In an earlier article I have tried to describe the “Old Sergeant” of my native parish. In a neighbouring glen which formed another parish of our local presbytery, there dwelt during my boyhood another veteran of the grand old type, that stout ex-warrior, Sergeant Davie Russell. I lived a good deal from time to time with the minister’s family of the parish in which the sergeant dwelt, and to the elderhood of which it was his pride to belong; and the manse boys of Glenvorlich used often to take me with them to visit the still stalwart veteran in his comfortable cottage under the shadow of the great mountain with the twin wens on its summit. The Sabbath evening was the time when he was best pleased to see us; and for the sake of the interesting stories which were sure to follow, we were content to endure a cross-examination in the toughest problems of the Shorter Catechism, and listen to a dissertation on the faulty tactics of Amasa, the captain of the host of Absalom, who, the sergeant contended, would not have suffered so severe a defeat if he had posted his troops out in the open to encounter the onslaught of Joab instead of taking up a position in the heart of the wood of Ephraim. On Sundays Sergeant Davie Russell always wore his pensioner’s blue coat with the red facings, the Waterloo Medal hanging by the faded crimson ribbon on its left breast, and the empty sleeve tacked to the right lapel of it. It was in the memorable battle which ended Napoleon’s career that he had lost his right arm, and ever since he had enjoyed his sergeant’s pension, with a trifle extra for his wound. Forty years of peace-time had no whit dulled his recollection of the old fighting days, and we boys hung on the old soldier’s lips as he told us stories of his battles. Wellington was his hero. “His soul was as a sword, to leap at his accustomed leader’s word”; to finish the quotation, “he knew no other lord.”

He used to talk to us of the young general’s calm face at Assaye, when he ordered forward the seventy-fourth regiment—the sergeant’s old corps—through the hurricane of Mahratta cannon fire to retrieve the mischief of the pickets’ reckless advance; and how, when the Mahratta batteries had been captured with a rush, the keen tulwars of the swarthy horsemen were slashing into the disordered ranks, until in the nick of time the eagle-eyed chief sped Maxwell’s light dragoons to the relief. Then he would speak of Wellington on the Busaco ridge; how, just as Loison’s supple Frenchmen had climbed the steep and rugged slope, and were re-forming on the edge of the upland, he gave the word to the Scottish regiment, which advanced at the double, halted, and poured in a volley, and then, bringing the bayonets down to the charge, literally pitchforked the Frenchmen headlong down the abrupt declivity. I think we used to like best to hear the sergeant tell of the desperate fighting in the storming of Peninsular fortresses besieged and taken by Wellington; of “the deadly breach in Badajos’s walls,” when the stormers leaped down into the ditch and struggled up the steep face of the battered masonry, only to find themselves confronted by the grim tiers of sword-blades projecting from massive beams, behind which stood drawn up the staunch defenders, sweeping the ascent with their musketry fire; of the fierce storm of Ciudad Rodrigo, where George Napier lay on the slope of the breach, struck down by the wound that shattered his arm, and still as he lay, waving his sword with his sound arm, and cheering on those whom his fall had for the moment caused to falter; of that strange quarter of an hour on the breach of Saint Sebastian, when the stormers, beaten back by the fire and steel of the serried defenders, lay down by order on the face of the breach, while Graham’s artillery played over them on the French masses defending the crown of it, the aim so fine that one of the leading men of the prostrate stormers, rashly raising his arm, had his hand carried away by a cannon-ball.

Waterloo, too, was a theme on which we used to incite the old sergeant to enlarge; and I delight to remember as it were yesterday how the veteran’s cheek would flush as he told of Wellington slowly riding along the line before the battle began, amid the cheering of the troops as he passed, cool and calm, as had been ever his wont in the old Peninsular days, with the high-souled confidence of success on the face of the man who had never known what it was to lose a battle. Then he would go on to tell of the advance of the massive French column up the slope on the left of La Haye Sainte, its broad front fair against Picton’s weak division; how that warlike chief sat on his charger in front of the Cameron Highlanders, to which regiment the sergeant then belonged, and vehemently damned as wretched cowards the Dutch-Belgian runaways, who fled through the firm British line; how, when he saw that the right moment had come, he shouted, “A volley, and then charge!” and how, at the word, the volley sped, and the Highlanders, springing through and over the ragged hedge, struck the head of the French mass with the cold steel. It was in the hand-to-hand fight that followed, the sergeant would recount with a jerk and twitch of his stump, that he lost his arm and gained his wound-pension; and as two comrades helped him to the rear when the French were routed, he saw Picton lying dead with a bullet-hole in his forehead.

