“But, Robin, lad! didst thou not strike for them?” cried Avery, who could not bear anything that seemed like cowardice.
“Should I, think you?” he made answer, in that low, hopeless tone that goes to the heart. “There were seventy or more of the enclosure men. I could but have died with them. Maybe I ought to have done that. I think it had cost less.”
“Forgive me, Robin!” said John, laying his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Poor heart! I meant not to reproach thee. I spake hastily, therefore unadvisedly.”
“Let me have thee abed, poor Robin,” said Isoult. “’Tis but one of the clock. Canst thou sleep, thinkest?”
“Sometime, I count I shall again,” he answered; “but an’ I were to judge by my feeling, I should think I never could any more.”
“Time healeth,” whispered Avery, rather to his wife than Robin; but the lad heard him.
“God doth, Mr Avery,” he said. “And they are with God.”
“Art thou less, Robin?” asked Avery tenderly.
“God is with me; that is the difference,” he replied.
Robin Tremayne had always been a quiet, thoughtful boy; and even when the first gush of his agony was over, there remained upon him a gentle, grave pensiveness which it appeared as if he would never lose.