“This is the boy, Dugald,” said Miss Mary; “this is just our Gilian.” “I see that. I know him finely,” said the General, turning upon him a roving melancholy eye: “Jock’s recruit.... Did you get back from your walk, my young lad? I never could fathom you, but perhaps you have your parts.... Well, well... what are ye dreaming on the day?... Eh? Ha! ha! ha! Aye dreaming, that was you; you’ll be dreaming next that the lassie likes you. Mind, she jilted Jock, she jilted Colin, she jilted me; were we not the born idiots? yet still-and-on.... Sixty miles in twenty-four hours; good marching, lads, good marching, for half-starved men, and not the true heather-bred at that.” The voice was becoming weaker in every sentence, the flush was paling on the countenance. Standing by the bedside, the Cornal looked upon his brother with a most rueful visage, his face hoved up with tears. “This beats all!” said he, and he turned and went beside the men at the window, leaving Miss Mary caressing still at the hand upon the coverlet, and with an arm about the boy. “He was a strong, fine, wiry man in his time,” said MacGibbon, looking over his shoulder at this end of a stormy life. “I mind him at Talavera; I think he was at his very best there.” The Paymaster looked, too, at the figure upon the bed, looked with a bent head, under lowered eyebrows, his lip and chin brown with snuffy tears. “At sixteen he threw the cabar against the champion of the three shires, and though he was a sober man a bottle was neither here nor there with him,” said the Cornal. Miss Mary was upon her knees. “The batteries are to open fire on San Vincent; seven eighteen-pounders and half a dozen howitzers are scarcely enough for that job. Tell Mackellar to move up two hundred yards farther on the right.” The General babbled again of his wars in a child’s accent, that rose now and then stormily to the vehemence of the battle-field. “_Columns deploy on the right centre company.... No, no, close column on the rear of the Grenadiers_.... I wish, I wish.... Jock, Jock, where’s your boy now? I cannot see him, I’m sore feared he’s hiding in the sutler’s vans. I knew him for a dreamer from the first day I saw him.... That’s Williams gone and my step to Major come. God sain him! we could have better spared another man.... _Halt, dress!_” He opened his eyes again and they fell upon Gilian. “You mind me of a boy I once knew,” said he. “Poor boy, poor boy, what a pity of you! My sister Mary would have liked you. I think we never gave her her due, and indeed she had a generous hand.” “Here she’s at your side, dear Dugald,” said his sister, and her head went down upon his breast.