ng about it that suits ill with his Highland dignity. Captain,
Captain!"

Gilian stood in front of this spate of talk, becoming more diffident and
fearful every moment. He had never had any thought as to how he should
tell the Paymaster that the goodwife of Ladyfield was dead, that was a
task he had expected to be left to some one else, but Jean Clerk and
her sister had a cunning enough purpose in making him the bearer of the
news.

"I am to tell him the goodwife of Ladyfield is dead," he explained,
stammering, to the Sergeant More.

"Dead!" said John More. "Now is not that wonderful?" He leaned against
the door as he had leaned many a time against sentry-box and barrack
wall, and dwelt a little upon memory. "Is not that wonderful? The first
time I saw her was at a wedding in Karnes, Lochow, and she was the
handsomest woman in the room, and there were sixty people at the
wedding from all parts, and sixty-nine roasted hens at the supper. Well,
well--dead! blessings with her; did I not know her well? Yes, and I knew
her husband too, Long Angus, since the first day he came to Ladyfield
for Old Mar--for the Paymaster--till the last day he came down the
glen in a cart, and he was the only sober body in the funeral, perhaps
because it was his own. Many a time I wondered that the widow did so
well in the farm for Captain Campbell, with no man to help her, the
sowing and the shearing, the dipping and the clipping, ploughmen and
herds to keep an eye on, and bargains to make with wool merchants and
drovers. Oh! she was a clever woman, your grandmother. And now she's
dead. Well, it's a way they have at her age! And the Paymaster must be
told, though I know it will vex him greatly, because he is a sort of man
who does not relish changes. Mind now you say Captain; you need not say
Captain Campbell, but just Captain, and maybe a 'sir' now and then. I
suppose you could not put off telling him for a half-hour or thereabouts
longer, when he would be going home for dinner any way; it is a pity
to spoil an old gentleman's meridian dram with melancholy news. No. You
were just told to come straight away and tell him--well, it is the good
soldier who makes no deviation from the word of command. Come away in
then and--Captain mind--and the salute."

The Sergeant More threw open the door of the room, filled up the space
a second and gave a sort of free-and-easy salute. "A message for you,
Captain," said he.

The singing was done. The Maj