But the latter was in no mood for jesting, especially on such a subject, and abruptly spoke of something else; for now, with all his intense longing to see Aurelia once more, he actually dreaded the thought of meeting her. "Better that I should avoid her, but in doing so, what will she think of me?" he pondered, while manipulating a cigar (we had not yet fought in the Crimea, thus cigarettes were as yet unknown among us). "To see her again will be but torture. What course ought I to follow--must I pursue, when, penniless as I know myself to be _now_, her love is denied me! I must quit even the dear old regiment in time, and begin a life of exile in India." The latter conviction, which had come strongly home to the heart of Roland Ruthven, filled him with sincere regret, for he loved the Royals, and was proud of them. A regiment, old in history, is, says some one (Kinglake, we think), like the immortal gods, ever young and ever glorious. And great, indeed, in fame, rich in glory, and old in history, are the First Royal Scots--the most ancient regiment in the world, for their traditions go back in an unbroken line to the twenty-four Scottish Guards of Charles III. of France; thence to the Scottish Garde du Corps which saved the life of St. Louis in 1254 in Palestine, and fought in all the wars of France, at Agincourt, the conquest of Naples, and at Pavia, where they were nearly cut to pieces; even Francis was taken prisoner. In after years there were engrafted on them the remains of those gallant Scottish bands which served in Bohemia under Sir Andrew Gray, and under Sir John Hepburn in all the wars of Gustavus Adolphus, and as the regiment of the Lords Douglas and Dunbarton--Dunbarton of "the druns"--they returned to Scotland after the Restoration, and now at this day their standards are so loaded by embroidered trophies, that the blue silk--the national colour of Scotland--is nearly hidden, while the _mere list_ of the battles and sieges in which they have been engaged--ever with glory and honour--occupy ten closely printed pages of the War Office Records. Even their rivals for three hundred years, the famous Regiment de Picardie, could not equal this, though in the French service they were wont to quiz the Royals as having been "the Guards of Pontius Pilate who slept upon their posts." In all the armies of Europe we can find no parallel to their annals, for there is nothing like it in the military history of any other country. Among all our noble British Infantry--that infantry which, as Bonaparte said, "never knew when it was beaten," and which, as Green tells us in his "History of the English People" was first created when William Wallace of Elderslie, drew up his Scottish spearmen, in those solid squares before which the united chivalry of England and Aquitaine went down: Amid all our "unconquerable British Infantry," we say, none have such a brilliant inheritance of glory as the old Royal Regiment.