Death was death whatever form it took, and he had to face death as many better men had done before him.

He had often thought about it and wondered how he should behave if the thing came to him.

Respectably, he had hoped; heroically, he had sworn in his moments of confidence.

But he had never for an instant dreamed of this cold, lonely, dreadful business.
Last Sunday, he remembered, he had basking in the afternoon sun in his little garden and reading about the end of Fergus MacIvor in WAVERLEY and thrilling to the romance of it; and Tibby had come out and summoned him in to tea.

Then he had rather wanted to be a Jacobite in the '45 and in peril of his neck, and now Providence had taken him most terribly at his word.
A week ago---! He groaned at the remembrance of that sunny garden.