“It is the last we’ll ever see of it, John,” said the Cornal. “Oh, man, man, if I were young again!” His foot was very heavy and slow as he followed the last he would witness of what had been his pride; his staff, that he tried to carry like a sword, roust go down now and then to seek a firmness in the sandy foot-way. Not for long at a time but in frequent flashes of remembrance he would throw back his shoulders and lift high his head and step out in time to the music. The Paymaster walked between him and Gilian, a little more robust and youthful, altogether in a different key, a key critical, jealous of the soldier lads that now he could not emulate. They were smart enough, he confessed, but they were not what the 46th had been; Crawford had a good carriage on his horse but--but--he was not---- “Oh, do not haver, Jock,” said the Cornal, angrily at last; “do not haver! They are stout lads, good lads enough, like what we were ourselves when first the wars summoned us, and Crawford, as he sits there, might very well be Dugald as I saw him ride about the bend of the road at San Sebastian and look across the sandy bay to see the rock we had to conquer. Let you and me say nothing that is not kind, Colin; have we not had our own day of it with the best? and no doubt when we were at the marching there were ancients on the roadside to swear we were never their equal. They are in there in the grass and bracken where you and I must some day join them and young lads still will be marching out to glory.” “In there among the grass and bracken,” thought Gilian, turning a moment to look up the slope that leads to Kilmalieu. The laurel drugged the air with death’s odour. “In the grasses and the bracken,” said Gilian, singing it to himself as if it were a coronach. Was that indeed the end of it all, of the hope, the lilt, the glory? And then he had a great pity for the dead that in their own time had been on many a march like this. Their tombs are thick in Kilmalieu. It seemed so cruel, so heedless, so taunting thus to march past them with no obeisance or remembrance, that to them, the dead soldiers, all his heart went out, and he hated the quick who marched upon the highway. But Crawford, like the best that have humour, had pity and pathos too. “Slow march!” he cried to his men, and the pipers played “Lochaber No More.” “He’s punctilious in his forms,” said the Paymaster, “but it’s thoughtful of him too.” “There was never but true _duine uasail_ put on the tartan of Argyll,” said the Cornal.