and when it was concluded, the hand of the clock on the alcalde's house wanted but five minutes of the hour. The soldier cast a hasty glance towards it, and, falling upon his knees, covered his face with his hands and burst out into an agony of prayer, from which he was only aroused by the seven strokes of the last hour he would ever hear on earth striking from the dull-toned bell.
His last moment was come!
When the sound ceased, Cameron of Fassifern and his field-officers dismounted from their horses, which were led away, and the provost-marshal drew up a section of twelve soldiers opposite where the prisoner yet knelt on the turf.
Many of his comrades now took their last farewell of him; and Evan Iverach, to whom he had given seven pounds, saved from his pay while prisoner at Coria, to send to his parents at Braemar, retired to his place in the ranks with tearless eyes, because Evan had a mistaken idea, that to have shown signs of deep emotion would have been unmanly. But that night, in his billet, honest Evan wept like a woman for the loss of his comrade and friend. During the bandaging of Mackie's eyes, Fassifern took off his bonnet, and kneeling down, commanded his regiment to do so likewise. As one man the Highlanders bent their bare knees to the sod, joining, as they did so, in the solemn psalm which Dugald and the prisoner had begun to sing. It was a sad and mournful Scottish air, one which every Scotsman present had been accustomed to hear sung in their village kirks or fathers' cottages in boyhood. It softened and subdued their hearts, carrying back their recollections to their childhood, and to years that had passed away into eternity. Many heard it chanted then for the first time since their native hills had faded from their sight, and as the strain died away through the deep and narrow vale of Banos, it found an echo in every breast.
Dugald closed his bible, and, placing a handkerchief in the hand of the prisoner, withdrew, and covering his wrinkled face with his bonnet, knelt down also. Now came the duty of the provost-marshal, whose unwilling detachment consisted of twelve picked men, of disorderly character, on whom, as a punishment, fell the lot of slaying their comrade.
With his eyes blindfolded, the unfortunate Highlander knelt down between his coffin and his grave, and, without quivering once, dropped his handkerchief.
"Section!" cried the provost-marshal, "'ready—present—fire!" The words followed each other in rapid succession, and the echoes of the death-shot were reverberated like thunder among the hills around. A shriek burst from the females of the village. Red blood was seen to spout forth from many a wound in the form of the prisoner; he sprung convulsively upwards, and then fell backward dead on the damp gravel, which was so soon to cover him.
The hearts of all began to beat more freely; but at that moment the red sun sank behind the darkening hills, and a deeper gloom enveloped Banos, the effect of which was not lost on the minds of the beholders.
All was over now! The corse lay stretched on the ground, and the smoke of the musquetry was curling around the grave which yawned beside it. Cameron sprung on his horse, and his voice was the first to break the oppressive silence. The shrill pipes sounded, and the rattling drums beat merrily in the re-echoing vale, as corps after corps marched past the spot where the body of Mackie, though breathless, lay yet bleeding, and moved up the winding pathway towards the pass of Banos, whence by different routes they marched to their cantonments in the villages and camps among the mountains. When all had passed away, the pioneers placed the dead man in his coffin, and covered him hurriedly up; the sods were carefully deposited over and beaten down with the shovel, and the grave of the man who had been living but ten minutes before, presented now the same appearance as the resting-place of one who had been many years entombed. The weeds and the long grass waved over it.
The village paisanos placed a rough wooden cross above it, to prevent, as they said, "the heretic from haunting the resting-place of his bones;" and near this rude emblem was placed a vine, which Evan Iverach tended daily—clearing its root of weeds and encumbrances, watching and pruning the stem, and long before the regiment left Banos he had twined it around and hidden the limbs of the cross; and when the Highlanders marched from the valley, as they wound through a deep defile among the mountains Evan's farewell look was cast to the place where the vine-covered cross marked the grave of his comrade.