But a shadow was to come between the brothers. They both fell in love, and, as ill fortune would have it, they both fell in love with the same girl. I remember her well, a pretty, airy creature, the daughter of the petty local shopkeeper up in the throat of the glen. In her reckless waywardness she played the brothers off against each other, and a bitter jealousy supplanted the old loyal affection. They did not quarrel outright, and both still lived under their father’s roof; but the elder brother glowered sullenly at the younger, and the younger would shoot galling jibes at his silent senior. The old sergeant noticed the alienation, and took it so to heart that he fell ill, and in a few days a long straggling procession came winding down the brae to the little graveyard by the burnside, and the old soldier of the Peninsula and Waterloo was lowered into his quiet grave under the willow trees. The brothers walked home together, drawn together again by their loss. That same evening a long silence was broken abruptly by the elder brother. “See here, Aleck, it can never mair be wi’ you an’ me as it used to be. If ye win that lassie, I s’all hae murder in my heart against you; if I win her, ye’ll nourish against me the hate o’ hell. Suppose we agree tae lay aside thoughts o’ her, heave awa’ thae trowels an’ plummets an’ planes an’ augers, an’ gae to the wars as the auld man did afore us. That’s the trade for us, lad; Brown Bess an’ the bayonet afore gimlets an’ gavels!” The brothers shook hands on the compact, and resolved to ’list without delay. They were stirring times, those early months of 1849, when news was coming home of the outbreak of the second Sikh war, and we were reading of the glorious death of Cureton, “the fair-haired boy of the Peninsula”; of young Herbert Edwardes’ ready prowess--a junior lieutenant, yet in command of an army with which he had won victories and was beleaguering Mooltan; of William Havelock’s wild gallop to his death across the Ramnuggur sands, and of stout old Thackwell’s stiff combat at Sadoolapore. The old sergeant had not been buried a week when his sons were tramping over the hills to Aberdeen, where was the nearest recruiting station, and presently we heard that both had enlisted in the same regiment, a corps which was in sore need of recruits, for it had suffered terrible losses in the desperate struggle of Chillianwallah. That news would have been the last tidings of the brothers that ever reached the highland glen, but for one letter from John to the minister of the parish, written about the end of 1850. He was doing well in the regiment, being already a full corporal; but now that there was peace and idleness, Aleck had grown restless and had volunteered into another regiment, since when he had not heard of him. No word more came of, or from, either of the brothers, and as the years passed they fell out of memory.