"You will not speak of this before our fellows?" urged Quentin, earnestly. "Betray confidence! you have my word, Kennedy. And now let me to bed. I am for the baggage-guard; as we are falling back, it starts with the artillery, two hours before the division marches to-morrow." The ring had now a new interest in Quentin's eyes, and he was never tired of reading the six mystical stones. "Dearest Flora," he said to himself, "how happy I am now, that not even that lovely Spaniard could for a moment tempt me to forget you!" For all that, the "lovely Spaniard" was very nearly doing a vast deal of mischief. Finding that he was alone, and all was quiet in his billet, he sat far into the hours of the silent night, writing a long, long letter to his friend the quartermaster--the story of his past adventures; and to Flora he enclosed the only gift he possessed--the ring of Madame de Ribeaupierre--with its remarkable story, and he had barely sealed the envelope when he heard the warning bugle for the baggage-guard to turn out sounding in the dark and silent streets of Alva; and then, with a weary head but happy heart, he sought his pallet, and without undressing, courted sleep for a couple of hours, before the drums of the division beat the _générale_. CHAPTER XII. THE OLD BRIGADIER. "I cannot deem why men so toil for fame, A porter is a porter, though his load Be the oceaned world, and although his road Be down the ages. What is in a name? Ah! 'tis our spirit's curse to strive and seek. Although its heart is rich in pearls and ores, The sea, complains upon a thousand shores; Sea-like we moan for ever."--ALEXANDER SMITH. By this time the snows of a bleak and early winter lay deep in the grassy glens and on the heathery hills of Carrick; the mountain burns and rivulets that whilome flowed to the Doon and the Girvan were frozen hard and fast, and, suspended in mid-air, the cascade of the Lollards' Linn hung under its gothic arch like the beard of Father Christmas. Long icicles hung from the eaves of the houses and from the quaint stone gurgoyles of the old square keep. The sound of the woodman's axe echoed in the leafless oakwood shaw and the brown thickets of Ardgour, and everywhere the hedges and trees were being lopped and trimmed by the shears or bill-hook of the gardener and husbandman. In the clear frosty air, from many a mountain loch rang up the cheers of the jovial curlers, with the roar of the granite curling-stones as they swept along the glassy _rinks_, and many a hearty fellow anticipated, his appetite sharpened by the frosty air, the banquet of salt beef and greens, with steaming whisky toddy, that closed his day's sport, at the Rohallion Arms in Maybole.