"Not a bit," sleepily. "I'm too interested--the undiscovered country, you know." His chest was sinking in upon his voice. "What's it going to be?" Piper's last word leapt to the lad's tongue. "Love," he said, before he knew that he had said it. The Gentleman nodded. "I believe you," he whispered. "Yes, yes, yes. "_The face familiar smiling through His tears--_ "I can see it." Kit was crying, he knew not why. Unable now to see the other's face, he stretched a hand and stroked it. "Are you there, sir?" "Always there, Little Chap." The voice was far, and getting further. "How--how d'you feel?" "Why, as I never felt before," chuckling still. For long he lay still, the night gathering about him. Then the voice came again out of the darkness. "Ah! there's the first star!" He lay with hands folded, and face starward. He was drinking in the dark as it began to people, and humming to himself. Kit, listening with all his heart, heard as it were the voice of one singing in Eternity. And whether his ear heard words, or whether only his heart heard the song the other's heart was singing, he never knew. "Hark to her, hark to the Voice of the Beautiful Spring, Calling to come, Calling to come, Over the moon-whitened wave on a kittiwake's wing, Over the foam, Furrow and foam, Leap to her, leap, O my heart, when thou hearest her sing, Home to her, home, Home to her, home." The song ceased. There was an age-long silence. Then out of the darkness from millions of miles away a whisper, "Kiss me, Little Chap." CHAPTER LXXXIX THE LAST POST The Parson bore the dead man down the hill beneath the stars, Kit still holding the cold hand. Here yesterday this same limp and lolling figure had chased Knapp with rousing limbs. Now not all the trumpets of his own Brigade could stir his little finger. Over the greensward the Parson bore his burthen, past the hushed sycamores, into the kitchen. They entered the Sanctuary. One candle there showed a Union Jack shrouding a still something on the dresser. Beside it the Parson laid his dead. Knapp, bloody-bandaged, crept through the curtain and joined them, Blob at his heels. So they gathered in the half-light: the garrison who had held the Fort, and the man who had stormed it. It was but the kitchen of a cottage; yet no soul there but felt that he was standing upon hallowed ground. Kit bent above the dead. Beautiful as he had been in life, the Gentleman was yet lovelier in death. Reverently Kit crossed the dead man's hands and laid his sword beside him. As he raised his head, one standing at the foot of the dresser bent. It was Blob. Kit shot out a hand, fearing some irreverence. Then he saw and stayed. Something in the spirit of the occasion, the stillness, the hallowed light, had waked in the boy some inherited memory of noble death-beds, brave as they were beautiful. The soul of the past, quickening the dull present, stirred him to lovely action.