Then I pitied my hero, the wandering soldier, so much alone, so eager, and unforgetting, till I felt the tears in my eyes as I imaged his hopeless longing.
She checked her sighs, she said my name in the softest whisper, laid her head upon my shoulder and wept. And then at last I met her quivering lips.
CHAPTER XXXV.—FAREWELL.
On the morrow, John Splendid came riding up the street on his way to the foreign wars. He had attired himself most sprucely; he rode a good horse, and he gave it every chance to show its quality. Old women cried to him from their windows and close-mouths. “Oh! laochain,” they said, “yours be the luck of the seventh son!” He answered gaily, with the harmless flatteries that came so readily to his lips always, they seemed the very bosom’s revelation. “Oh! women!” said he, “I’ll be thinking of your handsome sons, and the happy days we spent together, and wishing myself soberly home with them when I am far away.”
But not the old women alone waited on his going; shy girls courtesied or applauded at the corners. For them his horse caracoled on Stonefield’s causeway, his shoulders straightened, and his bonnet rose. “There you are!” said he, “still the temptation and the despair of a decent bachelor’s life. I’ll marry every one of you that has not a man when I come home.”
“And when may that be?” cried a little, bold, lair one, with a laughing look at him from under the blowing locks that escaped the snood on her hair.
“When may it be?” he repeated. “Say ‘Come home, Barbreck,’ in every one of your evening prayers, and heaven, for the sake of so sweet a face, may send me home the sooner with my fortune.”
Master Gordon, passing, heard the speech. “Do your own praying, Barbreck———”
“John,” said my hero. “John, this time, to you.”