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What follows?
Orange wreaths and snow-white satin dresses, kid gloves and wedding favours, compliments and kisses, a marriage settlement and so forth, were all the subjects for mature consideration ere long at Minden Lodge; and within a month Quentin Crawford—he had to change his name, as well as Flora—departed with his bride to spend the honeymoon among the green summer woods and purple heather braes of Rohallion; and joyful indeed was the salute that pealed from the guns on the battery—whilome those of La Bonne Citoyenne under the direction of the old quartermaster, who concluded by a general salvo that scared the rooks from the keep, sent the seabirds screaming in flocks to the Partan Craig, and made the dominie jump a yard high in his square-toed shoes; and red and rousing were the bonfires that blazed on the old castle rock and on the heights of Ardgour in honour of the day.
Cosmo, we have said, was enjoying the seclusion and safety from duns afforded by the fortress of Verdun, where we have no wish to disturb him.
Monkton, long since retired upon full pay as colonel, is still one of the most popular members of the Caledonian U.S. Club; but poor old Middleton died a lieutenant-general some years ago, near his native place, the secluded village of the Stennis, in Lothian. The old watch, which was the providential means of saving his life in action, he never had repaired; but it always hung above his mantelpiece with the bullet in it, for he said that no clock in the land could ever remind him so well of time and eternity.
Donna Isidora accompanied the French troops to Paris, and made a tremendous sensation as a Spanish opera-dancer. In London she became the rage, and, as La Fille de l'Air, her benefits were ably puffed and conducted by her secretary, whose name always figured in the bills as El Senor Trevino.
Old John Girvan "sleeps the sleep that knows no waking" in the green kirkyard of Rohallion; but he lived to dandle a young Quentin on his knee, and to hear the dominie teach a little Flora to lisp her first letters under the old oak-trees of Ardgour.
Eugene de Ribeaupierre, now one of the generals of the second Empire, has lived to lead his division of cavalry at Inkerman and the Tchernaya, at Solferino and Magenta, as bravely as ever his father did at Corunna, at Austerlitz, or Smolensko, in the wars of Napoleon the First.
THE END.