gaze of the Cornal and
the General, who stood to their feet facing his tense and thrilled small
figure. A wave of shame-heat swept over him at his own boldness.

Outside, the children's voices were fading in the distance as they
turned the corner of the church singing "Pity be."

"Pity be on poor prisoners, pity be on them:
Pity be on poor prisoners, if they come back again,"

they sang; the air softened into a fairy lullaby heard by an ear at eve
against the grassy hillock, full of charm, instinct with dream, and the
sentiment of it was as much the boy's within as the performers' without.

"This is the kind of play-actor John would make a soldier of," said the
Cornal, turning almost piteously to his brother. "It beats all! Where
did you learn all that?" he demanded harshly, scowling at the youth and
sitting down again.

"He has the picture of it very true, now, has he not?" said the General.
"I mind of many camps just like that, with the cork-trees behind and old
Sir George ramping and cursing in his tent because the pickets hailed,
and the corncrake would be rasping, rasping, a cannon-carriage badly
oiled, among the grass."

Gilian sank into the chair again, his face in shadow.

"Discipline and reverence for your elders and superiors are the first
lesson you would need, my boy," said the Cornal, taking a tiny drop of
the spirits again and touching the glass of his brother, who had done
likewise. "Discipline and reverence; discipline and reverence. I was
once cocky and putting in my tongue like you where something of sense
would have made me keep it between my teeth. Once in Spain, an ensign, I
found myself in a wine-shop or change-house, drinking as I should
never have been doing if I had as muckle sense as a clabbie-doo, with
a dragoon major old enough to be my father. He was a pock-pudding
Englishman, a great hash of a man with the chest of him slipped down
below his belt, and what was he but bragging about the rich people he
came of, and the rich soil they flourished on, its apple-orchards and
honey-flowers and its grass knee-deep in June. 'Do you know,' said I, 'I
would not give a yard's breadth of the shire of Argyll anywhere north of
Knapdale at its rockiest for all your lush straths, and if it comes to
antique pedigrees here am I, Clan Diarmid, with my tree going down to
Donacha Dhu of Lochow.' That was insolence, ill-considered, unnecessary,
for this major of dragoons, as I tell you, might be