hinvar, I cannot have my officers cut up
when they should be hunting Whigs--and" (looking at me) "preparing them
for burial."

I think he saw the hatred in my eyes, when he spoke thus of my father
lying stiff at a dyke back, for he lifted his hat to me quaintly as he
went.

"A good journey to you, and a fair return, young Castle Keeper!" he said
with a scorning of his haughty lip.

Yet I think that he had been greater and worthier had he denied himself
that word to a lad on my errand.

Of our further progress what need that I tell? Hour after hour I heard
the horses' feet ring on the road dully, as though I had been deep under
ground myself, and they trampling over me with a rush. It irked me that
it was a fine day and that my men, Hugh Kerr and John Meiklewood, would
not cease to speak with me. But all things wear round, and in time we
came to the place, where one had told Sandy as he fled that he had seen
William Gordon of Earlstoun lie stark and still.

There indeed we found my father lying where he had fallen in the angle
of a great wall, a mile or two south of the field of Bothwell. He had no
fewer than six wounds from musket balls upon him. As I looked I could
see the story of his end written plain for the dullest to read. He had
been beset by a party of dragoons in the angle of a great seven-foot
march dyke in which there was no break. They summoned him to surrender.
He refused, as I knew he would; and, as his manner was, he had risked
all upon a single-handed charge.

As we heard afterwards, he had come at the troopers with such fury that
he killed three and wounded another, besides slaying the horse that lay
beside him, before, with a storm of bullets, they stopped him in his
charge. Thus died, not unworthily, even while I was bringing in the kye
in the evening at Earlstoun, William Gordon, a father of whom, in life
and death, no son need be ashamed.

And where we found him, there we buried him, wrapping him just as he
was, in the shrouds my mother had sent for her well-beloved. Hugh Kerr
was for taking his sword out of his hand to keep at home as an heirloom.
But I thought no. For his hand was stiffened upon it where the blood had
run down his wrist. And besides, it had been his friend while he lived
and when he died, and it was hard to part him with that which had been
to him as the sword of the Lord and of Gideon. So we buried his sword
and him together, laying the little red Bible, stained and spott