The morning was hazy, and every where dense clouds of vapour were curling upward from the earth, exhaled by the heat of the sun, which, as the day advanced, became intense, while the air was oppressive and sultry; but a great change came over the face of nature about twelve o'clock at noon.
While passing through the copsewood which bordered the highway beyond the village of Waterloo, Ronald heard the wail of a bagpipe, arising up from the woodlands, and wildly floating through the still air of the summer morning. He stopped and listened breathlessly, while the stirred blood within him mounted to his cheek. The last time he heard that instrument, it was awakening the echoes in the woods of Toulouse. But the strain was different now. It was played sadly and slowly, with all the feeling of which its wild reeds are capable; and the air was an ancient dirge from the Isle of the Mist—Oran au Aiog, or 'the Song of Death,' and Stuart's breast became filled with soft melancholy, and with wonder to hear this solemn measure of the Highland isles played in such a place, and at such a time. The cause was soon revealed.
On suddenly turning a point of the road, which was lined on each side by thick thorns and tall poplars, he beheld Æneas or Angus Macvurich, a piper of the 92nd, stalking, with the slow and stately air peculiar to his profession, before a rudely-formed waggon, in which lay a wounded officer, over whom a cloak was cast to defend him from the fierce rays of the sun. Stuart, the assistant-surgeon, rode behind, and beside it came old Dugald Mhor Cameron, with his head bare and his silver tresses floating on the wind, while he hid his face in the end of his tartan plaid. A Highland soldier led by the bridle the horse which drew the vehicle,—a rough country car of the clumsiest construction, and a wretched jolting conveyance it must have been for a man enduring the agony of a complicated gun-shot wound. Anxiety and woe were depicted in every face of the advancing group, and the Highlander who led the horse turned round every moment to look upon the sufferer in the car.
Ronald knew all the sad truth at once. On his meeting it, the cavalcade halted, the lament ceased, and a murmur of greeting arose from the Highlanders,—all except old Dugald, who stared at him with eyes of wonder and vacancy.
It was the colonel, brave Cameron, whom they were bearing away,—as many of his ancestors had been borne, from his last battle-field to his long home. He was not dead, but lay motionless on his back, pale and bloody, with his sword (rolled up in a plaid for a pillow) placed under his head. His eyes were closed, his cheeks were sunken and ghastly, and the thick curls of his brown hair were dabbled with blood and soiled with clay. Notwithstanding his familiarity with scenes of blood, Ronald could not help shrinking on beholding the leader whom he loved so dearly, and whom so many brave men had followed, stretched thus helplessly, with the hand of the grim king upon him.
"Stuart, this is a sorrowful meeting," said Ronald in a low voice, as he pressed the hand of his old friend the medico. "Our good and gallant colonel—"
"Aich! ay,—the cornel—the cornel—the cornel," muttered Dugald in a whimpering voice. He seemed besotted with grief. "I kent, this time yesterday, that it was to happen ere the nicht fell. The lift was blue, and the sun was bricht; but a wreath descended on my auld een, and a red cloud was before me wherever I turned,—aboon me when I looked up, and below me when I looked doon; and I kent that death was near my heart, for the power of the taisch was upon me. Aich! ay! Lie you there, John Cameron? Few there were like you,—few indeed!" And the old man bowed down his wrinkled face between his bare knees, and wept bitterly.
"Poor Fassifern!" whispered the surgeon; "he will never draw sword again."
"Is he mortally wounded?" asked Ronald, in the same low tone.
"Yes. Ere noon he will have departed to a better place. But in this world he has been amply avenged."