He was strongly addicted to betting, and was a keen fox-hunter and sportsman. Beyond the kennel or the stable he had very few ideas; and so little capability had he of adapting his conversation to time, place, or person, that he was now prosing away to the preoccupied Flora about sporting matters. First it was of a famous match against time by the noted pedestrian, Captain Barclay of Urie; and next, how, when coursing among the Carrick hills, his two favourite stag-hounds so pressed a hare they had put up yesterday, that she leaped down a precipice more than fifty feet in height, and then the hounds followed without the slightest hesitation. "Good heavens! they were killed, of course!" said Flora, looking up with wonder. "Killed, Miss Warrender?--egad, no! To the astonishment of us all, we saw puss and the hounds scouring along the road towards Maybole; but the Ayr stage, coming up with four spanking greys, caused her to make for a field of grass, and though turned five several times by the hounds, she made her escape down a burn at last, for of course they lost the scent." Finding that Flora had relapsed into listlessness, and that he failed to interest her by his scraps of information on the Newmarket Craven meeting, such as his horse Rolla, eight stone, running against Lord Sackville's Tag, also eight stone, across the flat for a thousand guineas, and that three to one was being taken on Rolla; that the betting was even at Epsom on the brown colt, by Eclipse, out of Mrs. Fitzherbert, and other gossip of similar character, he was compelled to resume his place near the old Lord, who was just in the act of pressing him politely to join in another glass of claret, when Jack Andrews limped in with a letter, which the running-footman had at that moment brought from Maybole. The mail from Ayr had broken down near the bank of the Boon in the snow, and the guard had brought on the bags to Dalrymple, on one of the horses, at the risk of his life. Oblong and official, the cover of the letter showed that it was "On His Majesty's service." "News of Quentin Kennedy, doubtless," said Lord Rohallion, peering about for his eye-glass. "I pray God it be not unfortunate news about Cosmo!" thought Lady Winifred, for the tidings that came to many a poor mother in those days of war were sad enough sometimes.