we are both on the eve of starting for our Seigneury of St. Eustache, where the French people are taking up arms; but they love mamma so much, that she hopes she may prevail upon them to refrain from breaking the Queen's peace. So adieu till I write you from there, dearest, dearest," &c., &c.

And then, of course, there was a postscript, containing "cartloads of kisses."

Had she told Madame Darnel about the long-hidden will and his changed circumstances?

Roland rather supposed not; she was generous and loving enough, in her love and joy to have forgotten all about the matter!

Roland found an entire day's occupation in reading again and again the letter of Aurelia, nor was it fairly consigned to that breast-pocket in his uniform which contained her glove, till the warning drum beat on the 28th, when the troops marched to attack another body of the rebels, who had taken post at Point Oliviere, and had actually constructed there an abatis of felled trees for the purpose of cutting off the retreat of Wetherall's entire force!

But when the Royals came in sight, with their brass-drums beating and fixed bayonets gleaming bright and keen in the cold winter sun, and deployed from the line of march with coolness and confidence into companies for attack, after exchanging a few shots, the rebels lost all heart, and fled, with the loss of their cannon, which Roland captured at the head of his company, sword in hand, together with twenty-five prisoners, and then rescued his captain, a brave fellow, who in the first advance got entangled among the branches of the abatis and ran thus the serious risk of being shot down helpless; and for all this, Roland was elaborately and honourably mentioned in Colonel Wetherall's dispatch to Sir John Colborne.

On the same day the Colonel's force returned to Chambly with the captured guns and prisoners; but though elated by their success every officer and man was suffering greatly from the heavy and chill rain which turned into mud the wretched roads that were already knee-deep in snow.

Meanwhile tidings reached them that the Queen's forces, under Colonel Gore, had encountered such formidable obstruction, and opposition, and, moreover, endured so much from the severity of the Canadian winter, which had set in with all its bitterness, that they had been compelled to fall back from St. Denis, and retire.

Marching was now laborious work, for when frost came, the troops had to wear creepers, or plates of spikes strapped to their feet.

The snow lay so deep that one might almost imagine no power of the sun would ever melt it; and, at times, when the leafless trees are coated on every branch and twig with ice, whole forests seem to be turned into crystal, when the rays of light produce ten thousand prisms, and most wonderful is the effect if there is a slight breeze to set them in motion.

Wetherall had partially, by his great success, arrested the rebellion in his own quarter; but it was in all its strength elsewhere, and the troops had many severe and harassing duties to perform amid the frost and snow of a very severe winter. It has justly been said that the British officer is essentially a dandy, that "the neatly and closely cropped hair, the well-trimmed mustache, the set up figure, the spotless gloves, boots bright as a mirror, and the general air of dandyism are the outward symbols of those qualities which make men good soldiers."

It no doubt is so. The set up figure remained, but in Canada at that particular juncture, the dandyism had nearly departed, as much as it did in the Crimea.

Amid these duties, Roland could have no letters from Aurelia; neither could he write, for the postal arrangements were completely suspended, or could only be carried on by parties of armed men.

At last there came a day—one of horror—and Roland never forgot it!

"Look here, old fellow," said Logan, with a bright expression on his handsome face, bringing him a copy of the Montreal Gazette some weeks old; "as Byron says, 'pleasant 'tis to see one's name in print—'"

"Even in the 'Army List?'"

"Yes, and proud was I when first I saw my name there," said Logan.

"Well, whose name is in print now?"

"Yours."

"Mine!" A sickening thought occurred to Roland of the story of the concealed will, Ardgowrie, and the discovered heir or heirs, for though he had schooled himself to face the idea, it was a bitter one; therefore, it was only a relief to his mind to find, that the matter referred to, was the fact that he was favourably mentioned and thanked in General Orders by Sir John Colborne, commanding Her Majesty's forces in Canada. "for his gallantry displayed on the 28th of November last, at the abatis of Point Oliviere."

As he read it he thought of Aurelia, and the pleasure such a notice would afford her; and was carelessly running his eyes over the columns of the paper, when they caught her name—her name—and mentioned in a way that made his blood turn alternately cold as ice, and hot as fire!

When proceeding in her sledge, with her daughter Aurelia, Madame Darnel had been stopped and surrounded near her own seigneury "by a band of rebels under the notorious Colonel Smash, for whose arrest a reward is now offered."

The old lady had been subjected to such violence, that she had fainted and been borne to the house of the curé insensible, while her beautiful daughter was brutally carried off by the "Yankee Sympathiser," and was now, if alive, a helpless prisoner in his hands at St. Eustache.

Roland was petrified with grief and dismay by intelligence, so deplorable—so terrible! Logan, full of just anger and great indignation, was speaking to him, but Roland knew not what he said.

The former was recalling the views "the Colonel" had with regard to Aurelia; he recalled, too, his eavesdropping, his rancorous hatred, threats, and jealousy; he recalled, also, the whole character and bearing of the man, and when he thought of the soft, gentle, and beautiful Aurelia being helpless in his power, at such a time, when the whole of Lower Canada was rent by civil dissension, outrage, and bloodshed, and when the Queen's troops were menaced everywhere, the heart of Roland seemed to die within him!

