"Where is Angus Macvurich?" asked the colonel in a low voice, but a firm one, and as if all his energies were returning.
The piper answered by a loud snifter, or half-stifled sob.
"Oich! he's speakin' like himsel again. Ye'll no dee just this time,—will ye, no? O say ye'll no!" said old Dugald, bending over him in an agony of sorrow, and gazing on his face as a father would have done. "We'll baith gang hame,—ay, gang hame thegithir yet to Fassifern, among the green hills of the bonnie north country. Ochone! woe to the day we ever left it,—woe!"
"No, Dugald, my good, my dear old man; I shall never behold the fair Highland-hills again. My hour is come, and death is creeping into my heart, slowly but surely. Oh, that I might die among my kindred! It is a sad and desolate feeling to know that one must be buried in a distant land, and unheeding strangers will tread on the place of our repose. 'Tis sad to die here, and to find a grave so far away from home, from the land of the long yellow broom and the purple heather. Tell me, gentlemen, did my Highlanders storm the house on the Charleroi road?"
"Ay, please your honour," said the piper, "an' sticket every man they fand below the riggin o't."
"Those excepted who laid down their arms," added the surgeon. "But the house was gallantly stormed, colonel."
"Well done the Gaël! Well done, my good and brave soldiers!" cried the invalid.
There was a long pause, which nothing broke, save the loud breathing of the wounded Highlander, until, in feeble accents, he said,
"Come near me, Macvurich; I would hear the blast of the pipe once more ere I die. Play the ancient death-song of the Skye-men; my forefathers have often heard it without shrinking."
"Oran au Aiog?" said the piper, raising his drones.