"'Another job for me?' he asked.
"'Not a special one,' I said. 'I am going across again, but there is no occasion for you to make a special trip, and indeed my employer forgot to give me an order upon you. I should have gone back, if I had remembered it, but I thought you would not mind giving me a passage the next time you sailed across.'
"As the man remembered that we had made ourselves pleasant on board, he agreed at once to take me, next time the boat should be going. I laid out a pound in getting a coat more suitable for travelling in France than the peasant's smock. Then I took a lodging in a small inn.
"Three days later, a messenger came down with an order for the man to take him across at once, and as the captain charged me nothing for my passage, I had enough left to pay for my place in a diligence, and on arriving in Paris duly reported myself, at the barracks, as having returned.
"My first enquiry, of course, was about you and O'Sullivan. I found that he had never been heard of, but that you had lost a hand, and had been promoted to a captaincy; had been very ill, and had gone to the south of France on sick leave.
"After I heard that, I remained for two or three months at the depot, and then learned that the Duke of Berwick had just arrived from Dauphiny. I at once went to see him. He told me he could not put me on his staff again, as his numbers were complete, but would give me a letter to the Duke of Orleans, asking him to employ me in that capacity. When I got down here, I found that the duke had left, and that the Marshal de Bay was in command.
"On reading Berwick's letter, he at once appointed me one of his aides-de-camp. You were away, I found to my great disappointment, and I was sent off into Catalonia, with orders for four battalions to be sent at once to Badajos. I arrived here yesterday, in time for the shindy."
"Fortunately, O'Neil, I do not think there is much fear of another Oudenarde. There is no royal duke here, to interfere with our general; and the Portuguese are not to be compared with the Hanoverians, and Dutch, and the other allies that fought against us there."
"I hear, from the others, that you have been occupied in reconnoitring the country."
"Yes, and I was captured, but was fortunately able to give them the slip."