Again and again had Roland thought, while angry pride mingled with love and gratitude, that in marrying Aurelia, he would deprive her of no luxury to which she had been accustomed,—horses and carriages in summer, the sledge in winter, a dressing maid, or the thousand and one little things which wealth can procure, because she had that; but he had longed to make her mistress of Ardgowrie!

Now—now, when he had lost her, perhaps for ever, how pitiful and minor seemed all such considerations.

CHAPTER IX.
THE ABDUCTION OF AURELIA.

In the main, the newspaper report was correct.

Madame Darnel, with the amiable object in view stated in the letter of Aurelia, had been proceeding with her toward her own estate, which was near the pleasant and well-built village of St. Eustache, in Lower Canada. It consisted then of about a hundred houses, a handsome church and parsonage, and is situated near the mouth of the river Du Chine.

Her sledge was a handsome and fashionable one; the day was clear and bright, the snow, though deep, was frozen hard, and the sledge glided along delightfully. It was drawn by two fine horses, with showy harness, set off by high hoops with silver bells on the saddles, with rosettes of ribbon and streamers of coloured horse-hair on the bridles; and Aurelia—her charming face flushed and pinky with frosty air, a cosy boa round her slender neck, her hand, through gloved, inserted in a sable muff,—was enjoying to the utmost the gay jingle of the bells, the nice crisp sound of the runners of the sledge, when suddenly and involuntarily a shrill scream broke from her, when at a turn of the road near the river, where the cuttings in the banked-up snow lay deep between two rows of picket-fencing, a musket was fired, and their driver fell forward, a corpse, shot through the head, and the vehicle was surrounded by a mob of men.

Infuriated or sullen, but all ruffianly in aspect, these men nearly all wore fur caps, with large flaps down their cheeks, enormous pea jackets or blanket coats patched and tattered, with India-rubber shoes, or moose-skin mocassins, or thick cloth boots with high leggings.

All were armed with pikes, pitch-forks, swords, and pistols; many had fowling pieces; many more had muskets and bayonets, and wore cross-belts stolen from Government armouries or stripped from the slain; and some carried their ammunition in hunting pouches and shot bags.

One who seemed the leader wore a huge coat of buffalo hide, and looked like some great wild animal, for of the human face, nothing was visible, but a long blue nose and a pair of red and blood-shot eyes.

"Jerusalem and ginger nuts, but that was a shot well put in!" exclaimed this personage, whose voice there was no mistaking, and the two horrified and helpless creatures found that they were in the hands of that gang of the insurgents—the most dastardly and lawless—led by Ithuriel Smash.

Their first emotions on finding themselves in the centre of such a savage throng, were undoubtedly those of extreme terror and shrinking delicacy; but Madame Darnel for a time forgot her naturally womanish apprehensions, collected the powers of her mind, and throwing up her veil, confronted the whole band, which mustered more than a hundred men.

Among that mob were many on whom Aurelia and her mother had conferred countless acts of kindness and charity in sickness and health; but, like low-born and ungrateful cowards, they hung back now, when they should have rushed to her defence.

Certainly, to some of the French insurgents, the appeal of Madame Darnel, a handsome woman about forty years of age, with an intelligent and sweet expression in her well-cut features, and every way a person of refinement and delicacy, was not without a little effect; but the announcement of Smash that her daughter was his affianced wife who "intended to slope with one of the 'tarnal Britishers," against whom they were in arms, deprived poor Aurelia of all sympathy, and a roar of menace escaped his hearers.

"Is this conduct your return for my kindness and charity to a creature so immensely beneath me?" asked Madame Darnel.

"As whom?" asked Smash.

"You, fellow!"

"D—n your cussed impudence! Now then, Aurelia, come along, white face. You look as if you required a box of our New York 'Never-say-die or Health-restoring pills,'" said Smash; and a shriek burst from the girl as his coarse fingers with their long spiky nails grasped her tender arm, and she was literally torn away from her horrified mother, who fainted, and was borne off by some of the better disposed to the house of the curé.

Followed by the armed rabble, the helpless Aurelia incapable of all resistance, was dragged through the village of St. Eustache, and taken a literal prisoner, or victim, to her mother's house which adjoined, the seigneury of the Darnels, wherein Colonel Smash had established his headquarters.

For a moment or two she thought to conciliate her chief captor.

Tears big and bright were welling in her dark blue eyes; her bonnet and veil had been torn off, and her dark hair all unconfined rolled over her back and shoulders, as she stood with clasped hands and pleading looks before the so-called Colonel.

"Do shake hands with me," she condescended in her first fear to say; "shake hands, Ithuriel—let us be friends, and send me back to mamma, or bring her here."

"Friends—friends be darned!" roared Ithuriel, whose plug of pigtail dropped out of his lantern jaws, after which he proceeded to air it on the point of his jack knife, while eyeing her with mingled malevolence and admiration, and seated himself on a table. "You won't give me a kiss, I suppose; but I can take as many as I like, I reckon; and you look as if you scarcely remembered me—Ithuriel Alcibiades Smash. Strike me ugly, but that's a bad compliment. But," added the bantering ruffian, "I calculate I'll survive it! Flirtation and courtship are two very different things, Miss Aurelia, and I ain't disposed to flirt with you, as you'll find out before long."

