Sometimes he was present when Lord Rohallion and John Girvan had long consultations concerning farming and stock management, arable and pastoral; planting belts of pine for sheltering corn and deer; draining bogs and swamps; embanking or reclaiming; thatching farm-towns anew, and so forth--consultations which always ended in a jorum of hot toddy, and a reference to the war and chances of invasion, which naturally led to a mental parade of his majesty's 25th Foot, and old personal reminiscences, varying from the days of Minden down to Saratoga, Bunker's Hill, and Brandywine, with Corporal O'Lavery of the 17th, and Lord Rawdon's famous despatch. _Then_ agriculture and its patron, the Baronet of Ulbter, were voted a double bore, and everything gave place to "shop" and pipeclay. At other times Quentin was present when curious arguments ensued over a pipe and glass of grog between his preceptor and the ruddy-visaged quartermaster, who was wont to treat the ancients and their modes of warfare with supreme contempt. Thus, if he extolled Brown Bess and her bayonet, which the French could never withstand, Dominie Skaill brought the Parthians into the field, and told him how at close quarters with the Roman Legion they were broken; but how the troops of Crassus broke those same legions in turn, by the dexterity with which they used their bows, never failing to wind up with a reference to the Caledonian warriors who routed the Romans in the days of old, and the schiltrons or massed spearmen of Wight Wallace in later times, for the dominie had all the history of Harry the Minstrel by heart, and like the quartermaster, his patriotism had been no way lessened by many a jovial night spent with their friend Burns in his old farm-house of Lochlea or Mossgiel. Thus Quentin's mind became gradually imbued by quaint ideas, and filled with a curious mixture of military, legendary, and historic lore. The very air he breathed was full of patriotism, for he was in the land of Burns--in Carrick, the ancient lordship of the kingly Bruces; and many a story the dominie told him of the time when the Earls of Cassilis, the Lords of Rohallion, the Lairds of Blairquhan, and other noblesse of Carrick, had their town mansions in Maybole; when love was made through barred helmets, and when there were hunting, and hosting and foraying; when castles were stormed and granges burned; when the Black Vault of Dunure saw Danish blood stream from its gutters after Largs was won; and the Abbot of Corseregal roasting on an iron grille ten years after the Reformation. But the story that Quentin loved best was of the Gipsy King who lured away the fair Countess of Cassilis, and of the long years of captivity she spent in the grim old tower of Maybole, where, to this day, we may see the likenesses of herself and her rash lover, carved in stone upon the upper oriel.