Sergeant Russell’s family consisted of twin sons, who, when I knew them, were already grown men. From childhood both had ardently looked forward to follow in their father’s footsteps, and when in 1846 the country was ringing with the news of the victories of the first Sikh war—when “Moodkee,” “Ferozeshah,” and “Sobraon” were in every one’s mouth—the brothers, then of fit age to take service, had been frantic to accept the Queen’s shilling and take a share in the stirring doings. But they were entreated of their father to stay at home with him while he lived, for he was an old man and could not long survive. Filial affection constraining the lads, they reluctantly consented, and betook themselves to civilian avocations. John Russell, the elder twin, a taciturn, resolute man of strong character, became a stone mason; Aleck, the younger brother, of a lighter and less stable nature, took to the trade of a carpenter. Both were men of blameless life, and the mothers of the parish held up their mutual love to the admiration and imitation of their offspring.

But a shadow was to come between the brothers. They both fell in love, and, as ill fortune would have it, they both fell in love with the same girl. I remember her well, a pretty, airy creature, the daughter of the petty local shopkeeper up in the throat of the glen. In her reckless waywardness she played the brothers off against each other, and a bitter jealousy supplanted the old loyal affection. They did not quarrel outright, and both still lived under their father’s roof; but the elder brother glowered sullenly at the younger, and the younger would shoot galling jibes at his silent senior. The old sergeant noticed the alienation, and took it so to heart that he fell ill, and in a few days a long straggling procession came winding down the brae to the little graveyard by the burnside, and the old soldier of the Peninsula and Waterloo was lowered into his quiet grave under the willow trees.

The brothers walked home together, drawn together again by their loss. That same evening a long silence was broken abruptly by the elder brother.

“See here, Aleck, it can never mair be wi’ you an’ me as it used to be. If ye win that lassie, I s’all hae murder in my heart against you; if I win her, ye’ll nourish against me the hate o’ hell. Suppose we agree tae lay aside thoughts o’ her, heave awa’ thae trowels an’ plummets an’ planes an’ augers, an’ gae to the wars as the auld man did afore us. That’s the trade for us, lad; Brown Bess an’ the bayonet afore gimlets an’ gavels!”

The brothers shook hands on the compact, and resolved to ’list without delay. They were stirring times, those early months of 1849, when news was coming home of the outbreak of the second Sikh war, and we were reading of the glorious death of Cureton, “the fair-haired boy of the Peninsula”; of young Herbert Edwardes’ ready prowess—a junior lieutenant, yet in command of an army with which he had won victories and was beleaguering Mooltan; of William Havelock’s wild gallop to his death across the Ramnuggur sands, and of stout old Thackwell’s stiff combat at Sadoolapore. The old sergeant had not been buried a week when his sons were tramping over the hills to Aberdeen, where was the nearest recruiting station, and presently we heard that both had enlisted in the same regiment, a corps which was in sore need of recruits, for it had suffered terrible losses in the desperate struggle of Chillianwallah. That news would have been the last tidings of the brothers that ever reached the highland glen, but for one letter from John to the minister of the parish, written about the end of 1850. He was doing well in the regiment, being already a full corporal; but now that there was peace and idleness, Aleck had grown restless and had volunteered into another regiment, since when he had not heard of him. No word more came of, or from, either of the brothers, and as the years passed they fell out of memory.

Many years later I paid my first visit to India. The seven years of peace, after Chillianwallah and Goojerat and the annexation of the Punjaub, had been followed by the ghastly period of the great Mutiny, and now the blood of the Mutiny had been long dry. On the maidan of Cawnpore one could scarce discern the traces of the poor earthworks that had constituted Wheeler’s intrenchment, and Marochetti’s marble angel spread pitying wings over the well which had been filled to its top with our slaughtered ladies and their children. The shot-wrecked Residency of Lucknow stood, and still stands, in the condition the relieved garrison left it, a monument of that garrison’s heroic constancy; but otherwise the stains of battle had been wiped from the beautiful capital of Oude, and gardens bloomed where the dead had lain thick. The subalterns of Chillianwallah and Goojerat were general officers now—those whom the climate and the Mutiny had spared—and the talk in the clubs and at the mess-tables was no longer of old Gough and his “could steel,” and of the “Flying General” chasing the fugitives of Goojerat into the Khyber Pass, but of Clyde and Hugh Rose and William Peel and John Nicholson.

In the course of my travels I was the guest for a week of a general officer who was kind enough to recount to me many reminiscences of his long period of soldiering in India. One of those narratives had for me a special pathetic interest, and perhaps the emotion may be in a measure shared in by the reader who shall have already accompanied me thus far. I wrote down the story the same night it was told me, when the old soldier’s words were fresh in my memory.

