"He has about as much vocation for the kirk as I have. Would you have him drag out his life like a drone in a Scotch country manse, when a' the warld is up and stirring? Quentin is a penniless lad wi' a proud spirit, so he must e'en follow the drum, as his father followed it before him."
"His father before him, say ye? Some puir fellow, the son o' an outlawed Jacobite, doubtless. I dinna think, quartermaster, that he made much o' the trade o' war; a trade that is clean against scripture in every respect."
"Dominie, did not Richard Cameron, who fell bravely, battling for the right, at Airs Moss, only a hundred and twenty years ago, know every cut of his good broadsword, as well as the texts of his Bible? A man's hands should always be ready to keep his head; thus, whatever may be before him, I have taught Quentin to fence and to shoot."
"No harm, perhaps, in either, for I remember me," replied the inveterate quoter, "that Bishop Latimer says of himself 'my poor father was as diligent to teach me to shoot, as to learn any other thing.' But anent Quentin Kennedy, you and I will never be able to agree, John, so——"
"We'll e'en leave the lad's future to himself, dominie. I think he has some right to be consulted, and, odds heart! he is but a bairn yet; a bairn, though, that can handle his pistol as well as my other pupil, the Master Cosmo."
"Fie, fie, John Girvan! and a most sinfu' use has the Master made o' his skill."
"He has paraded a good many bucks and bullies by daylight; but what would you have an officer to do? If insulted, he must challenge; if challenged, he must go out, or quit the service and society too."
The dominie shook his head solemnly in deprecation of such sentiments, and said—
"I fear me muckle the Master will meet wi' his match some day, and a black one it will be for the house o' Rohallion; but now for my deoch an doruis. Pass the dram bottle. Ugh! the road down the glen will be eerie to-night, and I can never forget that awfu' morning, John, when I saw the wraith of Cosmo's uncle, standing at the castle-gate, in his wig, cocked hat, and red coat, silent and grim, even as the ghost of Cæsar, on the night before Philippi."
"Wi' a' the whisky you had under your belt, I wonder you didna see twa o' them."