Smash did not yet molest her; but she knew not what he might do if he imbibed much brandy, as he had a bottle beside him, and was helping himself liberally to the contents thereof, while he talked; and she eyed him with fast-growing alarm.

That he had shot the poor sledge-driver, an old and faithful domestic whom she had known from childhood, Aurelia never doubted; and that deed added to her unfathomable loathing and horror of him. She shivered in his presence, and shuddered whenever he drew near her. She glanced wildly at the room door, but escape was hopeless. He saw the glance and laughed aloud.

Was she acting in a melo-drama with the ruffian, as the heavy villain of the piece? Was it all a dream? It almost seemed so, the whole situation with all its contingent horrors and future uncertainties, appeared so new, so unnatural and unreal! He seemed to read her thoughts, for he said,—

"Was it not to spite that tarnation Britisher, who used to come into the room with an opera hat under his arm, like a roasted fowl with its gizzard, I might give you a little time to think of marrying me."

"Marry you!" exclaimed Aurelia in a peculiar tone, that filled him with rage and caused him to indulge in much language that was "more pagan than parliamentary" till he roused her scorn and anger.

"Coarse fool, and worse than fool! how dare you use language that is unfit for me to hear?"

"'Guess your Britisher will never see his wretched little island again—too many rifle bullets flying for that," said he irrelevantly, as he saw how every reference to Roland affected her. "You encouraged that 'ere Britisher," continued the Colonel, still airing his quid on his jack knife.

"Encouraged—how dare you say so?"

"Dare—there is no daring in it, my dear. Who commands here—you or I?"

"Sir, you presume upon your relationship in some way with mamma, to talk to me thus, surely."

"I presume only on my own love for you, and would keep you, a daughter of Canada, as I would a daughter of America, from the contamination of that 'tarnal red-coated British slave!"

Still, as yet, save when dragging her to the house—her own father's house—he had not laid hands on her. With all his roughness and innate brutality, he felt that there was an undefinable something in the grand hauteur, the excessive delicacy, the tone of refinement, in the general aspect and bearing of Aurelia, that quelled, while it secretly "riled" him.

He noticed the very expression of her nostrils, the quiver of her proud lip and the flash of her dark blue eye—the flash of scorn and loathing when she replied to him, and he quailed under it—he, the utter American rowdy! But this emotion began to die as he drained another bumper of stiff brandy and water, and he took to blustering and swearing again.

"Do not use language such as this—and to me," said Aurelia, putting her trembling hands to her ears; "surely you do not know the nature of oaths."

"Don't I? I calculate I've sworn enough to sink a seventy-four-gun ship," said he, with a mocking laugh; "but surely," he added, drawing nearer her, and adopting a coaxing tone and bearing, "in time you'll forget all about that fellow, and see the necessity of quietly becoming Mrs. Ithuriel Smash, when you cannot make a better of it."

The girl's heart seemed to give a great bound, and then to die within her, at these words, the look that accompanied and the dreadful inference to be deduced from them.

"Anyhow, I calculate that I shan't forget the evening I saw you and that yaw-haw beast of a Britisher giving each other such nice tokens of your mutual good-will—he giving you what he calls his heart—and you making a free gift of the whole seigneury of St. Eustache! If once he comes within the reach of my rifle...!"

The Colonel was unable to express what would happen then. He clenched hands and set his great yellow teeth with such force, that his quid slipped down his throat and nearly choked him.

Two or three days were passed by Aurelia in extreme misery and captivity, and almost hourly she was warned by Smash that his patience would soon be exhausted, and he would "send for the parson."

She secluded herself in her own room, and found for a little time a temporary protector in Papineau, one of the rebel leaders, a dapper little French colonist, who had now come to concert measures for the defence of the village, and urged that the young lady must not be intruded upon.

"Snakes alive! man, don't I tell you she is to be my wife?" roared Smash.

"Mon Dieu, my dear Colonel, that may be so," replied Papineau, taking a pinch in the old Parisian fashion; "win the heiress, but woo her gently. A lady can only receive in her own apartment a clergyman or a doctor."

"And a hairdresser," added the barber of the village who was there, armed to the teeth.

"By Jerusalem, then, I'll go as a hairdresser and scalp her, if she gives me more trouble! I'll teach her that I'm half-horse, half-alligator!" exclaimed Smash, who by this time was intoxicated to a dangerous extent.

A violent illness—the fever of great fear—had prostrated Madame Darnel.

Separated from the latter, Aurelia was without the little protection her presence might have afforded. She was glad to keep beside the female domestics of the seigneury, from among whom she was often haled forth shrieking to endure the extraordinary love-speeches of Smash; at last the women quitted the house in terror, and she was left there alone—alone with a man whom she now loathed with a fear indescribable!

CHAPTER X.
THE END GROWING NEAR.

The sea was frozen now for miles upon miles along the coast, there were no electric cables as yet, and inland all postal communication was cut off by concurrent events. No news came to Roland from Messrs. Hook and Crook, and for all that he knew to the contrary, the newly-found heirs might have eaten their Christmas pudding and drunk the new year in, at Ardgowrie!

