"Aye, sir. She was that. She was a bit moithered in her mind, dear heart, just afore she went. The last words she said were a prayer for his soul,--her sweetheart you know, sir, that she lost sixty years ago,--just as I'd heard her pray thousands of times. But, poor thing, she got his name wrong. She called him 'John.'"
Choking, I threw myself on my knees beside Margaret, and prayed and fought, and fought and prayed again. Here, before me, I saw Death in the only shape in which it can give no sorrow--sinless age that had gently glided into immortality; and, with equal vision, I saw the black passage ... and the still twisted thing lying there in a patch of gloom ... my friend, gone in the pride of his youth ... his life spilt out in anger and agony ... and by me. Then the innocent hand of her for whom, though all unwittingly, I had done this thing, crept on to my shoulder, and I turned to look at her.
"Thank God we came, Oliver!" she whispered.
Before we could rise, the black-robed priest lifted his tall, gaunt frame slowly from the prie-Dieu. Standing on the opposite side of the bed he raised his hands in blessing.
"Our sister is with God," he said, his deep voice vibrant with emotion. "My children, you are, as I think, those who were much in her prayers at the last. I know not who you are, but, in her memory and in God's name, I give you in this life His Peace, and in the life to come the assurance of His Everlasting Blessedness. Amen."
He ceased. Gravely, and in a solemn silence, he knelt again at the prie-Dieu. We rose. First Margaret, and then I, kissed the Prince's brooch and the folded hands, and then stole out of the room. We were too awe-stricken to speak, or even to look at each other, but, as we went, she placed her hand in mine.
Weary days, full of hard riding and scouting, passed before I saw Margaret again. I was always in the rear, generally far in the rear, while she and the other ladies were, very properly, kept well ahead. She now rode in the calash with Lady Ogilvie,--the two being inseparable,--and Maclachlan was with them. My work was hard and anxious but it kept me from thinking overmuch. I put all my soul into it so that it should.
"The lad does very well, as I told you he would," said the Colonel to Murray one night when I rode in to make my report.
"I see no signs of my chance of breaking him," said his lordship grimly, but he would have me sup with him that night, and was very unbending and helpful.
There is nothing I need say about this stage of the retreat. It was well managed, and is, I am told, a very creditable piece of soldiership. It does not belong to my story but to history, to which I leave it.