“In the early ‘fifties,” said the general, “our European troops serving in India were not in good case. In those days they were constantly quartered in the plains, the barracks were dismal, pestilential, thatched sheds, there were none of the comforts the soldier now enjoys, and in the dismal ennui his only resources were his canteen and the bazaar. The revulsion from the stir and variety of marching and fighting, superinduced widespread discontent, and in many instances depression intensified into actual despair. Quite an epidemic of suicide set in, and was but partially cured by Sir Charles Napier’s very Irish expedient of sentencing a man to be shot who had unsuccessfully attempted to take his own life. At this time transportation to West Australia was the usual punishment in the army for the military crime of grave insubordination. So low had sunk the morale of too many of the rank and file, and so ardent was the desire for change of any kind, no matter what or where, that men deliberately laid themselves out to earn the punishment of transportation. This was not a difficult task. The soldier had only to make a blow at his superior officer—and all above him from a lance-corporal to the colonel were his superior officers—or even to throw a cap or a glove at him, to have himself charged with the offence of mutinous conduct. The pro forma court-martial sat; the soldier pleaded guilty; the sentence of transportation was duly ‘approved and confirmed,’ and presently the man was blithely on his voyage to join a chain gang at Perth or Freemantle.

“This state of things was too injurious to the service to be allowed a long continuance. The Commander-in-Chief promulgated a trenchant order, denouncing in strong terms the utter subversion of discipline that seemed impending, and sternly intimating that death, and not transportation any more, should in future be the unfailing penalty for the crime of using or offering violence to a superior officer. The order was read aloud at the head of every regiment in India, but its purport did not seriously impress the troops. The men were fain to regard it in the light of what the Germans call a stroke on the water, and they did not believe that it would be actually put in force. They did not know the nature of Sir Charles Napier.

“It was in my own regiment, then quartered in Meerut, that the first offence was committed after the promulgation of the order. A young private named Creed, who had joined us in India from another regiment, one morning casually met on the parade-ground a young officer on the staff of the General, and without a word threw his cap in the face of the aide-de-camp. He was made a prisoner, and when brought before the colonel, frankly owned that he had no ill-feeling against the officer, whom, indeed, he did not know that he had ever seen before, and his simple explanation of his conduct was that he had acted on ‘a sudden impulse.’ It was proved, however, that the night before the assault he had been heard to say in the canteen that he meant to ‘qualify for West Australia’ within the next twenty-four hours. The case was reported to the Commander-in-Chief, who directed that the prisoner should be tried by a general court-martial, the attention of which he called to his recent orders. The sentence of the court was ‘death,’ which his Excellency approved and confirmed. It was read to the prisoner by the colonel, in front of the regiment, and he was informed that the sentence would be carried into execution on the morning of the next day but one.

“The night before the morning fixed for the execution there reported himself to me as having joined, a non-commissioned officer whose arrival I had been expecting for some days. Wishing to remain in India he had volunteered to us from a regiment which had been quartered at Agra, and which had been ordered to return to England. He was scarcely a prepossessing-looking man, but looked every inch a good soldier, and his face indicated self-command and dauntless resolution. Standing composedly at attention, he handed me the documents connected with his transfer and a private note from the adjutant of the regiment he had quitted. It ran thus—

“‘Sergeant Russell will hand you this note. We lose him with great regret; he will do you credit. I never have known a better non-commissioned officer. Duty to its last tittle is the man’s watchword and what he lives for. I verily believe were he detailed to the duty of shooting his own brother, he would perform the service without a word of remonstrance. I own that I grudge him to you.’ “I told the newcomer that his late adjutant had given him a high character, and that I was glad to have in the regiment a man so well recommended. He saluted silently; I detailed him to a company and told him he might go. But as he was leaving the orderly room a thought struck me and I recalled him. I knew how strong throughout the regiment was the sentiment in favour of the poor fellow who was waiting his doom; and it occurred to me that this new sergeant, who in the nature of things could not be a warm sharer in this sentiment, was a fitting man to detail to the command of the firing party. I briefly explained to him the circumstances, and then told him to what duty I purposed assigning him. ‘Very well, sir,’ was his calm remark; ‘it is an unpleasant duty, certainly, but I can understand the reason why you put it on me.’ Then, telling him to apply to the regimental sergeant-major for details, I let him go.

“I need not ask you whether you have ever seen a military execution; it is the most solemn and fortunately the rarest of all our military spectacles. It was not yet daylight when all the troops of the garrison, both European and native, were on march to the great parade-ground. The regiments, as they arrived, wheeled into position, the whole forming three sides of a vast square, the dressed ranks facing inwards. The dead silence was presently broken by the roll of the drum, announcing the approach of the procession escorting the doomed man, and a moment later the head of it rounded the flank of one of the faces of the great hollow square. In effect the yet living soldier was marching in his own funeral procession, his step keeping time to the swell and cadence of his own dirge. At the head of the sombre cortÈge was borne the empty coffin of the man whose sands of life were running out; there followed in slow march, with arms reversed, the execution party of twelve privates and a corporal, under the command of Sergeant Russell; and then a full military band, from whose instruments there pealed and wailed alternately the Dead March in Saul. There was a little interval of space, and then, alone save for the Presbyterian chaplain walking beside him in his Geneva gown, and praying in low, earnest accents, marched with firm step the condemned man, his face calm, but whiter than the white cap on his head. Close behind marched, with fixed bayonets, a corporal and a file of men of the quarter-guard. Thus was constituted what, save for the central figure of it, who still lived and moved and had his being, and for the empty coffin, was in every attribute a funeral procession.

