"No matter. There's always room intil you're laid on your back for the last time. An' you're that thin, 't would take two of you to make a shadow."
She set out cold chicken, and boiled bacon, and bread that would tempt one on a fast day, with a great loaf of cake, and Bernard and Barbe sat down. Sandy brought out the whiskey bottle. No one thought of objecting in those days.
"Oh, where's the colleen?" and Norah stepped to the door.
"Has she gone back home? She takes it a little strange," said Barbe. "She can't remember well. But she'll come to it presently." Then Barbe raised her eyes and met her husband's, that were so full of adoration; she blushed like a girl.
"And the war is over," declared Norah. "Did they all have leave to go home?"
"Oh, no. We can't say it's over, though the thought is there'll be no more hard fighting. And we've some good friends on the other side to argue the case for us."
"No, no," snorted Sandy. "It's not over by a long shot. An' then they'll get to fightin' atween theirselves, and split here an' there. Weel, Mr. Captain, are we to have a King or a great Emperor, like him of France, with a court an' all that?"
Bernard laughed. "We'll have neither. We've gotten rid of kings for all time."
"Don't do your skreeking until you're well out o' the woods. But I hope you'll be wise enough next time to let t'other fellow take his chance. An' it beats me to think a great Lord an' a great soldier, too, should be put about, and captured by a crowd of ignoramuses without training."
"Oh, you learn a good deal in five or six years," said the son good-naturedly. "There have been the Indians and the French."