It was a sad scene but a simple one. There was the gray light of early morning struggling in through the open port, and falling on the dying boy’s face; falling, too, on MʻHearty’s rough but kindly countenance, and on the figures of the sick-bay servants standing by the cot-foot tearful and frightened. That was all. But an open Bible lay upon the coverlet, and in his left hand the young soldier clasped a miniature—his little sweetheart’s.
“Bury it with me,” he whispered feebly. “See her, sir—and tell her—Willie died a hero’s death.—Kiss me, Jack—I would sleep now.”
The eyelids closed.
Ah! they had closed for aye.
Not a sound now save Jack’s gentle sobbing, then the slow and solemn tones of MʻHearty’s voice as he took up the little Bible and read from the Twenty-third Psalm: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.” Amen!
CHAPTER XXII.
STILL WATERS RUN DEEP.
“This little maxim, for my sake,
I pray you be believing:
The truest pleasures that we take
Are those that we are giving.”
Dibdin.