When he came back with the lighted candle in his hand, Macpherson was sitting up in the bed, with his eyes staring wide open and his hands stretched out. The wound had burst out afresh and the blood had stained the white counterpane.
“Listen, Gervase,” he said, “listen, my son! Do you hear how he is calling me? I would know the sound of his voice among ten thousand--the sound of his voice that I loved. I would have waited for you, but I knew him first and loved him first, and I cannot tarry. Jack, dear Jack, good comrade, I am coming. Oh! the marvellous light--” He struggled as if to leave the bed and Gervase was running forward to restrain him, when he fell back on the pillow, with his eyes and mouth wide open. At a glance Gervase saw that it was all over; his faithful friend was dead, and there was no need for watching now. As he stood for a long time looking at him, the hard and rugged face seemed to soften into a smile, and the lines that were cut deep in the forehead and the cheeks had disappeared, and he lay like one asleep. The fight was indeed over, and the reveille would awaken him from his rest no more.
They buried him the next day in the Cathedral yard, four men of his own regiment carrying the body on the stretcher on which they had brought him home. As Gervase saw him laid in the shallow grave, he felt that he had lost the best friend and the truest comrade he was ever likely to find. And there the ashes of the old soldier still lie mingled with those of many another who fell in the same quarrel and found a resting-place there from all their labours. In after days Gervase erected a tablet to his memory, with nothing more than the name and the date upon it and these words: “He laid down his life for his friend.”
Macpherson died toward the end of the second week in July, when the city had already begun to suffer the dire extremities of famine. The provisions in the magazines were almost exhausted; the meal and the tallow were doled out with a sparing hand. Already the citizens had begun to live upon food that at other times they would have turned from in disgust and loathing. Horse-flesh was almost becoming a luxury, dogs, rats, and cats were greedily devoured, and even of these the supply was beginning to fail. Putrid fevers had broken out which carried off multitudes; loathsome diseases of the skin grew common, and even the strongest began to find it hard to draw themselves to the walls or to help in repelling the frequent attacks on the outposts. Added to this, there was hardly a whole roof in the city, for during two months the iron hail had been continually pouring upon them. Many of them felt indeed that death would be a welcome relief, and they envied those who were already laid in the churchyard. But still they held out grimly, and with faces blackened with hunger, declared that they were ready to die rather than surrender. The spirit that may still be found here and there in the Imperial Province burned with an unabated flame--a pride which two centuries has not been able to remove, and strong almost to fanaticism. Yet it was not to be wondered at that discontent and suspicion should grow and spread. Some few proved insubordinate, others deserted to the enemy, but for the most part they stood loyally by their leaders.