Agitated by feelings such as few have experienced, on an evening in the summer of 1690, Walter Fenton found himself pursuing the dusty highway from Paris to St. Germains, the place where the hopes and the fears, the loyalty and the sorrows of the Jacobites were centred. He wore a plain suit of unlaced grey cloth, very much worn, a hat without a feather, and a plain walking-sword. He carried under his arm a small bundle, with particular care, for it contained a few necessaries and all he possessed in the world--his commission, the long-treasured letter of Dundee, and the Dutch standard he had taken at Killycrankie. These were now his whole fortune. That day he had walked from Senlis without tasting food, and was quite exhausted. After spending his last sou on a glass of sour vin ordinaire at a small cottage near the Wood of Treason (where Ganelon in 780 formed his plot which betrayed the house of Ardennes, the peers of Charlemagne, and occasioned the defeat at Roncesvalles), he grasped his bundle, and pushed on with renewed energy. His handsome features were impressed by an air of sadness and deep abstraction, for the acute achings of present sorrow struggled with the gentler whisperings of hope, and though his feet traversed the hard flinty roadway from Paris, his thoughts were far away in the land of his childhood, and his wandering fancy luxuriated on the memory of many a much-loved scene he might be fated to behold no more, and many an episode of tenderness and love that would never be re-acted again. How vividly he recalled every glance and graceful action of Lilian, as he had last beheld her. Nearest and dearest to his heart, she rendered the memory of his native land still more beloved, for she yet trod its soil and breathed its air, and he knew that daily she could gaze on those blue hills which are the first landmarks of the child in youth, and the last of the man in age, and to the recollection of which the emigrant and the exile cling with the tenacity of life. The current of his thoughts was interrupted, and his cheek flushed. The great and striking brick façade of the old castle of St. Germains, with its turrets shining in the setting sun, arose before him. There dwelt he on whom the hopes of half a nation rested, and Walter drew breath more freely as he progressed; his eye sparkled, and his cheek flushed with animation, for now other and less painful thoughts were occurring to his fancy. With the buoyancy natural to youth, sorrow gave way as hope spread its rainbow before him: and bright visions of the King's triumphant return and restoration by the swords of the Cavaliers or Jacobites, mingled with his own dreams of love and honour. Fired with ardour, he often grasped his sword, and springing forward, longed to throw himself at the foot of James VII., and pour forth in transport that singularly deep and burning passion of loyalty which animated every member of his faction.