I passed a hand across my brow; it was painful to the touch, and throbbed. My eyes were hot and heavy; my hand looked pale, thin, and white—quite unlike what it usually was; hence I must have been long ill—but where?
I strove to rise, that I might look forth from the window; but the effort was too much for me yet, and I sank back on my pillow.
I seemed to have had strange dreams of late—dreams of my brief soldiering; of the burning of the shipping; the faces and voices of Charters, Kirkton, and others had come distinctly—especially poor Tom's (the "stick it minister," as the Greys named him), and the words of his song lingered in my ear:—
"Why, soldiers, why,
Should we be melancholy, boys,
Whose business 'tis to die?
I had strange recollections of a warlike encounter with old Nathan Wylie in a wood in Brittany, and shooting him there, to save my cousin Aurora, whom he was tying to a tree. Then my wound from the charger's hoof, and the events subsequent thereto, gradually and coherently unfolded themselves before me. But where was I, and to whom indebted?
Some one moved near me; I was certain there was the fall of a gentle foot—of one who stepped on tiptoe.
"Who is there?" I asked in English, and then repeated the question in French.
"Ah, you are awake—awake at last!" said a soft voice, in the latter tongue.
"Who speaks?"
"C'est moi—'tis only me," replied a girl whose face was familiar to me, as she drew back the curtain.