Could she but see him now!
His hopes—if he had any—his plans and desires, the scenes around him, his companions and his circumstances, were all changed now, as thoroughly as if he had been born in a new, or other age. The world rushes past so fast now (for steam destroys time and distance), that his troubles were beginning to seem old; or as if the whole of his former life had passed away, and that if he was to cut out fortune, fame, and at least food, in the new one, the old life could not be forgotten too soon.
But Mary Montgomerie was the central figure in that former world still.
'How completely the romance has died out of my life!' he thought; 'and our love, it seems so like a dream to me now—but a sweet and beautiful one; a dream that can come no more, yet I am glad that I have had it. I would that I had a flower her hand has touched—a glove or a ribbon she has worn! Could I but know, that on my dead face such tears as hers might fall!' he added as he gave way to his dismal thoughts, and sooth to say his other circumstances were dreary enough.
The pouring rain had long since extinguished all the camp and bivouac fires, and was adding to the miseries of the wounded and the dying. He had covered his horse with a blanket, and made a pillow of his holsters, and, with the flaps of his Servian forage cap tied over his ears, lay there sleepless and heedless of whether he was kicked, or trampled upon, by his charger's hoofs, or the hoofs of others, while ever and anon the deep thunder grumbled over the spur of the Balkans, and the red lightning flashes lit up vividly, for a moment, the waters of the fast-flowing Morava, and a strange tower close by—a tower of human skulls, erected to commemorate a victory over the Servians by the Turks under Comourgi.
CHAPTER XIV.
A MYSTERY.
It was six in the morning of the following day. From the eastward came a blaze of glorious sunshine; the rain had ceased about midnight; the blue sky overhead was cloudless; shadows strange and darkly defined fell to the westward from rock and tree; the Morava was glowing in golden light; but by its margin lay the battle-field with all its horrors—a place that no sunshine could brighten.
Cecil was roused from sleep by Captain Mattei Guebhard, who announced that General Tchernaieff required his presence at head-quarters forthwith.
'For what purpose?' asked Cecil.