"Why, Terence," broke in the Lieutenant, "you shouldn't be so hard upon General Patterson; he's of an Irish family."
"The Gineral an Irishman! Niver! Of an Irish family! must have been hundreds of years back, and the bluid spoiled long before it got into his veins, by bad whiskey or something worse. It takes the raal potheen, that smacks of the smoke of the still, to keep up the bluid of an Irishman. Rot-gut would ruin St. Patrick himself if he were alive and could be got to taste it. Gineral Patterson an Irishman! no, sir; or there would have been bluidy noses at Bunker's Hill or Winchester, and that would have saved some at Bull Run."
"On with your story, Terence," said the crowd.
"Beggin' your pardon, there's no story about it,—the blissid truth, ivery word of it.
"Will, you see, while our ould Colonel, under the Gineral's orders, had me guarding a pratie patch—"
"Set an Irishman to guard a potato patch!" laughed the Second Lieutenant.
"It wasn't much use," said Terence, smiling, "for they disappeared the first night, and the slim college student that was Sergeant of that relief was put under guard for telling the officer of the guard, next morning, that there had been a heavy dew that night, and it evaporated so fast that it took the praties along. We lived on praties next day, but the poor Sergeant had to foot the bill.
"Well, as I was going on to say, while I was helping guard a pratie patch, an ice-house, corn-crib, smoke-house, and other such things that were near
our camp ground, and that belonged to a Rebel Colonel under Johnston;—Johnston himself was staling away with all his army to help fight the battle of Bull Run. Patrick—pace to his sowl—was in that battle and fought like a tiger, barrin' that he would have done better, as his Captain tould me, if he hadn't forgot the balls in his cartridge-box, and took to his musket like a shelaleh all day long. Patrick's regiment belonged to a Brigade that was ordered to keep Johnston in check, and there stood Patrick in line, like a true lad as he was, clubbing back the Butternuts, striking them right and left—maybe the fellows belonged to this same Rebel Colonel's regiment—until a round shot struck him full in the breast, knocking the heart out of as true an Irishman as iver lived, and killing dead the flower of the McCarthys.
"I didn't know it till we got to Baltimore, and thin whin I riflicted how the poor boy marched up to fight the bluidy Rebels, and how they killed him, my own brother, while I—I, who would have given my right hand to save him,—yis," said Terence, rising, and tears streaming from his eyes, "would have waded through fire and bluid to help the darlin', the pride of his mother,—I was guarding a Rebel Colonel's property, whin the whole of us, if we had fought Johnston, as we ought to have done, might have kept him back and saved our army, and that would have saved me my brother. And thin whin I remimbered how thick the Gineral was with the Rebel gentry, and how fine ladies with the divil in their eyes bowed to him in Charlestown, and spit at and cocked up their noses at us soldiers, while their husbands were off, maybe, murthering my brother; and how the Gineral, proud as a paycock on his prancing chestnut sorrel,