According to his promise, Saunderson had looked in during the course of the evening, but as he said, rather to cheer the watcher than in the hope of assisting the patient. He had been amazed at the great hold he had upon life, for no ordinary man could have survived such a wound for an hour. “He’ll be away before the morn,” he said; “you can see how he´s trying to loose himsel´. Man, ´tis a strange thing this dying, and we a´ take our ain gait about it. Some die hard like the auld man there, and some slip off easily, but licht or hard ´tis a´ ane. I´ve seen a guid few lately. I´m afeard ye can´t sit here this nicht, and I´ll look up some stout body to tak´ your place.” But Gervase would not hear of it. He had determined to see the last of his friend and was determined to spend the night at his bedside. He had seated himself in the chair by the window, and had taken up the little book which bore the owner´s name on the title page and the words “Utrecht, 1664,” and was worn and marked by repeated using. He read on till the sunset had died away and it became too dark to see the page. Then he closed the book and went downstairs in search of a light. When he came back with the lighted candle in his hand, Macpherson was sitting up in the bed, with his eyes staring wide open and his hands stretched out. The wound had burst out afresh and the blood had stained the white counterpane. “Listen, Gervase,” he said, “listen, my son! Do you hear how he is calling me? I would know the sound of his voice among ten thousand--the sound of his voice that I loved. I would have waited for you, but I knew him first and loved him first, and I cannot tarry. Jack, dear Jack, good comrade, I am coming. Oh! the marvellous light--” He struggled as if to leave the bed and Gervase was running forward to restrain him, when he fell back on the pillow, with his eyes and mouth wide open. At a glance Gervase saw that it was all over; his faithful friend was dead, and there was no need for watching now. As he stood for a long time looking at him, the hard and rugged face seemed to soften into a smile, and the lines that were cut deep in the forehead and the cheeks had disappeared, and he lay like one asleep. The fight was indeed over, and the reveille would awaken him from his rest no more. * * * * * They buried him the next day in the Cathedral yard, four men of his own regiment carrying the body on the stretcher on which they had brought him home. As Gervase saw him laid in the shallow grave, he felt that he had lost the best friend and the truest comrade he was ever likely to find. And there the ashes of the old soldier still lie mingled with those of many another who fell in the same quarrel and found a resting-place there from all their labours. In after days Gervase erected a tablet to his memory, with nothing more than the name and the date upon it and these words: “He laid down his life for his friend.”