But it is hardly worth while for me to say now what was in my mind about you." "What was that ?" "Well, laddie, you are doing no good here, and now that my knee is getting more limber I was hoping that I might get on active service again.

I wondered whether maybe you might like to do a little soldiering under me." My heart jumped at the thought.
"Aye, would I!" I cried.
"But it'll be clear six months before I'll be fit to pass a board, and it's long odds that Boney will be under lock and key before that." "And there's my mother," said I, "I doubt she'd never let me go." "Ah! well, she'll never be asked to now," he answered, and hobbled on upon his way.
I sat down among the heather with my chin on my hand, turning the thing over in my mind, and watching him in his old brown clothes, with the end of a grey plaid flapping over his shoulder, as he picked his way up the swell of the hill.

It was a poor life this, at West Inch, waiting to fill my father's shoes, with the same heath, and the same burn, and the same sheep, and the same grey house for ever before me.

But over there, over the blue sea, ah! there was a life fit for a man.

There was the Major, a man past his prime, wounded and spent, and yet planning to get to work again, whilst I, with all the strength of my youth, was wasting it upon these hillsides.