CHAPTER XVIII.

GILLIAN MAKES A STARTLING DISCOVERY.

For the present Gillian's fighting was over, though he remained, of course, on board the _Comet_, with the expedition, which ended successfully in the entire capture or total destruction of the Persian munitions of war at Akwaz, and the consequent disorganization of the army of the Shah--facts that belong to history rather than to our story.

Gillian was the hero of the hour; there was not a man in the army, from Outram and Havelock down to the humblest camp-follower, but envied the gallant young rescuer of pretty Mrs. Hartley.

Oblivious of all this, conscious only of his agony, and inspired by no wish but to escape it by death, he lay between two after guns on the starboard side of the main-deck, with a pillow under his head and a top studding-sail spread as awning above him--pale, breathing heavily, and was only completely roused, when Captain Hartley, after thanking him in words, which certainly came from his very heart, proffered him first his purse and next his watch.

Then an angry flush crossed Gillian's face, the blood from his wound burst through the doctor's dressings, and with his right hand he motioned the Captain away impatiently.

"A most singular young man!" said he to the Staff-Colonel, who leant on his sword--the old tulwur--and looked on approvingly.

"Hartley, dearest, leave him to me," urged his wife, who looked pale, ill, weary, and worn, after the terror she had been lately enduring; "the poor lad is not what he seems."

"Seems! by Jove, he is a soldier to the heart's core; but, as you will, my darling."

Full of tender and womanly sympathy, she hung over the lad, bathing his temples with a handkerchief, dipped in eau-de-cologne; and, as he lay there, on the hard deck, in the "garb of old Gaul"--the garb that for grace is second to none in the world,--a woman's eye could see how handsome he was, above the middle height, stalwart and well knit in figure, with finely proportioned limbs, and a more than pleasing face, and delicate in its features. His plumed and chequered bonnet was off now, and his close shorn hair seemed rich and crisp as that of a girl. His four-tailed Highland doublet had been thrown open, that the wound might be dressed, and she could see, as all near did, the ring of Dove Gainswood, attached to its blue ribbon.

"Poor fellow," said she, bursting into tears, as her husband led her away; "that bauble contains the secret of his life, and doubtless it is a sad one."

"His future shall be our care in every way," said the officer, full of gratitude and generosity; but there was another near, of whom he and Gillian wotted little--the old Staff-Colonel, who had been regarding him with great and growing interest.

"My God!" said he, in a low but piercing voice, "how strongly--how much and mysteriously his face reminds me of one I saw--long, long ago!"

"Of whose, Colonel?" asked the doctor, who had been gently re-adjusting the bandages.

"Of my poor dead wife. What is your name, my lad?" he asked, stooping over the sufferer.

"Lamond, sir," replied Gillian, faintly.

"Ah--my own--I, too, am a Lamond," replied the other, as his eyes brightened, and clansman-like, he pressed in his the young corporal's passive hand; "what other name--John, Duncan, or what?"

"Gillian Lamond," replied the other, with his eyes closed.

"How came you by that uncommon name?"

"It was that of my grandfather."

"And who was he?"

"Gillian Lamond of Avon-na-gillian."

A singular cry, or rather gasp, in which utter bewilderment and joy, were mingled with grief and horror, escaped the old field-officer, as he sank, tremulous in voice and in every limb, on his knees by Gillian's side, and in defiance of the astonished doctor, asked a few more hurried and earnest questions--only a few, but more than enough to convince him that this sufferer, who, from being a betrayed out-cast, had become a soldier, was his son; and so, while the _Comet_ and her two consorts were steaming up the Karun, blazing with their mortars and 36-pounders at the distant pickets of Persian cavalry, a great discovery was being made on her deck, and the strands of a singular narrative were woven together, but only at such long intervals as the cautious doctor would permit, for Gillian was now--notwithstanding all the blood he had lost--in a state so low and feverish, that any excitement might kill him.

"Gillian, my boy--Gillian, my son--whose ring is this you wear, as Mrs. Hartley tells me, at your neck?" asked the Colonel.

"Dove's--Dove Gainswood, father." (How new the words seemed now to his lips!)

"Then, for her sake, I shall not curse her father," replied the old soldier; and after a time proceeded to do so in no very measured or gentle terms, recurring ever and anon, pathetically, to the secret sentiment that had first stirred his soul, when he saw Gillian in the bivouac on the plain of Shiraz.

