By and by, when he was calmer, he came again to the pallet where the dying man lay, and picked up the sword which, along with his own, was propped against the canvas wall of the tent. It was of beautiful workmanship with a crest on the jewelled scabbard, and below a graven name which, by the light of the tallow dip, Richard at last spelled out:—
“Barry.”
He stood thinking for a moment. Why, this then was the man for whom Ellen Singleton had mistaken him that night he played the squire to her in a borrowed military cloak at the fête in Philadelphia. What strange fate had brought them thus together? “The finest officer who wears the red, and a lady-killer,” Dunn had said. And that tightness gathered again at Richard’s heart, for where else had he heard of the man?
Stay, was not Barry the name—Yes, it was the very name he had heard coupled with Joscelyn’s that night while he lay hiding in the freezing attic. “She is sitting on the stair with Captain Barry.” The very tones of the speaker came back to him, bringing again that thirsty desire to open the door and look for her which he had not been able to resist, though life itself might pay the forfeit.
He went back to the pallet, and bent down that he might see the face of his patient. So this was the man who had won her away from the rest of her company, the man to whom she had bent down so low that from the rear only the dark crown of her hair could be seen as she sat on her steps—this was the man to whose love tale she had listened smilingly, while he himself was a prisoner hiding for his very life. A lady-killer, Dunn had said; and well he could believe it from the traces of manly beauty still lingering in the suffering face. A fierce jealousy tore at his heart. Evidently, from his ramblings, Joscelyn had listened to this other’s wooing, and had written him letters, while she mocked him and sent him never so much as one little line in answer to all the pages he wrote her. He had always known that other men would love her,—it could not be otherwise with her sweetness and her beauty,—but always in his thoughts she had kept herself for him. Had it been a false hope; had she loved this brave Briton who called upon her with such pathos of tenderness? If so, then was his own dream-castle in ruins.
By and by, just before the end, there came a lucid hour. The wounded man turned his eyes questioningly upon his nurse.
“I found you after the fight, so far in our lines that your own men had missed you in their retreat, and the surgeon left you in my care,” Richard said gently.
“To die? Yes, I see it in your eyes.”
“You fell at the head of your men, as a soldier wishes death to find him.”