The General would say nothing further, but allowed himself to be laid out on the couch once more, and be covered with buffalo robes, and while he lay quiet, he slept no more that night, but every minute or so kept looking into the fire. At daybreak, at the sounding of Surachan on the pipes, he was able to start, and the balance of the march executed without incident.
He reached Philadelphia in safety, but within a short time after arriving there he passed away unexpectedly, and was buried in historic Old Christ Church, where a tablet with the following inscription was erected in the Chancel by the Pennsylvania Chapter of the Society of Colonial Wars: “To the Memory of Brigadier-General John Forbes, Colonel of the 17th Regiment of Foot, born at Pittencrief, Fifeshire, 1710, died in Philadelphia, March 11, 1759.”
MacCochran was released from the army, and being enamored of the wild mountain country in the interior of Pennsylvania, returned to the forests. Later, though nearly fifty years old, he enlisted and served through the Revolutionary War in Captain Parr’s Riflemen. After peace was declared he bought the little stone house on Rea’s Hill from young McCreath, who had served with him in the Rifle Brigade, and lived there alone until he died about 1803. He said that he liked the place for its memories of General Forbes, and he was always fond of telling to his mountaineer friends when they dropped in of an evening for a smoke and a toddy, of his hero’s exploits in peace and war, and more than once recounted the tale of the wraith which appeared to the General at the fireplace, during his eastward journey from Fort Duquesne.
General Forbes, he said, as noted previously, was a younger son, and had entered the army early in life. He had been too busy campaigning to marry, but not always too busy to fall in love. Yet he was a serious-minded man, and his romances were always of the better sort, and would have ended happily on one or more occasions but for the exigencies of his strenuous campaigns[campaigns], which moved him from place to place.
Of all his love affairs, the one that hit him the hardest, and lasted the longest, occurred after the victory of Lauffeld, won by Marshal Ligonier, when, as Lieutenant-Colonel, he was quartered with his regiment at Dunkerck, preparatory to embarking for England. Colonel Forbes’ billet was with one Armand Violet, a rich shipowner, who resided in a mediaeval chateau, which his wealth[wealth] had enabled him to purchase from some broken-down old family, on the outskirts of the town. It was built on a bare, chalky cliff, overlooking the sea, where the waves beat over the rocks, and sent the spray against the walls on stormy nights, and the wind, banshee-like, moaned incessantly among the parapets.
Violet was away a good deal, and his wife was an invalid, and peculiar, but their one daughter, Amethyst Violet, was a ray of sunshine enough to illuminate and radiate the gloomiest fortress-like chateau. She was under eighteen, about the middle height, slimly and trimly built, with chestnut brown hair, blue eyes, and a fair complexion; her hair was worn in puffs over her ears and brushed back from her brows, just as the girls are again wearing it today; she was vivacious and intelligent, and detected in the Colonel, despite his thirty-seven years, a man of superior personality and charm.
In the long wait, due to conflicting orders, and the non-arrival of the transport, Forbes and Amethyst became very well acquainted, in fact the Colonel was very much in love, but would not dream of mentioning his passion, as he deemed it folly for a man of his years and experience to espouse a mere child. The girl was equally smitten, but more impulsive, and less self-contained.
Every evening the pair were together in the great hall, sitting before the fire in the old hearth, their glances, which often met, indicating their feelings, but the Colonel confined his talk to descriptions of military life, Scotland, its glens and locks and wild game, old legends and ballads which he loved to recite. He was particularly fond of repeating the old ballad of Barbara Livingston.
One night while the wind was howling, and the spray was lashing against the castle walls, and the rain dashed and hissed against the panes, the time to retire had come, and Amethyst, instead of tripping away, sprang right into Forbes’ arms, and lay her fluffy head against his bespangled breast.
“You are the coldest man in the world” she sobbed, looking up with tear-dimmed blue eyes. “What have you meant all these nights, we two alone for hours and hours, your eyes on only the sparks as they swept upwards through the ‘louvre,’ and your thoughts only on battles and mountain scenery. I love you more than all the world, and yet you could not see it, or did not care. I can restrain my feelings no longer; tell me the truth, for I cannot bear the suspense and live.”