ome and fixed it there, to hallow, if they could,
a comrade's grave.

However, these poor fellows had been cheated hours before: Charles's
brotherly care had secured the poor remains, and the vicar winked a
blind permission: so Charles buried them by night in the church-yard
corner, under the yew, reading many prayers above them.

Two fierce-looking strange men went to that burial with reverent looks,
as it were chief mourners; and when all the rites were done, I heard
them gruffly say to Charles, "God bless you, sir, for this!"

When the mother heard those tidings of her son, she was sobered on the
instant, and ran about the house with all a mother's grief, shrieking
like a mad woman. But all her shrieks and tears could not bring back
poor Julian; deep, deep in the silent grave, she cannot wake him--cannot
kiss him now. Ah well! ah well!

Then did she return to his dear room, desperate for him--and Hollands
once, twice, thrice, she poured out a full tumbler of the burning fluid,
and drank it off like water; and it maddened her brain: her mind was in
a phrensy of delirium, while her body shook as with a palsy.

Let us draw the curtain; for she died that night.

They buried her in Aunt Green's grave: what a meeting theirs will be at
the day of resurrection!

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE OLD SCOTCH NURSE GOES HOME.

Six months at least--this is clearly not a story of the unities--six
months' interval must now elapse before the wedding-day. Charles and
Emmy--for he called her Emmy still, though Jeanie Mackie would persist
in mouthing it to "Aamy,"--wished to have it delayed a year, in respect
for the memory of those who, with all their crime and folly, were not
the less a mother and a brother: but the general would not hear of such
a thing; he was growing very old, he said; although actually he seemed
to have taken out a new lease of life, so young again and buoyant was
the new-found heart within him; and thus growing old, he was full of
fatherly fear that he should not live to see his children's happiness.
It was only reasonable and proper that our pair of cooing doves should
acquiesce in his desire.

Meanwhile, I am truly sorry to say it, Jeanie Mackie died; for it would
have been a good novel-like incident to have suffered the faithful old
creature to have witnessed her favourite's wedding, and then to have
been forthwith killed out of the way, by--perishing in the vestry.
However, things were ordered otherwis