Then, indeed, he forgot for a time that he was only a corporal of Hussars, as Colville did that he was an officer of the Guards, and they chummed like old friends together.
'Share with me the contents of my haversack and flask, Captain Colville,' said Robert Wodrow, as they sat for a few minutes by the banks of a wayside runnel. 'We are going into action again—that is pretty evident. "Few, few shall part where many meet"—you know what the poet says; and I care little if it be my chance to fall—after all—after all I have undergone.'
'Don't say so, Wodrow,' said Colville, in a tone of reprehension. 'Why the deuce are you so low in spirit now?'
'I should not be, now that I have met you again, Captain Colville,' replied Wodrow, as he received back his flask and took a long pull at it; 'but I feel—I feel—I don't know how to-day. It is not fear, but as if something was about to happen to me; and a song—a song that she—Ellinor—used to sing seems to haunt my memory now.'
'What song? "The Birks of Invermay"?'
'No—another, and at this moment her very voice seems in my ears,' he said, in broken accent.
'And this song of Ellinor's——'
'Ran thus,' said Wodrow, and, with a low voice and a certain humidity in his eyes, he actually sang a now forgotten song—
'Thy way along life's bright path lies,
Where flowers spring up before thee,
And faithful hearts and loving eyes
Assemble to adore thee.
The great and wise bend at thy shrine,
The fair and young pursue thee,
Fame's chaplets round thy temples twine,
And pleasure smiles to woo thee.
'Yet, 'mid each blessing time can bring,
Thy breast is still repining;
'Tis cold as Ammon's icy spring,
O'er which no sun is shining;
And friendship's presence has no charm—
And beauty's smiles are blighted,
Nor joy, nor fame the heart can warm,
That early love has slighted.'