"Good Heaven, Stuart! you are certainly very unwell," said Louis anxiously, his indignant feelings giving way to concern. "What can I do for you?" "Oh! ’tis nothing. It is past—a spasm—the wound I received at Merida." "Are you still troubled by it?" "No; that is—I mean—" He was relieved from his embarrassment by an exclamation of surprise and intense disgust from Lisle, who suddenly leaped up from the green turf on which they were seated. "It is a skull!" he exclaimed, turning something round and white out of the sod with his foot. "A skull?" "Yes; I knew not what it was. I felt something round and smooth lying half sunk in the earth, and my hand rested on it for some time. How does it come to lie here?" "No uncommon affair in Spain. It is the head of one of those poor fellows I told you of. I saw him killed here the day Long’s brigade of horse drove the French advanced picquet into the cork wood." "What! did you not bury them?"’ "No, we had no time. The wolves came at night, and saved us the trouble." "And this is dying in the bed of glory!" "So romancers tell us." "Ay, Stuart, ’tis all very fine to read of honour and glory. The charge, the encounter, and the victory in a novel—" "When seated in a well-curtained and softly carpeted room, with your feet encased in morocco slippers, and a huge fire roaring up the chimney; but here it is a very different matter." "Nevertheless, ’tis a gay thing to be a soldier," said Louis, eyeing his shining epaulet askance. "It is indeed! I have felt some delicious moments of gratified pride since I first donned the red coat,—moments in which I would scarcely have exchanged my claymore for a crown. But this ghastly death’s head had better be removed. Probably the poor boy it belonged to, for he was scarcely any thing else, had his own bright dreams of glory and military renown, and left his sunny vineyards, with hopes that one day he should exchange the goat-skin pack for the baton of a marshal of France. If he had such visions, where are they all now? But let it be taken away. Evan, dig a hole with your bayonet, and bury it deep under the turf." This temporary excitement over, the two friends again relapsed into their dry and unfriendly distance of manner. "Give me another cup from the borachio-skin; I will drink to Sir Allan’s health before I compose myself to rest for the night," said Ronald, anxious to put an end to it by retiring. "Drink and replenish again,—you are most welcome; but you will excuse me, Stuart, if I reply somewhat coldly to your many expressions of regard for my family," replied Louis, assuming a haughtiness of manner which it was impossible to pass over. "How so? What mean you?" asked Ronald hurriedly, his blood mounting to his very temples while he tossed the wine-horn from him.