To begin. I was sitting about eleven at night, over the fire, in my hut. I had been busy all day, and had had little rest the night before.
It was not my intention to attend our camp concert; but I was in a manner compelled to do so. Ill news from home reached poor young Ansdell of ours—and his colonel sent me to break it to him. I then had to wait about, in order to see the good colonel as he came out from the concert-room. It was, therefore, purely by accident that I met those friends whom I afterwards did not leave for several minutes.
The reason of this delay in their company may be told. It was a sudden agony about the uncertainty of life—young life; fresh and hopeful as pretty Laura Ansdell's—whom I had chanced to see riding through the North Camp, not two weeks ago—and now she was dead. Accustomed as I am to almost every form of mortality, I had never faced the grim fear exactly in this shape before. It put me out of myself for a little time.
I did not go near Granton the following day, but received from him a message and my plaid. She—the lady to whom I had lent it—was “quite well.” No more: how could I possibly expect any more?
I was, as I say, sitting over my hut-fire, with the strangest medley in my mind—rosy Laura Ansdell—now galloping across the moor—now lying still and colourless in her coffin; and another face, about the same age, though I suppose it would not be considered nearly as pretty, with the scarlet hood drawn over it; pallid with cold, yet with such a soft light in the eyes, such a trembling sweetness about the mouth! She must be a very happy-minded creature. I hardly ever saw her, or was with her any length of time, that she did not look the picture of content and repose. She always puts me in mind of Dallas's pet song, when we were boys—“Jessie, the Flower o' Dunblane.”
“She's modest as ony, and blithe as she's bonnie,
And guileless simplicity marks her its ain,
And far be the villain, divested o' feelin',
Wha'd blight in its bud the sweet Flower o' Dunblane.”
I say amen to that.