With Moore at Corunna

by G. A. Henty

"Now tell me about yourself, Terence, and your home in Ireland, and all about it."

"My home has been the regiment, Mary. My father has a few hundred acres in County Mayo, and a tumble-down house; that is to say, it was a tumble-down house when I saw it four years ago, but it had been shut up for a good many years, and I should not be surprised if it has quite tumbled down now. However, my father was always talking of going to live there when he left the army. The land is not worth much, I think. There are five hundred acres, and they let for about a hundred a year. However, my father has been in the regiment now for about eighteen years; and as I was born in barracks I have only been three or four times to Ballinagra, and then only because father took a fancy to have a look at the old house. My mother died when I was ten years old, and I ran almost wild until I got my commission last June."

"And how did you come to be a staff-officer of the English general?" she asked.

"I have had awfully good luck," Terence replied. "It happened in all sorts of ways."

"Please tell me everything," she said. "I want to know all about you."

"It is a long story, Mary."

"So much the better," she said. "I know nothing of what has passed for the last year, and I dare say I shall learn about it from your story. You don't know how happy I am feeling to be out in the sun and in the air again, and to see the country after being shut up in one room for a year. Suppose we sit down here and you tell me the whole story."

Terence accordingly related the history of his adventures since he had left England. The girl asked a great many questions, and specially insisted upon hearing his own adventures very fully.

"It is no use your keeping on saying that it is all luck," she said when he had finished. "Your colonel could not have thought that it was luck when he wrote the report about that adventure at sea, and your general could not have thought so, either, or he would not have praised you in his despatch. Then, you know, General Fane must have thought that it was quite out of the way or he would not have chosen you to be on his staff. Then afterwards the other general must have been pleased with you, or he would not have put you on his staff and sent you off on a mission to General Romana. It is quite certain that these things could not have been all luck, Terence. And anyhow, you cannot pretend that it was luck that this regiment of yours fought so well against the French, while none of the others seem to have fought at all. I suppose that you will say next that it was all luck that you got me out of the convent."

"There was a great deal of luck in it, Mary. If that cowardly bishop hadn't left Oporto secretly, after declaring that he would defend it until the last, I could never have got his ring."