These orders were perilous, loose, and vague; they promised nothing, but only that war at any hazard was to be waged in Old Castile and on the banks of the Ebro.
And now for a time let us change the scene to a not less tuneful or classic locality—the rocky hills and heather braes of Carrick's western shore.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PARAGRAPH.
"My kindred are dead, my love is fled;
Courage, my heart, thou canst love no more;
Pale is my cheek, my body is weak;
Courage, my heart, 'twill soon be o'er.
Dim are my eyes with tears of sorrow,
They ache for a night without a morrow!"
M.N.S.
It was towards the end of the month—the last days of October, now.
The acorns were falling from the moss-grown oaks, the hollies and hedge-rows were gay with scarlet berries and haws, the grey sea-gulls were often seen mingling with the black gleds and hoodie-crows far afield inshore. The redwing, the fieldfare, and the woodcock had come again to their old haunts on the braes of Rohallion, in the oakwood shaw, in the hawthorn birks that overhang the Girvan, and the deep carse land where the rushes grew and the water flowed of old.
The autumn winds, as they swept through the hollow glen, shook down the last brown leaves of the old sycamores, and the spoils of the past summer lay in rustling heaps about the haunted gate and the guns of La Bonne Citoyenne on the battery before the castle-keep. From the tall square chimneys of the old feudal stronghold on the storm-beaten bluff, the gudeman of Elsie Irvine and other fishermen from the coves, saw the smoke of the rousing fires ascending into the grey autumn sky, and the evening lights glittering early in the great towers, a land-mark now to them as it had been to their forefathers long ages ago, when the Scot and the Saxon found work nearer home for their swords than fighting for conquered Spain or ravaged Portugal.
"People now-a-days, with the help of the penny-post and the telegraph, and the endless means of communication and of coming and going, are certainly able to care for a greater number of persons than they could have done a hundred years ago," says a recent writer in the "Cornhill;" but he might have said thirty years ago, so far as the people of Scotland are concerned. Thus, secluded by her own retiring habits and personal circumstances, as well as by those incident to the time, content to reside in her narrow circle, and chiefly among her husband's household and dependents, Lady Rohallion's heart yearned with all a mother's love for her lost protégé, the more, perhaps, that the cold and repulsive manner of her only son Cosmo had cast her warm and affectionate heart somewhat back, as it were, upon herself; though the memory of much if not all his shortcomings in the way of filial reverence and regard were now by her forgotten, or merged in the idea of his absence at the seat of war.
Quentin's memory she cherished chiefly in silence; for, still fostering her hopes or views with regard to Cosmo and the wilful little heiress of Ardgour, she spoke of the lost one but reservedly, and at long intervals, to the latter; though, sooth to say, young Fernie of Fernwoodlee, a neighbouring proprietor, had become so frequent a visitor at the castle, that, so far as good looks, assiduity, and unwearying industry as an admirer might go, he bade fair—gossips said—to supplant both Quentin and the Master of Rohallion, for a lover lost, and another commencing a campaign, were just as satisfactory as no lover at all.