'My mother bides nigh the braes of Stratherroch, and I am not likely to forget that to-night,' said the soldier, with a break in his voice.
Raising Cameron's head gently, Allan put Donald's water-bottle to his lips, and he drank thirstily of the fetid and odious water it contained, 'the Nile soup,' as our men called it.
Refreshed even by it for a few minutes, Evan Cameron spoke to Allan, but in whispers, and, as they seemed to be meant for the ear of the latter alone, the soldiers with one accord drew back a little way.
'I knew from the first that I should never pull through—nor do I wish to do so, Allan,' said he, speaking at long intervals and with a husky effort.
'We have faced death together in many ways, but I wish your case had been mine, Evan, even if it is to be a fatal one.'
'Don't say that, Allan, dear fellow,' replied Evan, with that strange, far-off expression of eye which belongs alone to a fast-ebbing life—an expression which Allan could see even in the starlight as he stooped close over the sufferer, 'my sight is failing me, yet I can in fancy see Eveline—oh! so distinctly, Allan—and I seem to hear her voice—you don't mind me saying this now, lying, as I am here, face to face with God—the voice that seemed to whisper to my heart.'
Allan could only press the clammy hand that never again would grasp the broad claymore. Evan spoke again, but still more brokenly,
'I am not jealous now of my married rival; I only sorrow for the lost future of Eveline; married to an old man whom she may respect but never love, and with whom she cannot have a sympathy in common.'
'You are talking too much, Evan.'
'And thinking of her rather than my prayers. When I am lying here in my long and peaceful sleep, far from my father's grave in bonnie Stratherroch, she will live all the years of a young life, and, in the time to come, will—of course, forget me.'