I would see my darling’s little coffin borne from the fortress. I sat at a window that overlooked the gateway, and watched the simple procession with a heart so still, that it seemed turned to stone in its agony. My eyes were fixed and tearless, I dreaded the last look of that coffin which held all my hopes.
I am a soldier’s daughter—but I could take no pride, for the sake of my darling, in the last honours that were paid his little corpse—as it passed the gate, the guard of the Fifty —st regiment turned out and presented arms to the coffin. At this simple but characteristic compliment to my dead child, the well-springs of my full heart overflowed, and I burst into tears.
The procession passed through thee gateway, the soldiers retired to the guard-house, the single sentry kept his measured beat, and I, in my desolation, cast myself upon my bed and cried aloud, “What have I done, what have I done, to be so afflicted by the hand of God?”
“Say, rather, chastened,” said Mrs Lorton. “Ah! Eleanor, believe me, that those whom the Lord never sees fit to chasten are not to be envied, as you, in your present sorrow, would believe.”
The little miniature you have seen of my Francis was taken from life by Mrs Lorton; it fell into Mr Trail’s hands through the loss of a box when I was travelling; it has, you see, twice escaped destruction.
I returned to Annerley, broken-hearted. It was our winter—a desolate one, memorable in the annals of the colony for its storms and floods.
Oh! how long it was before the cold wind and rain, which I heard beating against the windows, ceased to send a shudder through my heart, for fear they should injure my poor little lost snowdrop. I had dreaded leaving Fort Wellington, yet, what a trial it was there—to see the vacant place in the nursery, and the unused playthings, carefully put away by Mrs Lorton, but sometimes drawn out by stealth, that I might weep over them!
These last lines of the manuscript are almost illegible, from the tears that had fallen on them.