ou will go far," said she to Gilian, "before you will come on finer
men. They are getting old and done, but once I knew them tall and strong
and strapping, not their equals in all the armies. And what they have
seen of wars, my dear! They were ever going or coming from them, and
sometimes I would not know where they were out in the quarrelsome world
but for a line in the _Saturday Post_ or the _Courier_ or maybe an old
hint in the General Almanack itself. Perhaps when you become acquainted
with the General and the Cornal you will wonder that they are never at
any time jocular, and maybe you will think that they are soured at life
and that all their kindness is turned to lappered cream. I knew them
nearly jocular, I knew them tall, light-footed laddies, running about
the pastures there gallivanting with the girls. But that, my dear, was
long ago, and I feel myself the old woman indeed when I see them so
stiff and solemn sitting in there over their evening glass."

"I have never seen them; were they at the funeral?" asked Gilian, his
interest roused in such survivals of the past.

"That they were," said Miss Mary; "a funeral now is their only
recreation. But perhaps you would not know them because they are not at
all like the Captain. He was a soldier too, in a way, but they were the
ancient warriors. Come into the room here and I will show you, if you
have finished your dinner."

Gilian went with her into the parlour again among the prints and the
hanging swords, that now he knew the trade and story of the men who sat
among them, were imbued with new interests.

Miss Mary pointed to the portraits. "That was Colin and Dugald before
they went away the second time," she said. "We had one of James too---he
died at Corunna--but it was the only one, and we gave it to a lady of
the place who was chief with him before he went away, and dwined a great
deal after his death. And that's his sword. When it came home from Spain
by MacFarlane, the carrier round from Dumbarton, I took it out and it
was clagged in the scabbard with a red glut. It was a sore memorial to
an only sister."

The boy stood in the middle of the floor feeling himself very much older
than he had done in the morning. The woman's confidences made him almost
a man, for before he had been spoken to but as a child, though his
thoughts were far older than his years. Those relics of war, especially
the sheath that had the glut of life in it corrupting when it came b