getting well. And so he slept for a few hours (the doctor came in and looked at him asleep, and shook his head), and woke about noon, and asked for something to drink; but his lips were quite black, and Charlie saw that he was somehow changed even before the man told him he was conscious of it himself. “It’s all up, Mr. Kettering,” said he, in a husky whisper, “it’s all up with me this turn. What’s the time o’ day now? Twelve o’clock? I shall be a dead man at sundown;” and then he told Charlie how he had received a warning, and he knew there was no hope “_here_ nor yet _yonder_,” he said, with a ghastly smile; for he had dreamt that he was standing sentry on a rampart over against the ocean, and the sun was setting in a golden haze, and the waters gleamed like molten gold; and he laid his firelock down, and rested and gazed with delight upon the scene; but a girl rose from the waves, far off between him and the sunset, and wrung the water from her long black hair, and pressed it with both hands to her throat, and seemed to staunch a ghastly wound that gaped at him even at that distance, and ever the blood flowed and flowed, and the sea became crimson, and the sun went down in blood-red streaks, and the sky darkened to the colour of blood, and everywhere there was blood, blood, nothing but blood; and the girl screamed to him in agony, saying, “Pray! pray!” and he knew that if he could speak a prayer before the sun went down he might be saved; and he strove and gasped, but he was choked; and still the sun dipped and dipped, and a fiery rim only was left above the sea, and still he could not speak; and it went down too; and the girl tossed up her arms with a shriek, and all was dark; and then with a convulsive effort he cried aloud, and his mouth was full of blood--and so he awoke. “And I shall never stand sentry nor carry a firelock again,” he said; and from that time he spoke no more, but folded his hands and lay quiet, as if asleep. The afternoon shadows lengthened on the hospital-wall--the evening drew near--at half-past six the dying man muttered a request for drink--at seven the sun went down, and he was dead!--peacefully, quietly he parted, like a child going to its rest. Charlie never knew it was all over till the doctor came; and they took him away and buried him, and there was a vacant place by Charlie’s bedside; and so Her Majesty lost a soldier, and a recruit was enlisted and sent to the _dépôt_ at home, and his place in the ranks was filled, and he was forgotten, just as peers, poets, conquerors, sovereigns, and sages are forgotten, only a little sooner--for the grim Reaper makes no distinction, and the monarch oak of the forest perishes as surely as the weed by the wayside. * * * * *