Time had made little Quentin as thoroughly at home in the castle and with the family of Rohallion, as if he had been born there. The absence of her son with the Guards (Carlton House and the Pavilion at Brighton were decidedly more amusing than that old castle by the sea), created a void in Lady Rohallion's heart; so the strange child came just in time to fill it, and she loved him tenderly and fondly. The old Lord was never weary of chatting and playing with Quentin; and he was the especial pet and occasionally tormentor of the quartermaster, grey-haired Jack Andrews, and of old Dominie Skaill, who had been long since inducted to the honourable post of tutor, and as such, after his scholastic duties were over, he daily visited the castle, in which a room was set apart for study. The following years saw Quentin Kennedy growing up into a fine and manly boy, bold in spirit and frank in nature; yet he retained even after his tenth year much of the chubby bloom, the rosy cheeks, the plump white skin, and the golden curls of his infancy. Lady Rohallion and her visitors thought him a perfect Cupid; but her husband and the quartermaster--particularly the latter--vowed he was a regular imp, who always broke his tobacco-pipes, tied explosives to the end of his pigtail, and played him a hundred other tricks, the result of Jack Andrews' secret education. The dominie often shook his bag-wig solemnly, for the boy's ways were at times very erratic and required reprehension; but his constant friend and adherent was Lady Rohallion, who, when beholding his beauty, his gambols, and grace, or when listening to his prattle, and watching all his waggish little ways, could never think but with a sigh of the widowed and unknown mother whom all these would have gladdened, and who was, perhaps, still sorrowing for the child who had forgotten her and transferred his filial love and faith to a stranger--if, indeed, the royalist sympathies of that unfortunate mother had not been long since expiated under the guillotine. Quentin's only annoyance existed when the Master of Rohallion, then a captain in the Guards, came home on leave, which, sooth to say, the Honourable Cosmo Crawford did as seldom as possible, the gaieties of London, club-life, the opera, and the atmosphere which surrounded the Prince of Wales, proving greater attractions than any to be found among the Highlands of Carrick. On these occasions, the boy felt sensibly how secondary a place he bore in the affections of the lady, and clung more to his friend the quartermaster. In addition to a cold and chilling stateliness of manner, the Master--a handsome and gallant soldier, however--disliked children generally, and half-grown boys in particular; thus if he ever spoke to Quentin, it was merely to quiz him as a young Frenchman (a nationality which the boy angrily repudiated), to call him a frog-eater, or little Boney, a name which, through some childish memory of the past, always roused his anger.