"One of the Clan Donald."
"But of what persuasion?"
"A musketeer of Culcraigie's company."
This man was elderly, and his hair was white as snow. He was dying, and his son, Eachin M'Donuil, who had recently accompanied me to Rügen, held up his head that he might hear the solemn prayers and exhortations of the two pastors, who required him to forgive all his enemies, that he might die at peace with all mankind. This he avowed himself quite willing to declare, excepting so far as concerned the M'Leods of M'Leod, the destroyers of his race in Eigg; and, at the thought of them, the old man's dying orbs flashed fire.
Then he was told that he must forgive all without exception, or all their exhortations and his repentance were in vain.
"Well," said he, with an effort, as he grasped his son's hand and a vindictive gleam passed over his stern grey eyes; "if it must be so, I forgive the M'Leods, but remember them, you, my son, Eachin—remember!" With these words he expired; and Eachin kissed first the cold brow of his father, and then the blade of his dirk.
I thanked Heaven on perceiving Ernestine, not, as in my first terror I had expected, stretched among the females in that portion of the church, which had been screened off for them, but on her knees between the pallets of two soldiers, to whom she was administering something prepared for them by the surgeon. Inspired by a fit of piety, or benevolence, or mercy (which you will), or by that pure and beautiful zeal, which leads the sisters of mercy to visit the abodes of suffering, poverty, and misery, she had stolen to this frightful hospital to minister to the sick. But she, so highly born, so cultivated in mind, and refined in nature, so gentle, so sensitive, and full of emotions of pity, had over-calculated her own strength of purpose, and now trembled at the unexpected and revolting horrors combined in that dismantled and crowded church.
"Ah! Ernestine," said I, "what frenzy brought you here—and on such an errand? You were never meant fur drudgery such as this, and now you have rendered all my care and anxiety vain, perhaps most fatally vain, by running into the jaws of disease and death."
"Pardon me," said she, raising her pale face and saddened eyes to mine. "It was a sudden thought—a happy gleam, that a few good deeds done in the name of Gabrielle (for this was her birthday) might please her spirit—dear Philip, that was all—a few good deeds done in the name of our poor Gabrielle, for the good of the suffering and the glory of Heaven."
"At the risk of your own life, Ernestine!"