Finding that he was alone, and all was quiet in his billet, he sat far into the hours of the silent night, writing a long, long letter to his friend the quartermaster—the story of his past adventures; and to Flora he enclosed the only gift he possessed—the ring of Madame de Ribeaupierre—with its remarkable story, and he had barely sealed the envelope when he heard the warning bugle for the baggage-guard to turn out sounding in the dark and silent streets of Alva; and then, with a weary head but happy heart, he sought his pallet, and without undressing, courted sleep for a couple of hours, before the drums of the division beat the générale.
CHAPTER XII.
THE OLD BRIGADIER.
"I cannot deem why men so toil for fame,
A porter is a porter, though his load
Be the oceaned world, and although his road
Be down the ages. What is in a name?
Ah! 'tis our spirit's curse to strive and seek.
Although its heart is rich in pearls and ores,
The sea, complains upon a thousand shores;
Sea-like we moan for ever."—ALEXANDER SMITH.
By this time the snows of a bleak and early winter lay deep in the grassy glens and on the heathery hills of Carrick; the mountain burns and rivulets that whilome flowed to the Doon and the Girvan were frozen hard and fast, and, suspended in mid-air, the cascade of the Lollards' Linn hung under its gothic arch like the beard of Father Christmas. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the houses and from the quaint stone gurgoyles of the old square keep.
The sound of the woodman's axe echoed in the leafless oakwood shaw and the brown thickets of Ardgour, and everywhere the hedges and trees were being lopped and trimmed by the shears or bill-hook of the gardener and husbandman.
In the clear frosty air, from many a mountain loch rang up the cheers of the jovial curlers, with the roar of the granite curling-stones as they swept along the glassy rinks, and many a hearty fellow anticipated, his appetite sharpened by the frosty air, the banquet of salt beef and greens, with steaming whisky toddy, that closed his day's sport, at the Rohallion Arms in Maybole.
The cattle were in their heather-roofed shielings on the sheltered sides of the hills, the sheep and swine were among the pea-ricks, the dusky smoke of the ruddy winter fire ascended into the clear blue air from many a happy hearth and thatched homestead; but, as the roads that wound over hill and lea were buried deep in snow, news of the distant war in Spain come slowly and uncertainly to such remote dwellings as the castle of Rohallion—how much more uncertainly and slowly to those glens in Sutherland and Ross, where a few heaps of stones amid the desert waste now mark the birthplaces of those who manned the ranks of our noblest Scottish regiments in that old and glorious war.
As yet no further tidings had been heard either of Quentin Kennedy or of his court-martial. All that had been heard at home, through the columns of the London Courier, was that the slender army of Sir John Moore was falling back before the overwhelming masses of the enemy, and that ere long all might be confusion in its ranks—perhaps dismay!
After the receipt of the Adjutant-General Sir Harry Calvert's letter, the public papers were searched in vain for further tidings of Quentin Kennedy, but none were found. "Our own correspondent," with his camp-gossip, had no place in the newspaper columns of those days. The mails were then often late and always uncertain; many that came by sea were lost between storms and privateers, and the vague anxiety of Quentin's friends gradually became painful suspense, and amid it Lord Rohallion once more wrote with energy recommending his young protégé to the duke.