I lay still and spoke not, as a large figure in a cloak approached the fire-place, and stooping down endeavored to light a candle at the fast expiring fire.
I had little difficulty in detecting the major even by the half-light; a muttered execration upon the candle, given with an energy that only an Irishman ever bestows upon slight matters, soon satisfied me on this head.
“May the Devil fly away with the commissary and the chandler to the forces! Ah, you’ve lit at last!”
With these words he stood up, and his eyes falling on me at the moment, he sprang a yard or two backwards, exclaiming as he did so, “The blessed Virgin be near us, what’s this?” a most energetic crossing of himself accompanying his words. My pale and haggard face, thus suddenly presented, having suggested to the worthy major the impression of a supernatural visitor, a hearty burst of laughter, which I could not resist, was my only answer; and the next moment O’Shaughnessy was wrenching my hand in a grasp like a steel vice.
“Upon my conscience, I thought it was your ghost; and if you kept quiet a little longer, I was going to promise you Christian burial, and as many Masses for your soul as my uncle the bishop could say between this and Easter. How are you, my boy? A little thin, and something paler, I think, than when you left us.”
Having assured him that fatigue and hunger were in a great measure the cause of my sickly looks, the major proceeded to place before me the débris of his day’s dinner, with a sufficiency of bottles to satisfy a mess-table, keeping up as he went a running fire of conversation.
“I’m as glad as if the Lord took the senior major, to see you here this night. With the blessing of Providence we’ll shoot Trevyllian in the morning, and any more of the heavies that like it. You are an ill-treated man, that’s what it is, and Dan O’Shaughnessy says it. Help yourself, my boy; crusty old port in that bottle as ever you touched your lips to. Power’s getting all right; it was contract powder, warranted not to kill. Bad luck to the commissaries once more! With such ammunition Sir Arthur does right to trust most to the bayonet. And how is Monsoon, the old rogue?”
“Gloriously, living in the midst of wine and olives.”
“No fear of him, the old sinner; but he is a fine fellow, after all. Charley, you are eating nothing, boy.”
“To tell you the truth, I’m far more anxious to talk with you at this moment than aught else.”