“Speak to her,” she said to her husband; “she is a stranger, and forlorn.”
“Where are you bound for, my good woman?” asked the colonel; “have you come far?”
The woman set down the child, a well-grown boy, who looked about two years old, and with a long sigh of weariness replied—
“I’ve come from England, sir, and I am on my way to the 30th Light Dragoons to find my husband.”
“That little chap is quite too heavy for you to carry. What is your name, young one?”
The urchin sprang to “attention,” saluted with rigid accuracy, and gravely replied—
“Mick Tullivan, Tir!”
“Good God!” whispered the colonel’s wife; “it’s Sullivan’s widow—it’s ‘the Crayture’ herself. Gallop to barracks for a gharry, and while you are gone, I will tell her. God pity her!”
And the kind lady was out of the saddle, and had the boy in her arms, and her tears were raining on his face, as the colonel rode away on his errand.
When the gharry arrived “the Crayture” was sitting by the wayside, the skirt of her dress drawn over her face, her head on the shoulder of the colonel’s wife, her boy gripped tight in her arms.