"You have returned, sir, at last?" was his stiff response to Quentin's hasty salute.
"It is little short of a miracle that I ever returned at all, Colonel Crawford; I have undergone no small danger I beg to assure you, and have but this instant entered Portalegre. I have acquitted myself of the duty with which the general did me the honour to entrust me. The junction will be formed with our division on the march, and I have a despatch from the Guerilla Chief."
"For whom?"
"Sir John Hope, sir; shall I give it to him in person?"
"No—I shall myself deliver it," replied Cosmo, who feared naturally the favourable impression which Quentin might make on the good general, to whom he had been represented as unworthy; "get your musket and fall in with your company as soon as possible. We shall have some other work cut out for you ere long," added Cosmo, with a dark and scornful smile, as he took, or rather snatched the despatch from Quentin, who seemed more fit for a sick bed than for marching among the sturdy grenadiers of the Borderers; but for that day he was attached to the baggage guard, which was under Lieutenant Colville, and this arrangement for his comfort was made by the kindness of the old halberdier Norman Calder, who was now sergeant-major. He rode the spare horse of Major Middleton, a boon but for which he could never have kept up with the troops.
With the baggage marched the rear guard of the division, having with it the sick, the drunk, disorderly, and prisoners, together with a medley of followers of a not very reputable kind, whose presence was not conducive to reflection or comfort, and who noisily scorned alike control or discipline.
As Quentin was riding thus, he was passed from the rear by the general and his staff. The former gave him a keen and inquiring glance, answered his salute briefly, and passed on. Whether Cosmo had mentioned him favourably, or the reverse, in delivering the despatch of Don Baltasar, he knew not; but he knew that when once the spiteful element attains ascendancy in the human heart, there is no mode in which it will not seek to be gratified and no measure to its malignity, and he sighed over an enmity that he dared neither to grapple with or hope to overcome; and all this he owed to the preference of Flora Warrender for him—her early friend and playmate in youth.
Well, there was some consolation in the cause!
Though his reception by the Master of Rohallion neither disappointed nor shocked him, it chilled the poor lad's heart, which grew heavy as he saw how unavailing and how fruitless were all his efforts to deserve praise or to win honour!