I said nothing, for I was thinking with agony about poor Aunt Jenny, who was now coming up to me, and the captain laughed as he saw her pain-wrung countenance.
“Good-bye, Val, my boy,” said my father slowly; “and bear up like a man.”
That was all, and he turned away.
The next moment Bob was clinging to my arm.
“O Val! O Val! O Val!” he cried in a choking voice, and then he dropped back, poor boy, for he could say no more.
“Be sharp there and get it done, me bhoy,” said the captain. “Ye can say good-bye to the owld woman; but lave the cat and the dogs till ye come back.”
“Are you going to march at once?” said my father as Aunt Jenny came to my side, and I gripped my saddle and bent down for her to put her arms round my neck.
“Sor, ye see that I am,” said the captain.
“But you and your men will take something to eat and drink?”
“Something to send them asleep?” said the captain suspiciously. “I’m thinkin’ they can last till we get back to Drak Pass, where there’s a shtore. I’m obleeged to ye all the same.—There, that’ll do, owld lady. I’ll make a man of the bhoy, and send him back safe and sound, if some of the raw recruits of the brutal Saxons don’t shoot him.”