"The flowers o' the forest that fought aye the foremost,
The prime o' our land are cauld in the clay."
That was why they played it as a Dead March in the Highland regiments. If Paul decided not to retire, it might be played at his funeral some day. At Paul's funeral! The very thought seemed impossible; and yet the girl's heart throbbed more with pride than fear. "That fought aye the foremost." Yes! if she were a soldier's wife that was what a soldier should do, even if she had to sit "drearie, lamenting her dearie."
It was too bad, she told herself, for the tune to haunt her so, since Paul would be coming soon now, and when they had first met her head had not been full of the "Flowers of the Forest" and such things; she had been reading one of Tom's letters. How foolish of her not to have brought one to complete the illusion! unless, indeed, there were, by chance, one in her pocket. Yes! a scrap of one, old enough to rouse her curiosity and engross her attention as she smoothed it out and began to read.
"To be disappointed in love! The phrase is arbitrarily bound up with the state of celibacy. Wherefore, my dear Marjory? wherefore? If love, as we once agreed, I think, is the touchstone of life, then marriage appears to me to be the continual essay of love, where, alas! the gold does not often reach the standard for hall marking; therefore it is conceivably better to be continually in love and not to marry. I don't know how it is, Mademoiselle Grands-serieux, but my philosophy invariably ends in paradoxes of doubtful propriety--now, doesn't it?"
She looked up smiling, then rose to her feet quickly, for there was a rustle behind her. Paul might have been there ahead of her after all, and have gone up to look at the river. Yes! there was someone at the head of the fall, where the solitary rowan tree leant above the alder-bushes, for the branches swayed.
"Paul!" she cried across the boom of the river, "is that you? Come down a bit; I'm here!"
"I'm coming, Miss Marjory, I'm coming," answered a childish voice; "but it is the berries I'm getting for you first. It is the last I will be getting you in Gleneira, I'm thinking, and they're real beauties, whatever."
Great heavens! how reckless of the boy! yet, was not recklessness in the blood? There he was, clinging to an overhanging branch; any instant he might fall, and---- "Paul!" she cried quickly, peremptorily; "come down at once. I don't want them."
She saw his bright, flushed face through the sparse yellowing leaves, close to the bunch of red berries, clutched by the little brown hand. So like that picture of his mother--so like--so like Paul, too!--her Paul. Ah, God in heaven!
The child had slipped. "Hold tight, Paul! Hold tight!"