ith the best? and no doubt when we were at
the marching there were ancients on the roadside to swear we were never
their equal. They are in there in the grass and bracken where you and
I must some day join them and young lads still will be marching out to
glory."

"In there among the grass and bracken," thought Gilian, turning a moment
to look up the slope that leads to Kilmalieu. The laurel drugged the
air with death's odour. "In the grasses and the bracken," said Gilian,
singing it to himself as if it were a coronach. Was that indeed the end
of it all, of the hope, the lilt, the glory? And then he had a great
pity for the dead that in their own time had been on many a march
like this. Their tombs are thick in Kilmalieu. It seemed so cruel,
so heedless, so taunting thus to march past them with no obeisance or
remembrance, that to them, the dead soldiers, all his heart went out,
and he hated the quick who marched upon the highway.

But Crawford, like the best that have humour, had pity and pathos too.
"Slow march!" he cried to his men, and the pipers played "Lochaber No
More."

"He's punctilious in his forms," said the Paymaster, "but it's
thoughtful of him too."

"There was never but true _duine uasail_ put on the tartan of Argyll,"
said the Cornal.

The pipes ceased; the drums beat again, echoing from the Sgornach rock
and the woody caverns of Blaranbui, Glenshira filled to the lip with
rolling thunder, the sea lulled to a whisper on the shore. Gilian and
the children were now all that were left to follow the soldiers, for the
oldsters had cheered feebly and gone back. And as he walked close up on
the rear of the troops, his mind was again on the good fortune of those
that from warfare must return. To come home after long years, and go up
the street so well acquaint, sitting bravely on his horse, paled in
the complexion somewhat from a wound, perhaps with the scar of it as
perpetual memorial, and to behold pity and pride in the look of them
that saw him! It would be such a day as this, he chose, with the sun
upon his braid and the sheen upon his horse's neck. The pipers would
play merrily and yet with a melancholy too, and so crowded the causeways
by the waiting community that even the windows must be open to their
overflowing.

And as thus he walked and dreamt saying no word to any of the chattering
bairns about him he was truly the Army's child. The Paymaster was right,
and generous to choose for him so fine