And then the poor crazed youth went through the motions of slapping his hands across his breast to quicken the circulation, and began humming the air of "The Pretty Maid Milking her Cow."
By degrees the motion of his hands slackened, his voice grew fainter, he turned his head on one side, and dropped into a deep, calm sleep.
Duty took me elsewhere, but I returned in a few hours. As I stole up to the bedside the patient was awake and looked brighter and better than before. It was the blazing of the wick before the candle expires.
"He has had a lucid interval," whispered the brother, "and was so meek and patient that it made me weep. But he is delirious again—still yearning for that relief."
At that instant the sunset flame shooting through a window burnished the sufferer's face until it looked like that of some waxen image with a halo; by a powerful effort he propped the upper portion of his body on his left elbow, raised his right arm in salute, and cried—
"Hurrah! I saw the sunlight on yer bay'nets, boys. Andy wouldn't lave his post. But whisper, sargent, ye were much-a-wanted, much-a-wanted!"
And with a glad laugh the boy-soldier fell back.
There was a thin crimson streak upon the pillow. The relief had, indeed, come at last.
John Augustus O'Shea, in Merry England.