The King's Own Borderers: A Military Romance, Volume 1 (of 3)Grant, James
General
The King's Own Borderers: A Military Romance, Volume 1 (of 3)
Grant, James
Soldiers -- Fiction
Lady Rohallion, pointing upward as he sat on her knee, told him that
his father was in heaven, and that in time he would meet him there;
for, of such as he was, poor orphan, was the kingdom of heaven made;
but in heaven or in the sea was all one for a time to little Quentin
Kennedy, who wept bitterly, and noisily too, till he grew weary, or
became consoled, by the winning ways of his gentle protectress, for
of course the poor child knew not the nature of his awful loss and
bereavement.
While the boy, already temporarily forgetful of his griefs, was
stretched on the soft, warm hearth-rug before the fire that blazed in
the parlour grate, and occupied himself with the gambols of a wiry
Skye-terrier, John Girvan handed to Lady Rohallion the relics he had
found on the drowned man.
"A ring!" said she; "this is painfully interesting; and it has an
inscription."
"Yes, madame, it is like the _annuli_ worn by the legionary tribunes
in the Punic war," added Dominie Skaill, who never lost an
opportunity of "airing" his classics.
"It bears a crest; that speaks of gentle birth," said Lady Rohallion,
who had a great veneration for that fortuitous circumstance. "And
there is a name, _Josephine_."
"Mamma--ma mère!" exclaimed the child, starting and looking up at
the, no doubt, familiar sound.
"His mother's name, I am sure; poor little fellow, he has heard his
father call her so," said Lady Rohallion, as she opened the plated
case and drew forth the documents it contained. One was on
parchment, the other two were letters.
"A military commission--Girvanmains, look here!"
It was the commission of Quentin Kennedy, _gentilhomme Ecossais_, to
be captain in the Royal Regiment of Scots, in the service of His Most
Christian Majesty, and was signed by the unfortunate Louis XVI., as
the date showed, in the year before his execution.
"So this poor drowned man has eaten his bread by tuck of drum!"
exclaimed the old quartermaster, with a kindling eye, as he stooped
to caress the orphan's golden curls. "Puir fellow--puir fellow! He
has been a commissioned officer like myself, so I'll e'en turn out
the Rohallion Volunteers, and he shall be borne to his grave as
becomes a soldier, with muffled drums and arms reversed--eh, dominie?"
"Yes, and the spoils of war shall be cast on the pile, as we read in
the eleventh book of the Æneid; and they shall march like the
Thebans, striking their weapons one on another, to the sound of the
trumpet--eh, quartermaster?"
"I'd batoon the first lout I caught doing aught so unsteady or so
unsoldierlike," was the indignant response.
"But how came this Scotsman to be serving the French King," asked the
dominie; "as such was he not a renegade soldier, such as the Romans
were wont to stab and leave unburied, as we find in Tacitus?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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