“There’s a darned sight o’ truth in what you say,” he assented, seriously, after a pause.
The tone of the reply took the English officer by surprise. He looked up with more interest, and the expression of cold sulkiness faded from his face. “You got off with great luck,” he said. “If they had many more like you, perhaps they might do something worth while. You’re an Irish-American, I fancy? And you have seen military service?”
The O’Mahony answered both questions with an affirmative nod.
“Then I’m astonished,” the officer went on, “that you and men like you, who know what war is really like, should come over here, and spend your money and risk your lives and liberty, without the hope of doing anything more than cause us a certain amount of bother. As a soldier, you must know that you have no earthly chance of success. The odds are ten thousand to one against you.”
The O’Mahony’s eyes permitted themselves a momentary twinkle. “Well, now, mister,” he said, carelessly; “I dunno so much about that. Take you an’ me, now, f’r instance, jest as we stand: I don’t reckon that bettin’ men ’u’d precisely tumble over one another in the rush to put their money on you. Maybe I’m no judge, but that’s the way it looks to me. What do you think yourself, now—honest Injun?”
The Englishman was not responsive to this light view of the situation. He frowned again, and pettishly shrugged his shoulders.
“Of course, I did not refer to that!” he said. “My misadventure is ridiculous and—ah—personally inconvenient—but it—ah—isn’t war. You take nothing by it.”
“Oh, yes—I’ve taken a good deal—too much, in fact,” said The O’Mahony, going off into a brown study over the burden of his acquisitions which his words conjured up. He paced up and down beside his prisoner for a minute or two. Then he halted, and turned to him for counsel.
“What do you think, yourself, would be the best thing for me to do with you, now’t I’ve got you?” he asked.
“Oh—really!—really, I must decline to advise with you upon the subject,” the other replied, frostily.