They took Peter from the wreckage
with scarcely a scar except his twisted leg.
Death had smoothed out some of the age in him, and had left his face much
as I remembered it long ago in the Mashonaland hills. In his pocket was his old battered Pilgrim’s Progress. It lies before me as I write, as beside it,
for I was his only legatee – the little case which came to him weeks later,
containing the highest honour that can be bestowed upon a soldier of Britain.
It was from
the Pilgrim’s Progress that I read
next morning, when in the lee of an apple orchard Mary and Blenkiron and I
stood in the soft spring rain beside his grave.
And what I read was the tale of the end, not of Mr Standfast who he had
singled out for his counterpart, but of Mr Valiant-for-Truth whom he had not
hoped to emulate. I set down the words
as a salute and a farewell:
“Then said he, ‘I am going to my Father’s;
and though with great difficulty I am got hither, yet now I do not repent me of
all the trouble I have been at to arrive where I am. My sword I give to him
that shall succeed me in my pilgrimage, and my courage and skill to him that
can get it. My marks and scars I carry
with me, to be a witness for me that I have fought His battles who will now be
my rewarder.’
“So he passed over, and all the
trumpets sounded for him on the other side.”
John Buchan, Mr Standfast (Chapter 54). London, Hodder & Stoughton (1919)
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