Don't you
cry for me. They said that I was bold, and so I am, and so I will be.
You may think that I am silly, but I can die as well as another.--I have
done no harm, have I?' he added quickly.
'None before Heaven,' she answered.
'Why then,' said Barnaby, 'let them do their worst. You told me
once--you--when I asked you what death meant, that it was nothing to
be feared, if we did no harm--Aha! mother, you thought I had forgotten
that!'
His merry laugh and playful manner smote her to the heart. She drew him
closer to her, and besought him to talk to her in whispers and to be
very quiet, for it was getting dark, and their time was short, and she
would soon have to leave him for the night.
'You will come to-morrow?' said Barnaby.
Yes. And every day. And they would never part again.
He joyfully replied that this was well, and what he wished, and what he
had felt quite certain she would tell him; and then he asked her where
she had been so long, and why she had not come to see him when he had
been a great soldier, and ran through the wild schemes he had had for
their being rich and living prosperously, and with some faint notion in
his mind that she was sad and he had made her so, tried to console and
comfort her, and talked of their former life and his old sports and
freedom: little dreaming that every word he uttered only increased her
sorrow, and that her tears fell faster at the freshened recollection of
their lost tranquillity.
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