The cattle were in their heather-roofed shielings on the sheltered sides of the hills, the sheep and swine were among the pea-ricks, the dusky smoke of the ruddy winter fire ascended into the clear blue air from many a happy hearth and thatched homestead; but, as the roads that wound over hill and lea were buried deep in snow, news of the distant war in Spain come slowly and uncertainly to such remote dwellings as the castle of Rohallion--how much more uncertainly and slowly to those glens in Sutherland and Ross, where a few heaps of stones amid the desert waste now mark the birthplaces of those who manned the ranks of our noblest Scottish regiments in that old and glorious war. As yet no further tidings had been heard either of Quentin Kennedy or of his court-martial. All that had been heard at home, through the columns of the London _Courier_, was that the slender army of Sir John Moore was falling back before the overwhelming masses of the enemy, and that ere long all might be confusion in its ranks--perhaps dismay! After the receipt of the Adjutant-General Sir Harry Calvert's letter, the public papers were searched in vain for further tidings of Quentin Kennedy, but none were found. "Our own correspondent," with his camp-gossip, had no place in the newspaper columns of those days. The mails were then often late and always uncertain; many that came by sea were lost between storms and privateers, and the vague anxiety of Quentin's friends gradually became painful suspense, and amid it Lord Rohallion once more _wrote with energy_ recommending his young protégé to the duke. Dinner was over, and the wax-candles in the candelabra and girandoles of crystal had been lighted in the antique yellow drawing-room; Lady Rohallion, seated as usual in her own corner, was engaged, according to her wont, upon some piece of knitting or other work for the poor or old folks on the estate; her grey hair, somewhat needlessly powdered, was dressed back as of old. Lord Rohallion had brought his decanter of claret with him into the drawing-room and placed it on a guéridon table by his side; and there he sat, in a cushioned easy-chair, lingering over the wine, and gazing dreamily into the large fire that blazed in the old-fashioned brass-basket between the delf-lined jambs of the fireplace. The wind was sighing through the old sycamores of the avenue, and the roar of the sea was heard on the Partan Craig. Flora was idling over the piano, practising the "Battle of Prague," the Duke of York's grand march, or some such piece of music then in vogue with young ladies, and near her hovered her present admirer, Jack Ferny of Fernwoodlee, a good-looking but brainless young fellow with sandy hair and a pea-green hunting-coat of the fast kind worn when the Pavilion was in its glory at Brighton. Ferny's estate was a small one, and he was evidently, as gossips said, "doing his best to make ducks and drakes of it."