Page:Tales of my landlord (Volume 4).djvu/103

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OLD MORTALITY.
95

and the lot has fallen on these fellows who were to murder you.—It is not the expiring pang that is worth thinking of in an event that must happen one day, and may befal us on any given moment—it is the memory which the soldier leaves behind him, like the long train of light that follows the sunken sun—that is all which is worth caring for, which distinguishes the death of the brave or the ignoble. When I think of death, Mr Morton, as a thing worth thinking of, it is in the hope of pressing one day some well-fought and hard-won field of battle, and dying with the shout of viotory in my ear—that would be worth dying for, and more, it would be worth having lived for!"

At the moment when Grahame delivered these sentiments, his eye glancing with the martial enthusiasm which formed such a prominent feature in his character, a gory figure, which seemed to rise out of the floor of the apartment, stood upright