lat, vacant eye. Gilian leaned upon
his other foot and was on the verge of crying at his situation. The
day had been far too crowded with strangers and new experience for
his comfort; he felt himself cruelly plucked out of his own sufficient
company and jarred by contact with a very complex world.

With a rude loud sound that shook the toddy ladles in the cupboard the
Cornal cleared his throat.

"How old are you?" he asked, and this roused the General, who came back
from his musings with a convulsive start, and repeated his brother's
question.

"Twelve," said Gilian, first in Gaelic out of instinct, and hurriedly
repeating it in English lest he should offend the gentlemen.

"Twelve," said the Cornal, thinking hard. "You are not very bulky for
your age. Is he now, Dugald?"

"He is not very bulky for his age," said the General, after a moment's
pause as if he were recalling all the boys he knew of that age, or
remitting himself to the days before his teens.

"And now, between ourselves," said the Cornal, leaning over with a show
of intimacy and even friendliness, "have you any notion yourself of
being a soger?"

"I never thought anything about it," Gilian confessed in a low tone. "I
can be anything the Captain would like me to be."

"Did you ever hear the like?" cried the Cornal, looking in amazement at
his brother. "He never thought anything about it, but he can be anything
he likes. Is not that a good one? Anything he likes!" And he laughed
with a choked and heavy effort till the scar upon his face fired like
blood, and Gilian seemed to see it gape and flow as it did when the
sword-slash struck it open in Corunna.

"Anything he likes!" echoed the General, laughing huskily till he
coughed and choked. They both sat smiling grimly with no more sound till
it seemed to the boy he must be in a dream, looking at the creations of
his brain. The step of a fly could have been heard in the room almost,
so sunk was it in silence, but outside, as in another world, a band of
children filled the street with the chant of "Pity be"--chant of the
trumpeters of the Lords.

Gilian never before heard that song with which the children were used to
accompany the fanfare of the scarlet-coated musicians who preceded
the Lords Justiciary on their circuit twice a year; but the words came
distinctly to him in by the open window where the wallflower nodded, and
he joined silently in his mind the dolorous chorus and felt himself the
pri