‘Ye see they didna ken ’at he wasna deid,’ assented Kirsty, ‘and we div ken ’at Steenie’s no deid! He’s maybe walkin aboot wi the bonny man--or maybe jist ristin himsel a wee efter the uprisin! Jist think o’ his heid bein a’ richt, and his een as clear as the bonny man’s ain! Eh, but Steenie maun be in grit glee!’ Thus talking as they went, they reached and entered the earth-house. They found no angels on guard, for Steenie had not to get up again. David wept the few tears of an old man over the son who had been of no use in the world but the best use--to love and be loved. Then, one at the head and the other at the feet, they brought the body out, and laid it on the bier. Kirsty went in again, and took Steenie’s shoes, tying them in her apron. ‘His feet’s no sic a weicht noo!’ she said, as together they carried their burden home. The mother met them at the door. ‘Eh!’ she cried, ‘I thoucht the Lord had taen ye baith, and left me my lane ’cause I was sae hard-hertit til him! But noo ’at he’s broucht ye back--and Steenie, what there is o’ him, puir bairn!--I s’ never say anither word, but jist lat him du as he likes.--There, Lord, I hae dune! Pardon thoo me wha canst.’ They carried the forsaken thing up the stair, and laid it on Kirsty’s bed, looking so like and so unlike Steenie asleep. Marion was so exhausted, both mind and body, that her husband insisted on her postponing all further ministration till the morning; but at night Kirsty unclothed the untenanted, and put on it a long white nightgown. When the mother saw it lying thus, she smiled, and wept no more; she knew that the bonny man had taken home his idiot. CHAPTER XXX FROM SNOW TO FIRE My narrative must now go a little way back in time, and a long way from the region of heather and snow, to India in the year of the mutiny. The regiment in which Francis Gordon served, his father’s old regiment, had lain for months besieged in a well known city by the native troops, and had begun to know what privation meant, its suffering aggravated by that of not a few women and children. With the other portions of the Company’s army there shut up, it had behaved admirably. Danger and sickness, wounds and fatigue, hunger and death, had brought out the best that was in the worst of them: when their country knew how they had fought and endured, she was proud of them. Had their enemies, however, been naked Zulus, they would have taken the place within a week. Francis Gordon had done his part, and well.