Poor Walter used to remember with pleasure that they had always remained aloof from the other prisoners, and were treated by them with marked respect. Their usual shelter was under the great mausoleum of the Barons of Coates, the quaint devices and antique sculpture of which had often raised his childish fear and wonder; he recalled through the struggling and misty perceptions of infancy, how day by day her fair features became paler and more attenuated, her eye more sunken and ghastly, her voice more tremulous and weak, and her strength even less than his own; for (he had heard the soldiers say) she had been a tenderly nurtured and fragile creature, unable to endure the hardships to which she was subjected; and so she perished among the first that died there.
One morning the little boy raised his head from the coarse plaid which on the previous night her feeble hands had wrapped around him, and called as usual for her daily kiss; he twisted his dimpled fingers in the masses of her silky hair, and laid his smiling face to hers—it was cold as the marble tomb beside them; he shrank back, and again called upon her, but her still lips gave no reply; he stirred her—she did not move. Then, struck by the peculiar, the terrible aspect of her pale and once beautiful face, the ghastly eyes and relaxed jaw, the child screamed aloud on the mother that heard him no more. He dreaded alike to remain or to fly; for, alas! there was no other in whose arms he could find a refuge.
A soldier approached. He was a white-haired veteran, who had looked on many a battle-field, and speaking kindly to the desolate child, he gently stirred the dead woman with his halberd.
"Is this thy mother, my puir bairn?" said he.
The child answered only by his tears, and hid his face in the grass.
"Come away with me, my little mannikin," continued the soldier, "for thy mother hath gone to a better and bonnier place than this."
"Take me there too," sobbed the child, clinging to the soldier's hand; "oh, take me there too."
"By my faith, little one, 'tis a march I am not prepared for yet—but our parson will tell you all about it. Tush! I know the flams of the drum better than how to expound the text; so come away, my puir bairn; thy mother, God rest her, is in good hands, I warrant. Come away; and rot me, if thou shalt want while old Willie Wemyss of the Scots' Musqueteers, hath a bodle in his pouch, or a bannock in his havresack."
By the good-hearted soldier he was carried away in a paroxysm of childish grief and terror; and he saw his mother no more.
By the beauty of her person, the exceeding whiteness of her hands, and a very valuable ring found with her, she was supposed to be of higher rank than her peasant's attire indicated; and those apparent proofs of a superior birth, the soldiers never omitted an opportunity of impressing upon Walter as he grew older; and cited innumerable Low Country legends and old Scottish traditions, wherein certain heroes just so circumstanced, had become great personages in the end; and Walter was taught to consider that there was no reason why he should be an exception. But who his mother was, had unfortunately remained locked in her own breast; whether from excessive debility and broken spirit she lacked strength to communicate with the other captives, or whether she feared to do so, could not be known now; her secret was buried with her, and thus a mystery was thrown over the fortune of the little boy, which through life caused him to be somewhat of a moody and reflective nature.