But Roland gave not a thought to such matters now! He had become changed in appearance, too; he was thinner, and two or three lines appeared about his eyes, where none had been visible before; and times there were when he thought himself going mad with the bitter strain upon his thoughts.

He had but a wild, clamorous craving and gnawing at the heart—a fierce longing to quit Chambly and set out for St. Eustache. But Roland Ruthven was a soldier of the Queen, and was chained to his post. His place was with the colours of the Royal Scots.

The cold at this time was intense; in the village market-place were masses of beef, sheep, and deer frozen hard as they had been for months, having been killed when the severe weather first set in. There, too, were plucked fowls, fish of all kinds frozen hard, and eels as stiff as walking-sticks. Even the milk was sold by the pound, and the loaves of bread, frozen hard the moment they left the oven, had to be literally sawn into slices, and half-and-half grog froze.

The snow was deeper than it had ever been seen by that proverbial party who is to be found everywhere, "the oldest inhabitant," and military operations were out of the question. Guards, when relieving others, frequently took over the arms of the old guard being unable to carry their own; and once Roland found a sentinel frozen dead, hard and stiff and pale as the snow around him, in his sentry-box, with his glazed eyes glaring horribly out of their sockets. He was Robert Bruce, already mentioned, who, poor fellow, would sing upon his post no more.

But amid all this, the mess often thought and talked of punkahs, of Bengal curries, green chillies, devilled biscuits, and other "up-country" memories, as if the very mention of such things would keep them warm! And at that merry mess-table Roland always felt himself to be now—how different from past times!—the skeleton at the banquet.

But there comes an end to all things, and relief came ere long to the agonised mind of Roland. He was seated in his billet—a miserable wood-cutter's hut at Chambly,—when, one morning, Hector Logan burst in upon him like a gale of wind, bringing a tempest of snow with him.

"News for you, Ruthven!" he cried, shaking himself like a Newfoundland dog; "splendid news! We are to march at once."

"For where?"

"St. Eustache, my boy."

"St. Eustache!" exclaimed Roland, starting to his feet.

"St. Eustache it is. I have just seen the Colonel with the General's order in his hand."

"Thank God!" exclaimed he, with great fervour; "we shall soon gain tidings now—you know of whom?"

"True, old fellow!"

"Yes—and vengeance too, perhaps!" added Roland, but his heart sank at the thought of how unavailing might be all human vengeance now!

Never did soldier prepare to take the field with greater alacrity than Roland Ruthven. The chances of Fate or of war might have compelled him to remain where he was, like Tantalus, in his pool, or to move in some other direction than St. Eustache!

It all came to pass thus.

The severity of the weather had abated a little, and even while it lasted rapine and outrage had reigned supreme in the disaffected districts. Sir John Colborne, on the 13th December, with all his disposable forces, set out on his march from Montreal, and Wetherall's little column was to join him on the way to St. Eustache to seize that place and scour the country about the Lake of the Two Mountains, where the insurgents under Papineau, Smash, and others had barbarously driven out all the loyal inhabitants, leaving many of them to perish miserably among the snow; and a vast extent of country was ravaged and pillaged.

Sharing Roland's anxiety, Hector Logan was in the highest spirits, when the troops moved off and turned their backs on Chambly, as they devoutly hoped, for ever.

Evening was approaching when the march began, without music, and the drummers had their drums slung behind them. The soldiers had their buff belts above their great coats. The musket-locks had been inspected and fresh ammunition served to all, which, as the men said to each other smilingly, "looked like business."

"No 'beauty and the bowl' for us to night, Roland, by Jove," said Logan, as he set his face to the fierce northern blast, which came sweeping from the Pole itself over half a world of snow, rasping the cheek like the roughest file.

Roland commanded the advanced guard, which consisted of two sections, with detached files, and as they were penetrating into disturbed districts, Colonel Wetherall repeated to him the usual orders and cautions to be observed when entering defiles or hollow-ways, ascending hills, with flank objects, and so on, and never did the young officer feel more sternly zealous in his life.

After proceeding some miles, just as the moon rose and the guard entered a hollow-way, where the cutting in the drifted snow was deep, Roland heard his first advanced file challenge some one and cock his musket. Then a man on horseback appeared, who replied in broken English.

Roland drew his sword, and on hurrying to the front found that his next advanced files had stopped the stranger, who appeared to be a peasant—a French settler. He wore an old-fashioned capote and mocassins of cow-hide; and had a rifle slung across his back.

"You are a Frenchman, I perceive?" said Roland.

"Monsieur l'officier," replied the man, saluting him, "je suis Canadien."

"Why are you armed?"

"For my own protection, monsieur."

"That may or may not be. Where do you live?"

"My farm is on the Rivière de Chine."

"Has it been burned?"

"No, monsieur."

"That in itself looks suspicious," said Roland, while the stranger glanced uneasily at the dark mass of the grey-coated and cross-belted column, now descending the slope in the moonlight.

"From whence came you last?" asked Roland.

"The village of St. Eustache, monsieur."

Roland's heart leaped; it was with difficulty he could ask the next question.

