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.