Considerably damped in spirit, by the dry and unsoldierlike reception he had experienced, Ronald next sought the quarters of the officer who commanded the detachment of his own regiment. On quitting the citadel, he passed the place where the French prisoners of war were confined. It was a small piece of ground, enclosed by a strong palisado, over which the poor fellows displayed for sale those ornaments and toys which the ingenuity of their nation enabled them to make. Little ships, toothpicks, bodkins, dominoes, boxes, &c. were manufactured by them from the bones of their scanty allowance of ration meat, and offered for sale to the soldiers of the garrison, or visitors from the city who chanced to pass the place of their confinement.
They appeared to be generally very merry, and were dressed in the peculiar uniform of the prison; but here and there might be observed an officer, who, having broken his parole of honour, was now degraded by being placed among the rank and file. Ronald was but a young soldier, and consequently pitied them; he thought of what his own feelings would be were he a prisoner in a foreign land, with the bayonets of guards glittering at every turn; but there seemed to be none there who yearned for home or hearts they had left behind them, save one, and of him we will speak hereafter. The reception Ronald met with from the officers of his own corps, tended much to revive his drooping spirits, which were, for some time, sadly depressed by the remembrance of Lochisla, and the affectionate friends he had left behind him there.
Among the officers were young men who, like himself, had recently left their homes in the distant north, and a unison of feeling existed in their minds; but, generally, they were merry thoughtless fellows, and the vivacity of their conversation, the frolics in which they were ever engaged, and the bustle of the garrison, were capital antidotes against care. But the tear often started to the eye of Stuart as he beheld the far-off peak of Ben Lomond, fifty miles distant from the window of his room,—his rank as a subaltern entitling him only to one, and he thought of the romantic hills of Perthshire, or of the lonely hearth where his grey-haired sire mourned for his absence. But little time was allowed him to muse thus. Parades in the castle, the promenades, theatres, the gay blaze of ball-rooms in the city, crowded with beautiful and fashionable girls and glittering uniforms, left him little time for reflection; and the day of embarkation for the Peninsula, the seat of war, to which all men's thoughts—and women's too, were turned, insensibly drew nigh.
Evan Iverach had been enlisted in his master's company, and under the hands of a regimental tailor, and the tuition of the drill sergeant, was rapidly becoming a smart soldier, while he still remained an attached servant to his master.
The latter, soon after his arrival in the capital, had visited his father's agent, Mr. Æneas Macquirk, a writer to the signet, who had long transacted the business and fleeced the pocket of the old laird in the most approved legal manner. This worthy, having lately procured the old gentleman's signature to a document which was ultimately to be his ruin, was therefore disposed to treat Ronald drily enough, having made the most of his father; and he would never have been invited to the snug front-door-house, with the carpeted staircase, comfortable dining and airy drawing-room in the new town, but for the vanity of Mrs. and the Misses Macquirk, who thought that the rich uniform of the young officer as a visitor gave their house a gay and fashionable air.
Quite the reverse of the good old "clerks to the signet" who once dwelt in the dark closes of the old city, Macquirk was one of the many contemptible fellows whose only talent is chicanery, and who fatten and thrive on that unfortunate love of litigation which possesses the people of Scotland. Mean and servile to the rich, he was equally purse-proud and overbearing to the poor, to whom he was a savage and remorseless creditor. Many were the unfortunate citizens who cursed the hour in which they first knew this man, who feathered his nest by the law, better than ever his father had done by the honester trade of mending shoes in the West Bow.
Mrs. Macquirk was a vulgar-looking woman, most unbecomingly fat; her money had procured her a husband, and she was as proud as could be expected, considering that she had first seen the light in the low purlieus of the Kraimes, and now found herself mistress of one of the handsomest houses in Edinburgh.
The young ladies were more agreeable, being rather good-looking but very affected, having received all the accomplishments that it was in the power of their slighted and brow-beaten governess, the daughter of a good but unfortunate family, to impart to them. They gave parties that Ronald might show off the uniform of the Gordon Highlanders, and played and sung to him in their best style; while he drew many comparisons between them and the Alice whose miniature he wore in his bosom, by which they lost immensely; and while listening to their confused foreign airs and songs, he thought how much sweeter and more musical were the tones of Alice Lisle, when she sung "The Birks of Invermay," or any other melody of the mountains, making his heart vibrate to her words. But even in the Castle of Edinburgh Ronald had recently made a friend, whose society, in spite of military and Highland gallantry, he preferred to that of the daughters of Macquirk.
Among the French captives within the stockade, he had frequently observed a young officer who remained apart from the rest, the deep dejection and abstraction of whose air gained him the readily excited sympathy of the young Highlander. He was a tall, handsome, well-shaped young man, with regular features, dark eyes, and a heavy black moustache on his upper lip. He wore the uniform of Napoleon's famous Imperial Guards; but the once gay epaulette and lace were much worn and faded. He wore a long scarlet forage-cap, adorned with a band, a tassel falling over his right shoulder. The gold cross of the Legion of Honour dangling at his breast showed that he had seen service, and distinguished himself.
He had more than once observed the peculiar look with which Ronald Stuart had eyed him; and on one occasion, with the politeness of his nation, he gracefully touched his cap. The Scotsman bowed, and beckoned him to a retired part of the palisado.