Did he know aught of a young lady who was in the hands of Mie insurgents?

"Mademoiselle Darnel—yes, monsieur. She is still in the house of the Seigneur with Colonel Smash, or perhaps in the church which is fortified. She is married to him, people say—or, rather, he has married her," added the fellow, with a grin, which nearly tempted Roland in his then mood of mind to run him through the body.

He felt sick, sick at heart; but in a little time he would know all—the worst!

"Corporal Burns," said he, with a voice strangely broken, as the listening soldiers told, "take this fellow, with a file of men, to the rear. The Colonel may wish to question him. Forward, lads!" he added, as the peasant was taken, in great tribulation of mind, towards the column, and once more the march of the advanced guard was resumed, and Roland Ruthven tramped on, so full of agitating thoughts that he never knew his cigar had been cold and out for half an hour or more.

The junction was duly effected with the column of Sir John Colborne; the Royal Scots Regiment, the Montreal Rifles, and Globinsky's Volunteers, were formed in one brigade under Colonel Wetherall. The latter force was dispatched through the forests that border the upper road leading to the point to be attacked, with orders to drive back and disperse all pickets and parties of the insurgents, while the remainder of the brigade crossed the Ottawa, or Grande Rivière, on the ice on the 14th of December.

There along the Ottawa, the then snow-covered country is undulating, thickly covered with fine wood, except on the western bank of the river, where for some twelve miles have been laid out townships, chiefly occupied by Irish, and American settlers. Below that of Chatham the old French Seigneuries begin.

The advance on the enemy's stronghold now began from several points.

In Roland's heart much of the ardour and fierce excitement incident to the march had died away, or rather taken the form of unspeakable anxiety and grief, especially when on the 14th of December he saw before him St. Eustache, with its wooden houses and orchards of bare apple-trees, the cold winter sunlight tipping the spire of the church, and the vanes of the large white house, wherein Roland knew that she might be, though the man taken over night informed Colonel Wetherall that it was not improbable she might be in the church, which the rebels considered the key of their position.

"Patience—patience!" he muttered, "patience yet awhile!"

No magistrate being with the troops, Sir John Colborne, while still at a little distance from the place, resolved to send forward an officer with the printed proclamation. For this service Roland at once volunteered. Tying a white handkerchief to the blade of his sword, in token of truce, he borrowed his friend the adjutant's horse, and galloped forward to the first line of stockades or outer defences, behind which the dark forms of armed rebels were seen clustering thick as bees, and at the windows of the seigneur's house.

The whole troops watched with anxiety the brief parley that seemed to ensue; then it was suddenly cut short by a lamentable crime. A stream of smoke came from the window of a house, the report of a musket rang out on the clear frosty air, Roland's horse was seen to rear, with its rider lying back on the crupper, but his knees still in the stirrups, to all appearance a corpse, as Nolan's was borne back from Balaclava!

A shout of rage burst from the Royals; the artillery opened, and all pressed forward to the attack, intent on dire vengeance, at a well-ordered rush.

By barricades, palisades, trenches, and loopholing the houses, the church, and its presbytery, Papineau, Smash, and their bands of rebels, had left nothing undone to render St. Eustache a somewhat formidable post; and they were encouraged by the knowledge that other bodies of their compatriots had fortified themselves at St. Benoit and elsewhere.

These preparations had, luckily for poor Aurelia, occupied much of her ungainly suitor's time, but he found himself at full leisure on the eventful 14th of December, and he began his system of annoyance again.

"The Colonel" had never sacrificed much to the graces, and his late occupations in St. Eustache had effectually prevented him from doing so at all; thus his appearance was every way the reverse of prepossessing.

In her own house, surrounded by familiar objects, though havoc and wanton destruction were visible on every hand, Aurelia had after a time gathered a fictitious courage, for was she not at home! But what struck her as curious was, that in this fellow's strange love-making he had never spoken of love, for, sooth to say, he knew not what, in its purer sense, the sweet emotion meant; and by partial successes, particularly the failure of Colonel Gore's column before St. Denis, he was now so swelled and inflated with pride that he threatened to explode like a Woolwich torpedo, and ever and anon he would say to Aurelia,—

"Snakes! I could scarcely expect you to marry me right off the reel, slick at once; but I may grow weary of giving you time, so listen to me!" (here he registered one of his awful oaths) "rather than that blazing Britisher should succeed, I'd job my bowie into you!"

If St. Eustache were attacked, and the Queen's troops defeated, then indeed did Aurelia know that one way or other her fate would be sealed. Indeed, it might be sealed either way!

Cold though the season—it could not well be colder—so hot was the constitution of the Colonel (or his "coppers," as he phrased it), that he was always compounding curious effervescing drinks in long tumblers from the contents of Madame Darnel's cellars; but on the morning in question he said—

"Aurelia, my dear, I have a bumper of that old mydeary, which belonged to your dad, old Darnel! Snakes! but it is the stuff. Not the mixtour of hickory and Jamaikey rum we get in New York," he added, draining a tumbler of the late Mr. Darnel's most cherished Madeira, much to the alarm of his shrinking listener, as intoxication always added, if possible, to the Colonel's vulgarity.

