"Dogs can see and ken when death enters a house."
"Death!—is my father's case so bad?" asked Roland, growing very pale, and setting down his glass.
"Bad—it couldna weel be worse," said she, in a broken voice, as she began to weep; "but the doctor—"
"Is in the house, I understand. Tell him that I am here. Oh, Elspat, have I crossed the broad Atlantic only to face death and sorrow?"
"Death and sorrow!" she added, shaking her head, "and I dread the fifth of August—it has aye been a fatal day to the Ruthvens. It was on that day your lady mother died, and on that day your uncle Philip, that should have been Laird, went forth and returned no more!"
Roland started impatiently to his feet, and something of a disdainful smile crossed his handsome face.
There is something grand and noble in the position of such a young man as he was—the descendant and representative of a long line of stainless ancestry, having the sense of carrying out its destiny in the future, and being the transmitter to other times and generations of its lofty traits and distinction.
No gamblers, "legs," or turf transactions ever degraded the line of Ardgowrie (pigeons there may have been, but never hawks), which, in a collateral branch, represented the attainted Earls of Gowrie and Lords of Ruthven, and if Roland had any weakness it was family pride, which he inherited from his father, who had left nothing undone to develop it; and with it grew the idea and conviction, that death were better than for a Ruthven to do aught that was dishonourable.
The second article of Roland's faith, like that of his father, was a profound veneration for the old Royal Scots, in which so many of the Ruthvens had lived and died, that they deemed it quite a family regiment, and many knew of no home out of it, and many, too, in battle or otherwise, had found their graves under its colours in all parts of the world.
As his father's son, Roland was a favourite with both battalions of the Royal Regiment, and he was the life and soul of the mess, and the most popular man in it.