"Aurelia!" he whispered to himself, and marvelled if the time would ever come, when he would bring her hither to be the queen of his life, and of beautiful Ardgowrie.
Day by day, his father was sinking, and all the powers of medicine could do nothing for him; his ailment was not old age but a passing away of the powers of life. The old Highland housekeeper, Elspat, had much contempt for the nostrums of the doctor, and believing her master to be under the spell of a gipsy-woman whom he had sent to prison for theft, maintained that he would never be cured, until the parings of his finger nails and a lock of his hair were buried in the earth with a live cock, a remnant of ancient Paganrie, which the reign of Victoria still finds prevailing in some parts of the Highlands.
So, as she fully expected, the morning of the 5th of August, saw the old Laird expire peacefully, after playing fatuously with the coverlet, and muttering that he could "hear the drums of the Royal beating the old Scots March," and the lamenting wail of Macaulay's pipe was heard on the terrace without, as Roland closed his father's eyes, and, crushed with natural grief, knelt by the side of his bed, and Elspat placed a plate containing a little salt on his breast.
In due time, amid the lamentations of his tenantry, and while the pipes woke the echoes of the glen, by the March of Gilliechriost (or of the Follower of Christ), one of the oldest airs in existence, he was laid in his last home, in the Ruthven aisle of Ardgowrie kirk, and Roland found himself alone in the world.
CHAPTER III.
THE CABINET OF SCINDIA.
Yes, Roland felt himself, most terribly alone now—far from the merry mess and the daily companionship of his brother officers, in that great old mansion, wherein for centuries generations of his ancestors were born and had died, and which stood amid such wild and desolate, yet beautiful scenery.
Expected though his father's death had been, by Roland, the shock of the event when it did occur, was so great, that it was not until two days after the funeral, and when his legal agents and advisers, Messrs. Hook and Crook, writers to Her Majesty's Signet, came to consult him on certain matters concerning the estate, that he bethought him of the old cabinet found by the Royals in Scindia's fortress, and he sprang up with a start to execute the last commands of his father the old Colonel.
In the latter's desk he found the key—one of very curious workmanship, and as he put it into the lock a singular sense of some great and impending evil—a sense which had never impressed itself upon him so vividly before—came over him, and seemed to whisper to him to be prepared!
Prepared for what?