comrades threw aside all distinction of rank, and were again the Archie
Gordon and Davie Barclay of old school-days--as real to them still as
those of the hardest battles they had fought together. In more
primitive Scotland, such relations are, or were more possible than in
countries where more divergent habits of life occasion wider social
separations; and then these were sober-minded men, who neither made
much of the shows of the world, nor were greedy after distinction,
which is the mere coffin wherein Duty-done lies buried.

When they returned to their country, both somewhat disabled, the one
retired to his inherited estate, the other to the family farm upon that
estate, where his brother had died shortly before; so that Archie was
now Davie's landlord. But no new relation would ever destroy the
friendship which school had made close, and war had welded. Almost
every week the friends met and spent the evening together--much
oftener, by and by, at Corbyknowe than at Castle Weelset. For both
married soon after their return, and their wives were of different
natures.

'My colonel has the glory,' Barclay said once, and but once, to his
sister, 'but, puir fallow, I hae the wife!' And truly the wife at the
farm had in her material enough, both moral and intellectual, for ten
ladies better than the wife at the castle.

David's wife brought him a son the first year of their marriage, and
the next year came a son to the colonel and a daughter to the sergeant.
One night, as the two fathers sat together at the farm, some twelve
hours after the birth of David's girl, they mutually promised that the
survivor would do his best for the child of the other. Before he died
the colonel would gladly have taken his boy from his wife and given him