"Ah—ah!" said little M. Papineau, regarding him with a smile, snuff-box in hand, "the ancient Persians—if we are to believe history—never undertook any great matter, and never discoursed of aught that referred to policy or public interest, till they were at least, as the sailors say, three sheets in the wind, and you seem to be of their opinion. And now I must go round our posts."

And, bowing with mock courtesy to Aurelia, he took his sword and pistols, and withdrew, stuffing them into the belt that girt his buffalo coat.

Afraid almost to close her eyes at night, the poor girl had now an unslept, wild, and hunted look in them, with black circles round them; her face was deadly pale, and her once beautiful dark silky hair, never dressed now, was twisted in one great uncombed mass at the back of her head. Smash saw all this plainly enough, but he was pitiless as a Canadian bear, and only muttered,—

"Darn, me, but I'll tame her yet, and break her spirit or her heart!"

A little cry escaped her—a cry of joy, but more she dared not utter, for lo! from the windows of the room she could see, advancing over the waste of far extending snow through which the great Montreal road lay, the dark masses of the approaching troops, dark because all were in their grey overcoats; but the fixed bayonets glittered like a grey steely forest; the bright colours, crimson, blue, and gold, were waving in the sun, here and there the rays of the latter were reflected from a brass drum.

The heads of the infantry columns halted, and a distant flash or gleam seemed to pass along the ranks as the arms were "ordered" and the men stood "at ease;" the artillery were all well to the front, unlimbered and wheeled round, the horses untraced and taken to the rear, and while one solitary officer was seen galloping towards St. Eustache, a ferocious interjection escaped Ithuriel Smash, and a roar of voices burst over all the place, when some thousand men grasped their arms—weapons of every description.

How wildly with hope beat the heart of Aurelia at this moment! But she closed her ears to the cries she heard around her, from the colonists and their American sympathisers.

"Sacré Anglais! Blood for blood!"

"Down with the Red slaves of Queen Victoria!"

"Death to the island savages!"

"We'll whip the 'tarnal Britishers into the sea!"

And so forth, the phrases only alike in their spirit of ferocity. Meanwhile the solitary and adventurous officer was coming galloping on. At last he drew near that portion of the rudely-constructed works or fortifications (that connected all the houses and gardens of St. Eustache) which was immediately overlooked by the windows of the room in which she was compelled to remain with Ithuriel Smash, who, on the officer reining in his horse and waving his flag of truce, threw up a sash to hear what he had to say.

"Listen, my good people," he cried, displaying a paper, "to the proclamation of Lieutenant-General Sir John Colborne, G.C.B. and G.C.H., Commander-in-Chief of all Her Britannic Majesty's forces in Canada:—

"Our Sovereign Lady the Queen chargeth and commandeth all the persons here assembled in Eustache, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the Acts made in the 27th year of King George the Third, to prevent tumultuous risings and assemblies."

A yell of scorn and defiance responded to the reading of this brief document. Meanwhile a moan escaped Aurelia, and a fierce chuckle Colonel Smash; and so occupied was the former in looking at her lover, that she took no heed of the Colonel, who softly and silently locked a musket, took aim, and fired.

Then a piercing shriek escaped Aurelia, as Roland, to all appearance dead or dying, prostrate backward on the crupper of his horse, was borne by it to the rear.

"Jerusalem and earthquakes!" said the assassin, laughing. "No need to waste a second bullet now!"

"Oh Father in Heaven, but this is too much—too much!" cried Aurelia, as she fell on her knees and covered her face with her hands.

"Is it?" said the ruffian, with another fiendish laugh, while proceeding to reload. "Now I think the game is in my own hands in more ways than one, Aurelia Darnel. We've dug up the war-hatchet, and ain't going to smoke the painted calumet of peace now!"

She fell prone on her face in a swoon, and thus Ithuriel Smash had to leave her, to come round as best she might, as other work was cut out for him now, as the troops were closing up fast on every hand, and already the guns of Glasgow's artillery had begun to knock everything in the village to pieces.

CHAPTER XI.
ST. EUSTACHE STORMED.

We have no intention of keeping the reader in suspense.

The shot fired at Roland had missed him, and only barked a tree; for though he was so close, recent potations had rendered "the Colonel's" aim a very unsteady one; but his intended victim, inspired by a sudden idea born of his own coolness and decision of purpose, gripped the horse with his knees, and, feigning death to escape further firing, fell back on the crupper of his saddle, and in this way was carried safely to the rear, followed by the yells and derisive laughter of the insurgents.

Believing their favourite officer slain, a shout of rage burst from the Royals, and every man made a forward step in eager anticipation of the order to advance.

"A flag of truce fired on!" exclaimed old Sir John Colborne, starting in his stirrups with honest grief and indignation. "Forward, Wetherall, to the attack and lead your column up the central street!"

"I have escaped, General, by a miracle and a ruse," said Roland, reining in his horse and sitting erect in his saddle, to the surprise of all who saw him; "and now I shall rejoin my company."

He resigned the steed to its owner, and the attack at once began—indeed it had begun, for the artillery had already opened fire, and stone and timber were alike going crashing down beneath it.

