"But call him not a Frenchman," said the dominie, "when he bears the gude auld Carrick name of Kennedy." "Aye, dominie; it used to find an echo hereabout, in the old trooping and tramping times," replied Girvan. "And has so still," added Rohallion, laughing; "for I am half a Kennedy, and often have I heard my mother sing-- "'Twixt Wigton and the town of Ayr, Portpatrick and the Cruives of Cree, Nae man may hope in peace to bide, Unless he court Saint Kennedie." "Like the Maxwells in Nithsdale, the Kennedies had all their own way here in those days," said Lady Winifred, as she drew off her lace mittens, and prepared to adjust her ivory-mounted spinning-wheel. "But to return to the present time, tell me, John Girvan, did that French ship actually come within range of our gun-battery?" "Yes, my lord--or nearly so." "And what were you about, John, to stand with your hands in your pockets at such a time? Egad, 'twas not like an old 25th man?" The quartermaster reddened. "There was a tremendous gale from the seaward," said Lady Rohallion, coming to his assistance; "a storm--a tempest----" "And she came only within a mile of the Partan Craig, where the unfortunate merchantman was in sore peril--a foe on one side, a lee shore on the other--eh, dominie?" "'_Here_ Scylla bellows from her dire abodes, Tremendous port--abhorred by men and gods, And there Charybdis,' as old Homer hath it," replied the dominie, promptly. "Even had the battery been manned, my lord, I am doubtful--I am doubtful if these old twenty-four pounders would pitch shot so far; and she scarcely appeared, before she hauled her wind and disappeared into the mist," said Girvan, giving his old yellow wig an angry twist. "Some of these small craft are growing very saucy," said Lord Rohallion, to change the subject, which he saw was distasteful to his old comrade. "It was only the other day that a lieutenant with fourteen men from one of our gun-brigs landed on the coast of France to distribute royalist manifestoes of the Comte d'Artois, dated from Holyrood, but he and his men were taken by a party of dragoons who surrounded an auberge in which they were imprudently drinking. They were instantly hanged as spies, by order of General Monnet, and the bodies are to be seen on fifteen gibbets, a mile apart, along the coast between Boulogne and Cape Grisnez." "Poor men! How horrible!" exclaimed Lady Winifred. "Such barbarities were not committed in our time, my lord, except among the Indians." "Quartermaster--but we are getting old fellows now," said Rohallion, with something between a laugh and a sigh. "We have often stopped the march of the French with fixed bayonets, but we can't arrest the march of time."