“The parade came to the ‘shoulder’ as the little column, wheeling to its right after clearing the flank by which it had entered the square, began its slow, solemn progress along the front of the left face. I felt the throbbing strains of the Dead March becoming actual torture to me long before the procession, moving in its measured march along the successive faces, had reached the front of the centre, where stood the regiment to which the prisoner and myself belonged. ‘Steady, men!’ shouted the colonel hoarsely, as he felt rather than heard or saw the involuntary shiver that ran along the ranks as the firm, pale face slowly passed. With an upward glance at the chief, the poor fellow straightened himself and set his shoulders more square, as if he took his officer’s word of command to include him also. His chum broke into noisy weeping, and a young officer swooned, but the doomed man strode steadily on, without the quiver of a muscle of his set face.

“At length the long, cruel progress was completed, and the head of the procession drew off to the centre of the unoccupied fourth face of the square; the coffin-bearers laid down their burden there and retired, and Sergeant Russell drew up his firing party into two ranks fronting toward the coffin, at a distance of about thirty paces. The band ceased its sombre music and wheeled aside. The prisoner, accompanied still by the clergyman, marched steadily up to his coffin, on which the two knelt down.

“The clergyman’s ministrations were almost immediately interrupted. At a signal from the general the judge-advocate rode out from the staff, and, moving forward to the flank of the firing party, read in sonorous tones the warrant for the condemned soldier’s execution. Universal admiration and compassion were stirred by the soldierly bearing of the man as he listened to the official authorisation of his doom. As the judge-advocate approached he had risen from the kneeling position, doffed his cap, and sprung smartly to ‘attention,’ retaining that attitude until the end, when he saluted respectfully and knelt down again as the minister rejoined him. There was a short interval of prayer; then the judge-advocate beckoned to the chaplain to retire, and the soldier remained alone, kneeling on his coffin-lid there, face to face with imminent death in the midst of the strained and painful silence.

“Marching at the head of the procession, the members of the firing party had no opportunity of seeing their unfortunate comrade until he had reached his coffin and was kneeling in front of where Sergeant Russell had drawn up the party of which he had the command. I should tell you that the sergeant of an execution party carries a loaded pistol, with which it is his stern duty to fulfil the accomplishment of the sentence if the volley of his command shall not have been promptly fatal. The corporal of the party told me afterward that after it had taken position Sergeant Russell spent some time in examining their muskets, and that the prisoner had for some little time been kneeling on his coffin before the sergeant looked at him. As he gazed he suddenly started, became deadly pale, muttered more than once, ‘My God, my God,’ and was for several minutes visibly perturbed; but later, although still ghastly pale and having a strange ‘raised’ expression, he pulled himself together and was alert in his duty. What I myself saw and heard was, that after the parson had withdrawn, and Sergeant Russell approached the prisoner to fulfil the duty of blindfolding and pinioning him, the latter gave a great start and, throwing up his arms, uttered a loud exclamation.

“The feeling in the regiment, as I have told you, was exceedingly bitter against the sentence, and there happened just what I had apprehended. In the dead silence Sergeant Russell’s deliberate order, ‘Make ready!’ ‘Present!’ ‘Fire!’ rang out like the knell of fate. The volley sped; the light smoke drifted aside; and lo! the prisoner still knelt scatheless on his coffin.

“There was a brief pause, and then Sergeant Russell, with his face bleached to a ghastly pallor, but set and resolute, his step firm, strode up to the kneeling blindfolded man, pistol in hand, and—did his duty. But he did not return to the party he commanded. No, he remained standing over the prostrate figure, and was deliberately reloading the pistol.

“‘What the devil is the man doing?’ cried the general testily.

“‘Probably, sir,’ answered the assistant adjutant-general, ‘he has not fully accomplished his duty. He seems a man of exceptional nerve!’

“‘Well,’ said the general, ‘I wish he’d be sharp about it!’ “Sergeant Russell did not detain the chief unreasonably long. Having reloaded it, he put the pistol to his temple, drew trigger, and fell dead across his brother’s body.

“For that they were brothers,” continued the general after a pause, “the papers found in their effects proved conclusively. The younger one, Alexander, had joined us in a false name. By the way, they were countrymen of your own—natives of Glenvorlich in Banffshire.”