With the baggage marched the rear guard of the division, having with it the sick, the drunk, disorderly, and prisoners, together with a medley of followers of a not very reputable kind, whose presence was not conducive to reflection or comfort, and who noisily scorned alike control or discipline. As Quentin was riding thus, he was passed from the rear by the general and his staff. The former gave him a keen and inquiring glance, answered his salute briefly, and passed on. Whether Cosmo had mentioned him favourably, or the reverse, in delivering the despatch of Don Baltasar, he knew not; but he knew that when once the spiteful element attains ascendancy in the human heart, there is no mode in which it will not seek to be gratified and no measure to its malignity, and he sighed over an enmity that he dared neither to grapple with or hope to overcome; and all this he owed to the preference of Flora Warrender for him--her early friend and playmate in youth. Well, there was some consolation in the cause! Though his reception by the Master of Rohallion neither disappointed nor shocked him, it chilled the poor lad's heart, which grew heavy as he saw how unavailing and how fruitless were all his efforts to deserve praise or to win honour! CHAPTER V. HALT AT AZUMAR. "Pleasures fled hence, wide now's the gulf between us; Stern Mars has routed Bacchus and sweet Venus: I can no more--the lamp's fast fading ray Reminds me of parade ere break of day, Where, shivering, I must strut, though bleak the morning, Roused by the hateful drummer's early warning. Come, then, my boat-cloak, let me wrap thee round, And snore in concert stretched upon the ground." _An Elegy._ The noisy racket maintained by those who were in custody of the rear-guard, the voices of others who whipped or cheered on the long string of baggage animals (Evora horses, Castilian mules, and sturdy burros or donkeys), the various novel sights and sounds incident to the march of Hope's division, together with the appearance of the division itself winding down the deep valleys and up the steep mountains like a long and glittering snake, amid clouds of white dust, out of which the sheen of arms and the waving of colours came incessantly, won Quentin from his sadder thoughts, and he began to feel, after all he had undergone, an emotion, of joy on finding himself among his old comrades--a joy that can only be known by a soldier--by one forming a part of that great and permanent, but almost always happy family, a regiment of the line. The morning was bright and breezy; the large floating clouds cast their flying shadows over the sunlit landscape at times, adding alike to its beauty and the striking effect of the marching columns.