Fiction > Book editions > London, 1889 - Master of Ballantrae

THE JOURNEY IN THE WILDERNESS. 323
name) stood with his elbow in one hand^ and his chin
sunk in the other, gazing before him on the surface of
the wood. My eyes followed his, and rested almost
pleasantly upon the frosted contexture of the pines,
rising in moonlit hillocks, or sinking in the shadow of
small glens. Hard by, I told myself, w^as the grave of
our enemy, now gone where the wicked cease from
troubling, the earth heaped for ever on his once so active
limbs. I could not but think of him as somehow for-
tunate to be thus done with man's anxiety and weari-
ness, the daily expense of spirit, and that daily river of
circumstance to be swum through, at any hazard, under
the penalty of shame or death. I could not but think
how good was the end of that long travel; and with
that, my mind swung at a tangent to my lord. For was
not my lord dead also ? a maimed soldier, looking vainly
for discharge, lingering derided in the line of battle ?
A kind man, I remembered him ; wise, with a decent
pride, a son perhaps too dutiful, a husband only too
loving, one that could suffer and be silent, one whose
hand I loved to press. Of a sudden, pity caught in my
windpipe with a sob ; I could have wept aloud to re-
member and behold him ; and standing thus by his
elbow, under the broad moon, I prayed fervently either
that he should be released, or I strengthened to persist
in my affection.
" Oh God,''' said I, " this was the best man to me
and to himself, and now I shrink from him. He did no
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