"Yes, madame, it is like the annuli worn by the legionary tribunes in the Punic war," added Dominie Skaill, who never lost an opportunity of "airing" his classics.
"It bears a crest; that speaks of gentle birth," said Lady Rohallion, who had a great veneration for that fortuitous circumstance. "And there is a name, Josephine."
"Mamma—ma mère!" exclaimed the child, starting and looking up at the, no doubt, familiar sound.
"His mother's name, I am sure; poor little fellow, he has heard his father call her so," said Lady Rohallion, as she opened the plated case and drew forth the documents it contained. One was on parchment, the other two were letters.
"A military commission—Girvanmains, look here!"
It was the commission of Quentin Kennedy, gentilhomme Ecossais, to be captain in the Royal Regiment of Scots, in the service of His Most Christian Majesty, and was signed by the unfortunate Louis XVI., as the date showed, in the year before his execution.
"So this poor drowned man has eaten his bread by tuck of drum!" exclaimed the old quartermaster, with a kindling eye, as he stooped to caress the orphan's golden curls. "Puir fellow—puir fellow! He has been a commissioned officer like myself, so I'll e'en turn out the Rohallion Volunteers, and he shall be borne to his grave as becomes a soldier, with muffled drums and arms reversed—eh, dominie?"
"Yes, and the spoils of war shall be cast on the pile, as we read in the eleventh book of the Æneid; and they shall march like the Thebans, striking their weapons one on another, to the sound of the trumpet—eh, quartermaster?"
"I'd batoon the first lout I caught doing aught so unsteady or so unsoldierlike," was the indignant response.
"But how came this Scotsman to be serving the French King," asked the dominie; "as such was he not a renegade soldier, such as the Romans were wont to stab and leave unburied, as we find in Tacitus?"