"Yea," replied the dominie, while rubbing one hand over the other, and smiling blandly, as perhaps his scholars seldom saw him smile; "your lordship has come back like Cincinnatus after the defeat of the Volci and the Æqui, to plough turnips and plant gude kail on haugh and rig—so welcome hame to Carrick, my lord."
The dominie had on his Sunday coat, with its huge flapped pockets; his best three-cornered hat, bound with black braid, was under his arm, and his square shoe-buckles shone like silver.
"And our little Frenchman has become quite a friend with your lordship, I see," said Girvan, patting the child on the head.
"Quite—a splendid little fellow he is!"
"But call him not a Frenchman," said the dominie, "when he bears the gude auld Carrick name of Kennedy."
"Aye, dominie; it used to find an echo hereabout, in the old trooping and tramping times," replied Girvan.
"And has so still," added Rohallion, laughing; "for I am half a Kennedy, and often have I heard my mother sing—
"'Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr,
Portpatrick and the Cruives of Cree,
Nae man may hope in peace to bide,
Unless he court Saint Kennedie."
"Like the Maxwells in Nithsdale, the Kennedies had all their own way here in those days," said Lady Winifred, as she drew off her lace mittens, and prepared to adjust her ivory-mounted spinning-wheel.
"But to return to the present time, tell me, John Girvan, did that French ship actually come within range of our gun-battery?"