Coffee and cigarettes discussed, and a bottle or two of vina drunk to wash down mutton-chops fried in a flat earthen pot with a wooden handle, stuck into the hottest part of the bivouac fire, Cecil repaired to the place where his troop had picketed their horses, and looked after his own, which Tchernaieff had sent back to the bivouac. It was unbitted and munching some chopped forage; he relaxed the girths, and, rolled in his great coarse trooper's cloak, lay down on the bare earth beside it, though rain was beginning to fall. He was sore in every limb, and weary with the events of the day. He was without a wound, but many a buffet, blow, and strain, got he knew not how, began to make his bones ache now, as he thought over the stirring events of the day, and gave himself up--as he too often did--to sad and harrowing reflections. Mary and the Cameronians--the regiment and Mary! was it the past life or the present one that was a dream? So far away did the old life seem now, that though some of the events we have related happened but a few months since, years seemed to have elapsed since Mary's last love-kiss lingered on his lips on that twilight evening in Edinburgh, and when he listened for the last time to the sound of her voice--the voice that had been for a time, and was still, the music of his life. Oblivious of the pouring rain and sodden bivouac, he lay there thinking not of the past battle, or the present glory now; he was remembering the regimental ball--the lights, the music, the swift tender expression of Mary's eyes as she swept through the dance with him--their first and last dance, the returned pressure of her soft hand, the touch of her hair on his cheek; all the exultation of the time, and more than all, her secret visit to him in the old grey fortress of the city! Could she but see him now! His hopes--if he had any--his plans and desires, the scenes around him, his companions and his circumstances, were all changed now, as thoroughly as if he had been born in a new, or other age. The world rushes past so fast now (for steam destroys time and distance), that his troubles were beginning to seem old; or as if the whole of his former life had passed away, and that if he was to cut out fortune, fame, and at least food, in the new one, the old life could not be forgotten too soon. But Mary Montgomerie was the central figure in that former world still. 'How completely the romance has died out of my life!' he thought; 'and our love, it seems so like a dream to me now--but a sweet and beautiful one; a dream that can come no more, yet I am glad that I have had it. I would that I had a flower her hand has touched--a glove or a ribbon she has worn! Could I but know, that on my dead face such tears as hers might fall!' he added as he gave way to his dismal thoughts, and sooth to say his other circumstances were dreary enough.