The New Year's day of 1801 passed over at Rohallion amid feasting and revelling, for in the good old fashion the worthy lord, as his fathers had done before him, entertained all his people in the great hall of the tower. There the trophies were hung with green holly and scarlet berries; there the Yule log still smouldered on the hearth, and there he shook the powder from his hair, while footing it merrily with the wives and daughters of the fishers and cottars, while old Girvan hobbled away in his brigadier wig, the dominie screwing up his fiddle to discourse sweet music with the piper of Maybole, while as an interlude came the drums and fifes of the Rohallion Volunteers, to make the old castle ring to the cheering sounds of "Lady Jean o' Rohallion's Rant;" and this hearty homeliness, together with a free distribution of gifts on "auld handsel Monday," made the lord and lady of the manor adored by their tenantry. On that day there was something for every one: to the dominie a snuff-mull, which he received with many bows, reminding the donor how "Tacitus affirmed that Tiberius prohibited the bestowal of new year gifts, which was a great saving of expense to the knights and senators," To the quartermaster a gilt-bound "Army List," to keep him in reading and reference for the ensuing year; to Elsie at the coves a lace-curchie, and to little Quentin a gallant rocking-horse. So all danced the new year in hand-in-hand, to the old song,-- "Now Yule has come and Yule has gane, And we hae feasted weel! Sae Jock maun to his flail again, And Jenny to her wheel." In the ensuing spring, when fresh flowers and budding leaves came "to deck the dead season's bier;" when the aroma of fertility, warmth, and verdure came from the sunny upland slopes, and the mountain burns, as they bore brown leaves along, seemed to brawl louder over their stony beds towards the Firth of Clyde; when greener tints spread over the pastoral hills and glens about Rohallion; when the sky, long chilled by the frost of the past winter, had a richer tone and colour; when the air was warm and pleasant as it fanned the new-turned sods--when this sweet season came, we say, the old Lord had ceased to lament having been refused a brigade in the expedition to Egypt. By that time he had heard of the fall of his old friend and brother officer, the gallant Sir Ralph Abercrombie, and how war and disease had thinned the ranks of his army. He sorrowed for this: but his old spirit blazed up anew when he heard of how the 28th or Gloucestershire Slashers, in the Temple of the Sun, faced their rear rank about when surrounded, and defended themselves like a double wall of fire; how the Gordon Highlanders, at the bayonet's point, carried the cannon of the foe at the Tower of Mandora; how the Black Watch destroyed the boasted Invincibles, and won their scarlet plumes; and how the shrill pipes of the Highland Brigade rang in fierce defiance along the embattled heights of Nicopolis!