"Well, no, Miss Ward, not to say serious—we are none of us chickens, so to speak, and we have most of us cut our wisdom teeth a good many years ago. The sergeant has been poorly for a week now. He is down in the mouth, and I can't rouse him nohow. Would you believe it, Miss Ward, I was trying to argify with him this morning about that there Sepoy. 'For it stands to reason, McGill,' I said to him, 'that there could only be two of them;' and he fairly flew at me, lost his temper, and told me I was an infernal liar. Why, you might have knocked me down with a feather, I was so taken aback;" and the corporal's droll face was puckered up with care.
"Never mind, Corporal," returned Waveney, soothingly. "McGill was ill and not himself, or he would not have been so irritable with his old comrade. Look here, I have come to bid you all good-bye, because I am going away; and my sister has made you one of those cakes you like, and I have brought you some tobacco." Then the corporal's face cleared a little.
They found the old soldier lying on his bed, with a rug over his feet; his face looked drawn and pallid. At the sound of Waveney's light step he turned his sightless eyes towards her, and a strange expression passed over his features.
"There was only one step that was as light," he murmured, in his thick, soft voice, "and that was Sheila's, and hers hardly brushed the dewdrops from the heather." Then, as Waveney took hold of his great hand, "and it was her small fingers, too, the brown little hands that carried the creel of peat, and stacked it underneath the eaves; and it is Sheila that has come to me—Heaven bless her sweet face!—before I take the long journey."
"My dear old friend, do you not know me?" and Waveney looked anxiously at him. "It is not Sheila, it is Miss Ward who has come to wish you good-bye." Then the old man looked bewildered, and raised himself on the pillow.
"And are you ferry well, Miss Ward? And it is I who have made the mistake, like the old fool that I was. It may be I was dreaming—I was always clever at the dreams, as the corporal knows. But it seemed to me as though I could see the blue water of the loch, and the grey walls of our cottage, and the shingly roofs, and even the cocks and hens pecking in the dust. And there was Sheila coming up from the beach, with her bare feet, and red kerchief tied over her dark hair; and her smile was like sunshine, and her hands were full of great scarlet poppies. And if it was a dream, it was a good dream."
"Was Sheila your sister?" asked Waveney, softly. For she knew that Sergeant McGill had never been married, though the corporal was a widower. Then, at the beloved name, McGill roused to complete consciousness.
"No, Miss Ward. I had no sister, only six brothers, and Sheila was the lass of my heart; and when I had got my stripes we were to have married. But it was my fate, for when I came from the wars, there was the loch, and the purple moors, and the grey walls of the cottage; but Sheila, she would never come to meet me again with the poppies in her hand, and the wild rose in her cheek. She lay in the graveyard on the hillside, where the dead can hear the bees humming in the heather. But it is not the goot manners to be telling you of the old troubles, and very soon it is Sheila herself that I shall see."
"Tell Miss Ward the message that Sheila left with her mother, McGill."
"It was this that she said," he continued, in a proud tone, "'You must bid Fergus McGill not to grieve; he is a grand soldier and a good lad, and dearly I would have loved to have been his wife. But God's will be done. Tell him I will be near the gates; and that if the angels permit, that it is Sheila who will be there to welcome him.'"