Rattling Dick Duff had so completely adopted the bearing of a modest, quiet, and seriously-disposed young man, that the heart of Father John Cameron, a priest well up in years, was quite won; and Dick began to feel some compunction, while telling him with the utmost gravity, that "a natural abhorrence of gaiety and military uproar, with a love of retirement and of cloistral seclusion, &c. &c., had brought him and his companions, Captain Garriehorne and Colquhoun Grant, the famous scout who so tormented the Duc de Raguse, to visit them;" but he added, "what the devil is the matter? Is any one dead or hidden here—what's the row, that you all speak in whispers, as if the walls had ears?"
"It is a strange story," said the old priest, Father Cameron; "our beloved rector, without an apparent ailment, believes himself at the point of death. It is a sad narrative to me, for I loved the rector as a younger brother; although many years his senior (more than I dare reckon now), his talents and his piety made him superior to us all. He believes that the day, the hour—yea, the moment of his departure is fixed: it is a solemn, a terrible presentiment—but you, as soldiers, will be inclined to smile at it and me."
"Nay, sir," replied Dick, "you wrong us there; for on service we see every day the most terrible fulfilment of presentiments. I had a brother drowned upon the 16th of November—my father ever said it was our fatal day, and had been so for ages. He was wounded by my side on the 16th of November, when our Highlanders stormed one of the West India Isles, and on the 16th of November he was killed near the city of Alexandria, and with my own hands I buried him the day before we marched towards the Nile. Poor old man!"
"And there was poor old Major Wallace of Ours," said Grant, "who had always a presentiment that he would die on the 18th of March, the day he was wounded as an ensign at the blockade of Alexandria in 1801, and on the 18th of last March we found him dead in his tent, killed by a random shot, when we were covering the siege of Badajoz."
"Ay," sighed the priest, "there was poured forth the hot blood of many a gallant heart."
"So you see, my dear sir, that solemn presentiments are to be found in the camp as well as in the cloister," added Dick, draining his wine-horn, with a thoughtful smile.
"Our reverend rector is powerfully possessed by the idea that he will not outlive the 16th of this month of November, the day on which his patron——"
The priest hesitated.
"Don't hesitate, my dear sir," said Dick; "for I am come of an old Catholic stock—say on."
"The day on which his patron-saint died, and for a year past this conviction has become stronger in his mind as the time approached; yet he is a hale man and well, though somewhat more feeble than he was wont to be. His patron is Margaret, Queen of Scotland, who died on the 16th of November, and this day is the fifteenth. A month ago, he felt this presentiment come more strongly, mysteriously, and solemnly upon him; so that he could no longer attend to his duties as rector, but spent his whole time in abstemious fasting and earnest prayer, as one preparing for a great change. He dismissed all the professors, students, servants, and other inmates to a country house which we possess, six miles from the city, telling us to enjoy ourselves for a brief space, as a dark day of mourning was at hand.