If better times came he had often thought that, if successful in winning a competency, he would return to his native land, for his close connection with the Scottish regiment kept alive in him his feeling of nationality, and he always regarded himself as a stranger in France.

The estates and title now bestowed upon him seemed to put this hope further away than ever, and to fix him permanently in France, a contingency more disagreeable to him the more he saw how completely France was dominated by faction, and how unstable were the conditions of life there.

His musings, therefore, as he walked up and down for hours, were very different from those which most young men would have felt at so great and sudden a change in their fortunes..