Covered by the Montreal Rifle Corps, the First Royals advanced, steadily firing up the central street, and seized all the most defensible houses. Logan was then despatched by Colonel Wetherall, with orders to bring up some of the artillery; but he was driven back by the fire of the rebels from the lower windows of the church of St. Eustache, till the officer commanding the artillery had promptly conceived where his services were wanted, and galloping into the village by the rear, endeavoured to blow or burst open the door of the sacred edifice, but completely failed to do so, so dense and heavy was the barricade of earth behind it; but some companies of the Royals and Rifles from the neighbouring houses opened a terrible fire of musketry upon the occupants of the church, whose shrieks and yells came through the windows, which were almost instantly divested of every vestige of glass.

After an hour of heavy cross-firing, and the door still defying every effort of our troops, the Scots Royals attacked the presbytery, which was full of men, forced an entrance, led by their officers, sword in hand, and now ensued a terrible scene, for they bayoneted nearly every man in the place, and then set it in flames, while scores of desultory combats were going on in the streets without.

There, in many places, streams and pools of crimson blood dyed the pure white snow; in others, by repeated footsteps and struggles, it was trod to slush and snowy mire, wherein the dead and dying lay weltering—the breath of the latter, in many instances their last respiration, curling away like steam upon the frosty air of the keen Canadian winter day, while on all hands were heard strange cries, oaths, and yells.

"Vive la République Canadien! A bas les Anglais!" cried the French Colonists.

"A bas la Reine! A bas la Ligne!"

"Vive Papineau!"

"Down with British rule; death to old Colborne and his red-coats!"

Such were the shouts on one side; on the other, only the din of the heavy file firing, and at times that ringing united cheer, the import or instinct of which there is no mistaking.

By this time the smoke of the blazing presbytery had enveloped the whole church, which, as a wooden edifice, it was supposed would soon catch fire. Now Roland remembered the supposition of the French peasant, that Aurelia might be there, and we may imagine the sensations with which he beheld the dark smoke-wreaths eddying around its taper spire!

"Carry the church by storm!" was now the order of Sir John Colborne; and while a straggling fire was poured upon the column, from the house of the seigneur and others, Wetherall ordered his grenadiers—we had such soldiers still—to lead the van, the post of honour and peril being ever theirs by traditional right.

The blood of all the troops was fairly up, and as the column went forward surging and storming, and firing with the bayonets pointed upward at an angle, the soldiers of the Royal Regiment raised the shout of "Scotland for ever!"—a cri de guerre first used by the Greys at Waterloo, and last by the Duke of Albany's Highlanders at the storming of Kotah in 1858.

Pouring in by the shattered windows, leaping over every obstacle, and plunging like a torrent among the armed crowd within the church, the Royals made a terrible havoc, and among those who fought here was Roland, as yet untouched, and amid all the carnage and mad confusion around him, having but one thought in his heart.

At the same time, some other of the battalion companies, led by Major Ward and Captain Bell (afterwards Sir George and colonel of the regiment in 1868), a Peninsular officer who in this war commanded the fort and garrison of Coteau du Lac, an important post on the frontier, and received the thanks of Sir John Colborne for his exertions in recovering all the 24-pound guns and 4000 shot from the bottom of the river, and getting them in position amid the winter snows to face the rebels—led these and other officers we say, the rest of the Royals gradually fought their way into the church by the rear, and bayoneting all who resisted, set it on fire, and the corpses were consumed in the flames.

One hundred and eighteen men taken prisoners.

"Quartier! Quartier! Je me livre a vous!" (I yield myself up to you) was now the cry of the French colonists.

"Quarter for the love of God, and her Majesty the Queen!" echoed the British rebels, on finding that all was over.

Papineau, if there, was nowhere to be found; and Smash, though seen often, had disappeared.

In the apartment where we left her, Aurelia Darnel had heard all the dreadful uproar around her—the myriad horrible sounds of a combat on which she dared not look, and she lay in a corner, gathered, as it were, in a heap, though on her knees, unable even to form a prayer, stunned, crushed, and bewildered, with but one thought—"Roland dead!"

Steps, sounds rather, drew near the room; the door was flung open and Ithuriel Smash, pale as death, bleeding from more than one wound in his body, and with a dreadful rattle-snake expression in his eyes—an expression of agony, madness, and rage, staggered in; then he fell on his hands, and came crawling slowly, panting and groaning, towards her, leaving a track of his own blood—"the trail of the serpent" behind him on the floor.

His long knife was clenched in his teeth; his murderous intention was plain—to slay her would be his last effort, and in the corner where she crouched, Aurelia could not escape him!

She uttered a low wail of despair, ending in an involuntary shriek for help—help for the love of God! And help came.

Poetic and dramatic justice would require that the obnoxious Colonel Smash should perish by the hand of Roland; but responsive to her cry, there burst into the room, Logan of Logan Braes and a few of the Royals, by whom he was speedily bayoneted like a reptile or mad dog, and he died, biting at the bayonets, like a dog or a savage.

Logan tenderly raised the half-dead girl from the floor, and in a few minutes after, the caressing arms of Roland, caressing and reassuring, were around her—and she felt safe then—doubly safe with him and her mother.

CHAPTER XII.
CONCLUSION.

