"Well, according to the poor devil's own story, the face just kept on looking at him and he had another shot at it, and 'My God Almighty,' he said to O'Reilly, 'it was there always!' While he was saying that to O'Reilly he began to chuck another fit, and apparently went on chucking them till he died a couple of hours ago."
"One result of it is," said another man, "that they couldn't get a man to go on sentry there alone last night. I expect we shall have to double the sentries there every night as long as we're here."
"Silly asses!" remarked Tomkinson, but he said it without conviction.
After breakfast we went out to look at the wall by the magazine. It was about eleven feet high, with a coped top, and they told me there was a deep and wide dry ditch on the outside. A ladder was brought, and we examined the angle of the wall at which Harris said the face had appeared. He had made a beautiful shot, one of his bullets having flicked a piece off the ridge of the coping exactly at the corner.
"It's not the kind of shot a man would make if he had been drinking," said Moffat, regretfully abandoning his first simple hypothesis; "he must have been mad."
"I wish I could find out who his people are," said Brownlow, the adjutant, who had joined us; "they found in his box a letter to him from his mother, but we can't make out the name of the place. By Jove, Yeates, you're an Irishman, perhaps you can help us."
He handed me a letter in a dirty envelope. There was no address given, the contents were very short, and I may be forgiven if I transcribe them:—
"My dear Son, I hope you are well as this leaves me at present, thanks be to God for it. I am very much unaisy about the cow. She swelled up this morning, she ran in and was frauding and I did not do but to run up for torn sweeney in the minute. We are thinking it is too much lairels or an eirub she took. I do not know what I will do with her. God help one that's alone with himself I had not a days luck since ye went away. I am thinkin' them that wants ye is tired lookin' for ye. And so I remain,
"YOUR FOND MOTHER."
"Well, you don't get much of a lead from the cow, do you? And what the deuce is an eirub?" said Brownlow.