"What! did you not bury them?"'
"No, we had no time. The wolves came at night, and saved us the trouble."
"And this is dying in the bed of glory!"
"So romancers tell us."
"Ay, Stuart, 'tis all very fine to read of honour and glory. The charge, the encounter, and the victory in a novel—"
"When seated in a well-curtained and softly carpeted room, with your feet encased in morocco slippers, and a huge fire roaring up the chimney; but here it is a very different matter."
"Nevertheless, 'tis a gay thing to be a soldier," said Louis, eyeing his shining epaulet askance.
"It is indeed! I have felt some delicious moments of gratified pride since I first donned the red coat,—moments in which I would scarcely have exchanged my claymore for a crown. But this ghastly death's head had better be removed. Probably the poor boy it belonged to, for he was scarcely any thing else, had his own bright dreams of glory and military renown, and left his sunny vineyards, with hopes that one day he should exchange the goat-skin pack for the baton of a marshal of France. If he had such visions, where are they all now? But let it be taken away. Evan, dig a hole with your bayonet, and bury it deep under the turf."
This temporary excitement over, the two friends again relapsed into their dry and unfriendly distance of manner.
"Give me another cup from the borachio-skin; I will drink to Sir Allan's health before I compose myself to rest for the night," said Ronald, anxious to put an end to it by retiring.