Once when the dominie pointed to a Vandyke that hung in the great hall, representing Lady Jean of Rohallion, and told him that "she was an evil-minded woman, who persecuted the saints of God in her time; and that the cross at her girdle was the hammer of Beelzebub, and an emblem of her damnable apostasy from the pure and covenanted Kirk of Scotland," the boy's eyes would assume their gleam, and then a pure, soft smile, as he said that "his mother in France wore just such a cross as that, and that he would love the picture for her sake." Then Dominie Skaill would groan in spirit over "the bad bluid" that boiled in a heart so young and tender, and stamping up and down the hall in his square-toed shoes, would openly express his fears that "the bairn was a veritable young Claverhouse!" On other occasions, and they were many, when Quentin was alone, and gazing on the sea that frothed so white about the Partan Craig, out of the perplexing mists of memory came the dream-like incidents of the wreck on that gloomy November night; his loving father's pale and despairing face, when the ship went down and left them all struggling amid the cold waves of a dark and stormy sea; and with these memories came others beyond that time, softer and dearer, like the recollections of a prior existence. There was the cathedral, with its lights and music at mass; the bridge, the river, and the windmill; how surely he should know them all again! And so pondering and dreaming thus, he would lie for hours on the sunny bank that sloped southward from the cliff of Rohallion, while the blue Firth of Clyde that chafed upon the rocks below, came faintly and dreamily to his ear. Thus his vision was turned inward, though his eyes were perhaps fixed on the blue ether overhead, where the sea mews were revolving and the great eagle soaring aloft; or on the distant tower and Tolbooth of Maybole that stood clear and dark against the sunset-flush--the wavy undulations of the Carrick hills: the blue peaks of Arran that rose afar off, or the nearer coast of Cunninghame, chequered by golden light on violet coloured shadow. CHAPTER IX. THE QUARTERMASTER'S SNUGGERY. "Ambition is dead within me: but there is some satisfaction in a queen's commission, with half-pay at the end of it."--_Once a Week_.