During our halt, the convent parlour was thronged by the gentlemen of the Scottish forces; and our illustrious Camp-Marechal Hepburn presented to the abbess a valuable gold medal, which, in the German wars, he had torn from the neck of the terrible Count Pappenheim, the hero of a hundred wounds. Weary with marching in all our harness, half choked by the spring dust, that rolled along the roads of Upper Champagne, under the feet of so many thousand infantry, and the wheels of many powder-waggons, baggage-wains, and field-pieces, just as the sun was setting, we gladly halted one evening, in the little town of La Fere Champenoise, and resigned our horses to our grooms, servants, or pages. As we rambled along the streets in search of refreshment, the welcome voice of a tapster, shouting to passengers in the old fashion, drew us towards a tavern or hostelry. 'Messieurs,' he continued to cry, 'we have here good wine and good oats! will you have a chopin for yourself and a measure for your charger? enter, messieurs, enter!' This tavern was styled the _Count of Champagne_, from its sign-board, which bore an imaginary head of that personage in a barbed helmet of the middle ages; and from the circumstance of the quaint old house having been a residence of Theobauld V., last Count of Champagne and Brie; consequently our tavern was quite historical, and at least four hundred years old. CHAPTER XVIII. THE TWO ABBÉS. Dundrennan, Sir Quintin Home, Raynold Cheyne and I, entered the common hall, or room of the tavern, and after bowing politely to two abbés who were seated in a corner conversing over a stoup of French wine, and reading the columns of the 'Mercury,' we ordered dinner. 'A poor tavern this,' said Sir Quentin, surveying the old gloomy room and worm-eaten furniture. 'True; but our swords are sheathed in leather just now--not crimson velvet,' said the Viscount, pithily. 'That ride from Mailly to-day has given me an appetite,' said Cheyne; 'dinner--dinner, quick!' 'And jovial stoups of your wine of champagne all round,' added Sir Quentin. 'What the deuce, my Laird of Redden!' exclaimed the Viscount, 'thy purse actually rings with the sound of metal; hast thou inherited a fortune?' 'Or been upon the highway?' added Cheyne, in the same tone of banter. 'I have been overmuch upon the highway since I rid myself of yonder English captain in the bounds of Berwick,' replied the Baronet, with a grim smile; 'since that unfortunate day, my purse has usually been the lightest thing about me.' 'Except thy heart, gallant Home,' added Dundrennan. 'Viscount, I thank you.' 'And yet, Sir Quentin,' said I, 'rumour avers that the fair Mademoiselle de Chevreuse views you with favour, and we all know that she has eighty thousand francs per annum.'