As the bearers of the hurdle halted with their burden on the stone steps of the house in which Macpherson lodged, he called out to them to stop. “Let me look at it once more before I go. I´ll never see it again.” And so they stood there in silence fronting the sunrise; he raised his head for a minute and then motioned to them to carry him in. They laid him in his own bed, and left Gervase and the surgeon to examine his wound. But it was evident that nothing could be done for him. He was already past all mortal aid, and as he suffered from no pain they had only to wait for the end that would not be long in coming. “He´ll no´ need my aid, Mr. Orme,” said Saunderson, “for there´s none of us could bring him round. ´Tis a pity there´s no woman body to close his eyes; but I´m told he was a fine soldier, and I´ll look in and see the last of him mysel´.” “No one shall touch him but myself,” said Gervase, “I shall never have such a friend again, and God knows there is none will miss him as I will.” Gervase had never been in the room before, and as he sat down by the bed he looked round him with a saddened interest. On the table lay the leather-bound volume he remembered so well. Above the bed hung a broad sword with its hilt of silver richly chased, and he could see from where he sat, that there was a legend upon the blade. A pair of spurs, a silver-mounted pistol, and a long pipe of foreign make, lay on the mantelshelf. A couple of high-backed chairs, a few simple cooking utensils in the hearth, and an oak press, the doors of which lay open, were all the furniture in the room. It looked bare and comfortless, and it seemed to add to the pathos of the tragedy that a man with so much that was gallant and loveable, should die friendless and unregretted in a room like this.