Many a day they spent together, this patient dominie and his playful pupil, wandering among the ruins of the Castle of Kilhenzie, in feudal times a stronghold of the Kennedies, and there for hours they were wont to sit, under the aged and giant tree which still stands near its southern wall--a tree twenty-two feet in girth, and so vast that it covers nearly the eighth of an acre. "On that tree many a bold reiver, gipsy loon, and landlouping Southron has been hung in his boots by the auld Kennedies o' Kilhenzie," the dominie would say; "they were a dour, stern, and warlike stock, boasting themselves to be kean-na-tigh, or, as the name bears, 'head of the race,' and who can say, Quentin, but you may be their lineal descendant, and if every head wears its ain bonnet, be Laird of Kilhenzie yet? yea, restored to your proper estate after all your wanderings, even as Telemachus was, who in childhood was also saved miraculously from the sea." Then the boy would look up to the ivy-covered masses of the crumbling wall, with its gaping windows, through which the gleds and hoodie-crows were flying, and feel strange throbbings and emotions wakened in his heart by the dominie's words; and there he often came alone to loiter, and think and dream over what his friend had said, till his musings took a tangible form, and ultimately, in all his day-dreams, he came to identify the old castle with _himself_--he knew not why. When Quentin was brought first to Rohallion, he was wont to pray to his "blessed Mother who was in heaven," and to lisp the name of "la Mère de Dieu" with great reverence, to the utter scandal and bewilderment of Dominie Skaill, who smelt the old leaven of Prelacy and Popery strong in this, for he believed only in the Kirk of Scotland as by law established, confirmed by the Revolution Settlement and Treaty of Union (though sadly outraged by the restoration of patronage in 1712); and such language, he averred, was rank hanging matter in an adult! Quentin's dark eyes were wont to sparkle and flash on hearing these rebukes, or France abused, as she was pretty sure to be, daily, by every one in those days; but after a time all these emotions and ideas gave place to local influences, and he settled down into a quiet little Scottish schoolboy, though, as we have said, somewhat of a truant withal. His mind sobered and changed even as his clustering golden curls grew into dark and shining chestnut though dreamlike memories would still steal upon his mind--memories that came he knew not whence.