"No, he is certainly not poor," returned her father, laughing. "I should think he is tolerably well-to-do, judging from appearances, and certainly he has rich friends. He has asked my permission to call again when he is in the neighbourhood;" and both the girls were pleased to hear this. Waveney had not seen her old friends at the Hospital for more than a week, so one morning she went across to wish them good-bye. She had a little cake that Mollie had made for them, and some tobacco that she had bought with her own money. It was a wet day, and most of the pensioners were in the big hall. One of them told Waveney that Sergeant McGill was in his cubicle with the corporal, as usual, in attendance. "They do say the sergeant's a bit poorly," continued her informant. And a moment afterwards she came upon Corporal Marks, stumping along the corridor with a newspaper in his hand. The little man looked dejected, but he saluted Waveney with his usual dignity. "I hear the sergeant is not well. I trust it is nothing serious." Then the corporal shook his head, and his blue eyes were a little watery. "Well, no, Miss Ward, not to say serious--we are none of us chickens, so to speak, and we have most of us cut our wisdom teeth a good many years ago. The sergeant has been poorly for a week now. He is down in the mouth, and I can't rouse him nohow. Would you believe it, Miss Ward, I was trying to argify with him this morning about that there Sepoy. 'For it stands to reason, McGill,' I said to him, 'that there could only be two of them;' and he fairly flew at me, lost his temper, and told me I was an infernal liar. Why, you might have knocked me down with a feather, I was so taken aback;" and the corporal's droll face was puckered up with care. "Never mind, Corporal," returned Waveney, soothingly. "McGill was ill and not himself, or he would not have been so irritable with his old comrade. Look here, I have come to bid you all good-bye, because I am going away; and my sister has made you one of those cakes you like, and I have brought you some tobacco." Then the corporal's face cleared a little. They found the old soldier lying on his bed, with a rug over his feet; his face looked drawn and pallid. At the sound of Waveney's light step he turned his sightless eyes towards her, and a strange expression passed over his features. "There was only one step that was as light," he murmured, in his thick, soft voice, "and that was Sheila's, and hers hardly brushed the dewdrops from the heather." Then, as Waveney took hold of his great hand, "and it was her small fingers, too, the brown little hands that carried the creel of peat, and stacked it underneath the eaves; and it is Sheila that has come to me--Heaven bless her sweet face!--before I take the long journey."