Proud of themselves and of the honours their predecessors had sustained untarnished in so many foreign battles, Dunbarton's musqueteers felt an esprit du corps, to which at that time few other military bands were entitled; and it was with a bosom glowing with the highest sentiments of this description, that Walter Fenton for the first time clasped on the silver gorget and plumed headpiece of his junior rank, and found himself really a standard-bearer of a regiment deemed the first in Europe, and whose boasted antiquity had become a jocular proverb, obtaining for it the name of Pontius Pilate's Guard. When next he paid his devoirs at the residence of the Napiers, Lilian fairly blushed with pleasure to see him looking so gallant and handsome; for, to a young girl's eye, a nodding plume, a golden scarf, and jewelled rapier, were considerable additions to an exterior otherwise extremely prepossessing. The paleness resulting from his confinement had quite passed away; his olive cheek was suffused with the rich warm glow of health; while buoyant spirits, new hopes, and high aspirations, lent a lustre to his eye and a grace to his actions, which was not visible before, when he felt himself to be the mere object of patronage and dependence--the poor private gentleman with a brass-hilted whinger and corslet of black iron. Again and again he visited the old turretted house on the Burghmuir, and drank deeper draughts of that intoxicating passion which, from its hopelessness, he dared hardly acknowledge to himself. Every day he became more and more in love, and felt that it would be impossible (with all his awe of Lady Grisel's fardingale and cane) to keep it long a secret from the being who inspired it. CHAPTER II. THE GLOVE. Distrust me not, but unreserved disclose The anxious thought that in thy bosom glows; To impart our griefs is apt to mitigate, And social sorrows blunt the darts of fate. EVENING, a Poem. A month had passed away, and the summer came; it was a month of unalloyed happiness to Walter Fenton, who, at the somewhat solitary mansion of Bruntisfield, was a frequent and always a welcome guest; and there he spent every moment he could spare from his military duties, which chiefly consisted of being on guard at the Palace Porch or Privy Council Chamber, a review on Leith Links before old Sir Thomas of Binns practising King James's new mode of exercise by flam of drum, or 'worrying' various unhappy old women to say 'God save the King,' pronounce the rising at Bothwell a rebellion, Archbishop Sharpe a martyr, and Peden an impostor.