“Dead!” said John More. “Now is not that wonderful?” He leaned against the door as he had leaned many a time against sentry-box and barrack wall, and dwelt a little upon memory. “Is not that wonderful? The first time I saw her was at a wedding in Karnes, Lochow, and she was the handsomest woman in the room, and there were sixty people at the wedding from all parts, and sixty-nine roasted hens at the supper. Well, well--dead! blessings with her; did I not know her well? Yes, and I knew her husband too, Long Angus, since the first day he came to Ladyfield for Old Mar--for the Paymaster--till the last day he came down the glen in a cart, and he was the only sober body in the funeral, perhaps because it was his own. Many a time I wondered that the widow did so well in the farm for Captain Campbell, with no man to help her, the sowing and the shearing, the dipping and the clipping, ploughmen and herds to keep an eye on, and bargains to make with wool merchants and drovers. Oh! she was a clever woman, your grandmother. And now she’s dead. Well, it’s a way they have at her age! And the Paymaster must be told, though I know it will vex him greatly, because he is a sort of man who does not relish changes. Mind now you say Captain; you need not say Captain Campbell, but just Captain, and maybe a ‘sir’ now and then. I suppose you could not put off telling him for a half-hour or thereabouts longer, when he would be going home for dinner any way; it is a pity to spoil an old gentleman’s meridian dram with melancholy news. No. You were just told to come straight away and tell him--well, it is the good soldier who makes no deviation from the word of command. Come away in then and--Captain mind--and the salute.” The Sergeant More threw open the door of the room, filled up the space a second and gave a sort of free-and-easy salute. “A message for you, Captain,” said he. The singing was done. The Major’s mind was wandering over the plains of Waterloo to guess by the vacancy of his gaze; on his left Bob MacGibbon smoked a black segar, the others talked of townsmen still in the army and of others buried under the walls of Badajos. They all turned when the Sergeant More spoke, and they saw him push before him into the room the little boy of Ladyfield with his bonnet in his hand and his eyes restless and timid like pigeons at a strange gate fluttering. “Ho! Gilian, it is you?” said the Paymaster, with a very hearty voice; then he seemed to guess the nature of the message, for his voice softened from the loud and bumptious tone it had for ordinary. “How is it in Lecknamban?” he asked in the Gaelic, and Gilian told him, minding duly his “sir” and his “Captain” and his salute.