With the civil war in Canada, our story has little more to do.

Suffice it that for a brief time, Roland Ruthven, after seeing Madame Darnel and her daughter safe in their chateau of St. Eustache at Montreal, had again to join the troops, who advanced to St. Benoit, where, so great was the terror excited by the recent victorious assault, that no opposition was offered, and the rebels sent delegates to say humbly, that they would, without conditions, lay their arms down, and they were conveyed under escort to Montreal, to meet the meed of their crimes.

The good result of all these operations was the return of the colonists to their homes, and the disappearance of all armed parties of insurgents. About the same season, however, in the following year, when the deep snows of the Canadian winter began to fall, there was a second rising in Lower Canada; but it was again crushed by the energy and gallantry of Sir John Colborne at Napierville, and for these and other services, the Queen created the fine old soldier a peer of Great Britain.

Prior to these events some startling changes occurred in the history of the two principal characters in our little narrative.

The Darnel estate at St. Eustache was utterly destroyed; the mansion had been ruined or burned, the lands ravaged, and the circumstances of the once wealthy widow were sorely impaired; her horses, carriages, and many other luxuries had to be dispensed with and economy become the new order of the day; but now, safe at her own home at Montreal, all the beauty and gaiety of Aurelia returned, and after all she had undergone, even poverty seemed, a slight matter to face—as yet.

"O Roland darling!" said she, with a little laugh, as they stood together in a window of the château one evening in the spring, looking towards Montreal steeped in the sunset, and where the greenery of the woods was deepening faster than it ever does in Britain at the same season, vegetation maturing with wondrous rapidity the moment the snow disappears; "O, Roland—I am poor as yourself now, and yet you still talk of marrying me and going to India; but could I take my poor mamma there?"

Roland's loving countenance fell.

"You lost your noble estate by a will; I my seigniory—or nearly all of it—by civil war; our fortune is ruined."

"Yet—we must not—cannot part, after all—after all!"

"Oh no—no!" murmured the girl, fondly and plaintively, with her sweet face pillowed on his breast.

Next day Roland arrived with a face full of such excitement, wonder, and so many varying expressions, that Aurelia knew not what to make of him and his incoherences for some time at least.

That morning the regimental postman brought him a letter, the first words of which, however much expected, made a lump rise in his throat.

It was from his legal agents, Messrs. Hook and Crook, Writers to the Signet, and dated from Edinburgh:—

"DEAR SIR,"—(It used to be my dear sir once) "We beg to acquaint you, with much regret, that we have now traced out and learned authentically who are the heirs of the marriage of your deceased uncle, the late Mr. Philip Ruthven, eldest son of General Roland Ruthven, who went to Jamaica."

Roland felt very sick as he read, and paused; then summing up courage, he resumed the obnoxious epistle, and read on.

"From the latter place that gentleman went to Canada, where he married a lady of Montreal, by whom he had several children, all of whom are dead save one, Miss Aurelia Darnel de St. Eustache" ("Oh, my God!" thought Roland, "what miracle is this?"), for he took the name of Darnel to please the family of his wife, who was the daughter of a wealthy French seigneur.

"We regret to be the medium of such very bad news, but of course are now taking the usual legal measures to execute the will of the late General Ruthven, according to your own instructions."

So Aurelia was his cousin, the daughter of the lost Philip, who had quitted Scotland in disgust, never to return, and she was the heiress of Ardgowrie!

And he—what was he? For weal or woe her affianced husband. It was all like the plot of a drama; and some time elapsed before Roland could realise the whole situation; but there was the prosaic letter of the lawyers, which, under other circumstances, might have seemed to cut his very heart-strings.

Now how innocuous it was!

Another hour found him by the side of Aurelia, and to attempt to record all the explanations and loving incoherences, astonishment and joy of that particular interview would be a difficult task indeed; but even while speaking to her, and while her voice was in his ear, Roland seemed to see before him the cabinet of Scindia, with the now baffled secret it contained.

If Roland had now, in a modified sense, to blush at, and feel shame, for his father's duplicity in the matter of the will—a duplicity born of the various emotions we have already described, dislike between brothers, temptation offered on one hand, the dread of losing the ambitious girl he loved on the other—and then the total disappearance of Philip, he had to blush before one who had accepted him as a husband when their positions were very different, when all the odds of wealth and landed property were, as once again, in her favour, and he was still the penniless soldier with his sword alone.

And Roland, as he looked on Aurelia again, recalled the youthful portrait of his lost uncle Philip at Ardgowrie, and saw, or thought he saw, how closely she resembled it.

We have little more to add.

The Darnel estates, we have said, were ruined; but Ardgowrie was yet in all its baronial glory; to Ardgowrie they would go, and sell the former, so it was all settled ere the Canadian summer came swiftly on; thus the reader may be assured that they were married long before the month of August, so old Elspat Gorm's "fatal day" of the Ruthvens was fully evaded. Nor need we add, though we do so, that jolly Hector Logan was groomsman, and old General Colborne gave the bride away.

In winning Aurelia, Poland regained his inheritance, but he never left the old Royal Regiment, or returned finally to Ardgowrie, till he had, like his father before him, been long a popular colonel of the corps.