be shot at sunrise, therefore, he desired to see me. And I remember how he yawned and yawned, this lank and bony sergeant, showing within his mouth his yellow fangs!

“Oh, Euan! When I arrived, my foster father — who I then supposed was my own father — lay in a tent a condemned deserter, seeming not even to care, or to comprehend his dreadful plight. All the defence he ever made, they say was that he had tired of dirty camps and foolish drums, and wished to paint again. Euan, it was terrible. He did not understand. He was a visionary — a man of endless silences, dreamy of eye, gentle and vague of mind — no soldier, nor fitted to understand a military life at all.

“I remember the smoky lantern burning red within the tent, and the vast shadows it cast;