'Horse and man went down like drift-wood When the floods are black at Yule, And their carcases were whirling In the Garry's deepest pool.' Outlawed, he became a colonel in the French service, and fell in battle but long after; his name appears as 'my Lord Dunkell' in the _Liste des Officiers Genereaux_ for May 10, 1748. James, the fourth lord, was also a general in the French army, and was a Grand Cross of St. Louis. His grandson, the present lord, proved--untrue to the old traditions of his race--a very different, useless, and mediocre Scottish peer, of the type too well known in our day. He had no property in Scotland, and no more interest in her people, morally, practically, or politically, than a Zulu chief. He was proud of his descent and title, nothing more, and, not being very wealthy, thought, like his wife, that Leslie Colville would be a very eligible son-in-law; while at his death his title would inevitably pass to a second cousin, Colonel Charles Edward Galloway, _chef d'escadron_ of a cavalry regiment, then quartered at Chalons-sur-Marne. Lord Dunkeld had one pet vanity--a real or fancied resemblance in his profile to those of the Grand Monarque and the later Louis of France; a facial angle indicative of weakness certainly, if not of worse; but, if the idea pleased him, it did no one any harm. Though thoroughly English bred, and English in all her ideas, as taken from her mother, the Hon. Blanche Gabrielle--so called from her grandmother, Gabrielle de Fontaine-Martel (daughter of the marquis of that name)--had considerable French espièglerie in her manner, and many pretty foreign tricks of it, with her eyebrows and hands, but she was naturally cold, ambitious, selfish, and vain. It was the luncheon-time at Craigmhor, which Lord Dunkeld only rented. The shooting had not yet begun; the circle therefore had some difficulty in getting through the days, and the necessity for some amusement being devised, 'something being done,' was on the tapis. Blanche wore a dress of plain blue serge, with a simple linen collar and lace collarette encircling her slender neck. Her hair, of a light golden tint, was dressed in the most perfect taste by the deft fingers of Mademoiselle Rosette, her French maid. In contrast to her hair, her eyes were dark--large eyes, full of observation and expressive of sensitiveness; she had delicately cut lips, which always seemed to droop when she did not smile. She had a general air of great softness and sweetness, which was most deceptive, as Blanche Galloway was secretly strong, with all the strength of one who in love, hate, or ambition could be fearless, and wily as fearless. Lastly, she had that which so often comes with foreign blood in a girl's veins, the faintest indication of a moustache, or down, at the corners of her red and mobile lips.