Cora had now removed her bonnet and cloak. She was beautiful as ever, but paler, I thought, for the flush that dyed her soft face at first had now passed away, and she lowered her dark lashes at times when I looked at her. But her secret was out now. I knew all, but could scarcely foresee how matters were to end.
Cora wore at her breast the silver crescent and lion I had sent her from India. She had more. She had on her finger my Rangoon diamond, which the Marchioness had sent to her, and which I desired her to retain for my sake, till I replaced it by one more valuable still.
We were very happy that night in Southampton; and, with more alacrity than I thought remained in me, I prepared at once to return to Scotland.
My health was not now what it had been; but my native air in Calderwood Glen would restore it. To repine now would have been ungrateful to heaven and my kind kinsfolk.
I had passed through that dreadful ordeal, the Valley of Death, and had returned with life and youth before me, when so many better and braver than I had perished by my side. So I resolved to return thankfully and joyfully home, to water my laurels among the heath-clad hills and grassy glens of my native place.
CHAPTER LIII.
Away with my firelock!
Here, take my red coat!
On danger and glory
No longer I'll dote.
A train of soft passions
Now rise in my breast;
The soldier subsides,
And ambition's at rest.
And no more shall the sound
Of the trumpet or drum
Forewarn the poor shepherd
Of evils to come.
SOLDIER'S SONG.
Poor Willie Pitblado sank fast after the extraction of the ball, and the subsequent amputation of his leg.
In the pleasant month of June, when he knew that the golden laburnums and the hawthorns, pink and white, would be wearing their loveliest hues among the green hills and burnsides where he had played in boyhood, and when the summer breeze would be rustling the thick foliage that shaded his father's humble cottage in Calderwood Glen, Willie felt that his hour was coming nigh, and he grew very sad and restless.
On that day, the last he was to spend on earth, there was an unwonted bustle in and around the great military hospital of Fort Pitt, and, natheless the sick and wounded, the weary in body and subdued in spirit, the dying men in the wards, and those whose battles and troubles were over, and who lay stark and stiff under a white sheet in the deadhouse, awaiting the muffled drums and the—now daily—funeral party, there had been a scouring of tins and polishing of wooden tables, a renovation of sanded floors and white-washed walls; an extra folding and arranging of knapsacks and bedding. Staff officers in full uniform, with aiguillette and plume, galloped to and fro, in and out, up and down the steep hill from whence the grim old fort looks down upon the quiet and sleepy Medway, with all its old battered hulks; and then whispers were passed along the wards that the Queen—Queen Victoria herself—was coming to visit the poor fellows who had carried her colours in triumph up the slopes of Alma, through the valley of Inkermann, and in the charges at Balaclava.