Young Walter, from his well-knit figure, and a determined aspect which he had acquired by his camp education, was as great a favourite among the starched little damoiselles of the Countess's withdrawing-room, as his clenched fist and bent brows made him a terror at times to the little cavaliers whose jealousy he excited; and his military preceptors (the old Royals, then battling and broiling at Tangiers) had inculcated a pugnacity of disposition that sometimes was very troublesome; and he once proceeded so far as to d--n the old Dowager of Drumsturdy pretty roundly, and draw his poniard on the young lord her son, who, with his companions, had mocked him as "a covenanter's brat." The Countess made him crave pardon of the little noble, and they shook hands like two cut-and-thrust gallants of six feet high. But when their companions, with childish malevolence, taunted poor Walter as "my lord's loon," "the soldier's varlet," or "the powder puggy," epithets which always kindled his rage and drew tears from his eyes, Lilian, ever gentle and kind, wept with him, espoused his cause, and told that "Walter's mother was a noble lady, for the Countess had her ring of gold;" and the influence of the little nymph, with her cheeks like glowing peaches, and her bright hair flowing in sunny ringlets around a face ever beaming with happiness--was never lost, or failed to maintain peace among them. And thus days passed swiftly into years, and the girl was twelve and the boy sixteen when they were separated. Walter followed his noble patron to the field, when the landing of Argyle in the west, and Monmouth in the south, threw Britain into a flame. Dunbarton, now a general officer, marched with the Scottish forces against the former; but Walter, as a volunteer, served under Colonel Halkett, with a battalion of Scottish musqueteers, at the battle of Sedgemoor, where he felt what it was to have lead bullets rebounding from his buff coat and headpiece. Since then he had been serving as a private gentleman; but in a country like Scotland, swarming with idle young men of good birth and high spirit, who despised every occupation save that of arms, preferment came not, and he had too often experienced the mortification of seeing others obtain what he justly deemed his due, the commission of King James VII.