So it seemed that the newspaper report, concerning the defeat and death of Colonel Lamond among the hill tribes, was all a canard or mistake. His party had been victorious; but he had certainly been wounded and carried off prisoner in the affair at Mora; but an old Lama priest, saved, protected, and cured him, and conveyed him to the plains, from whence he had reached Calcutta. From thence and Bombay, he had written to his brother-in-law, Gideon Gainswood, announcing his safety and homeward journey; but both letters would seem to have been miscarried; and, as at Bombay, he found "his old friend, Jamie Outram," departing with his expedition for Bushire, he could not resist having, as he said, "a farewell shy at the Persians," and thus had joined his personal staff as a volunteer, in the capacity of an extra aide-de-camp; and thereby hung a great deal more than the pious and godly Gideon Gainswood would care to see nicely woven up into a "process" before the Lords of Council and Session; and the old man gnawed his grizzled moustache, while black fury gathered in his bronzed visage, as he thought of the cruel, dark, and treacherous game that had been played to himself and his son; and where now, he thought, were all those savings of years of industry and peril, that were to have made his son the heir of their ancestral rocks and hills of Avon-na-gillian!

"I suppose much must be pardoned even in a Scotch lawyer, that would be unpardonable in a man of any other trade," said the Colonel, as he sat on the gunslide near Gillian, and poured forth his wrath, sometimes in Hindostanee, when the vocabulary of English abuse failed him; "but Gainswood is a psalm-singing scoundrel of the deepest die, and one whom, ere long, I shall most terribly unmask."

"But, father," urged Gillian, in a broken voice; "to use his own adopted phraseology--are the children to suffer for the sins of their parents? Is Dove to be considered as venial as her father?"

"Dove is a dear girl, and a genuine little brick!" exclaimed the Colonel, smiting the deck with his tulwur; "but as for her father, I must, when thinking of him, agree with Mrs. Shelly, that 'it is certainly more creditable to cultivate the earth for the sustenance of man, than to be the confidant and accomplice of his vices--which is the profession of the law.' When shall I be face to face with the sanctimonious legal Thug!"

Night came down on the Karun; the moon, no longer a crescent now, but full, round, and in all her silver beauty, came out of the blue sky; the boom of the guns and the crash of the mortars had died away, and under half steam the _Comet_ moved quietly in the fairway of that stately tribute of the Euphrates.

For the last few hours Gillian was almost voiceless, or able to speak only in tremulous and uncertain whispers; and he was sleeping heavily, while the old Colonel, sleepless, full of sad and fierce thoughts, sat yet on the gunslide and watched him, as the doctor alleged it was too close between decks to have one so feverish taken below; and from time to time, the old man stooped and gazed on him, till his eyes became blind with tears, and even while prayers gathered in his heart, the curses of deep and most just anger hovered on his lips.

Around him was the Persian shore bordering the waves of that classic river. It was a calm and lovely evening now; dusky shadows were stealing upward from the roots of the graceful date palms, and pomegranate trees, the leaves of which glittered in the moonlight, even while the last rays of sunshine lingered redly on the snow-clad mountain peaks that stood up so sharply against the deep blue of the sky beyond. The rising breeze rustled the foliage, the river went flowing downward to the Euphrates, snatching at the roots of the overhanging underwood, and watching by his newly-found son, that old man sat buried in bitter thought.

Away from the banks of the Karun, away from Shiraz, where Hafiz, the Anacreon of Persia, lies in his rose-covered grave near the garden of Jehan Numa; away from Faristan, the land of Abassides and the Attabegs, where the chinar, the dark cypress, and the pale willow grow side by side, and cast their changing shadows on the rice and brilliant poppy fields, the cotton-trees, the saffron and the hemp, the old Indian soldier's heart went home to Avon-na-gillian--the place of his hopes and his day-dreams--amid the surf-beaten isles of the West.

He saw before him a heath-clad glen, traversed by the Avon, a rough mountain stream, foaming over water-worn rocks, with tufts of vegetation sprouting in the many crevices as the burn leaped from pool to pool, its brown surface flecked by air-bells and the frequent trout. Overhead is a grey sky, against which stands a weather-stained old tower, looking down upon the distant tumbling sea, as it looked when Hacho's galleys fled from Largs in the days of old.

Old Lachlan Lamond had seen the wonders of the Taj Mahal at Agra, the marble domes of Delhi, and Seringham with its Temple of the Thousand Pillars, but he would freely have given them, all for that old battered Hebridean tower; and the glories of the _Indus_, the Jumna and Ganges, were as nothing to his heart, when compared with the old brawling burn that foamed through the lonely glen.

From his reverie he was roused by the doctor kneeling and looking anxiously at Gillian, who was an object of uncommon interest now.

"Is he in danger?" he asked, in a hoarse whisper.

"Very great."

"Will the boy die?" he asked piteously, after a painful pause.

The staff-surgeon only waved his hand, as if to impose silence or resignation, and moved away without any other response.

Then the heart of the old soldier--the heart that had never quailed amid the strife of India's bloodiest battles--died away within him, and stunned and bewildered by the discoveries and catastrophe of the day, bowing his head upon the hilt of his sword, he wept like a very woman.