CHAPTER XXII
CREED SEES A GHOST
When Bill awoke, yellow lamplight flooded the room and Daddy Dunnigan was busy about the stove, from the direction of which came a cheerful sizzling and the appetizing odor of frying meat and strong coffee.
For several minutes he lay in a delicious drowse, idly watching the old man as he hobbled deftly from stove to cupboard, and from cupboard to table.
So this was the man, he mused, of whom his mother had so often spoken when, as a little boy, he had listened with bated breath to her tales of the fighting McKims.
He remembered how her soft eyes would glow, and her lips curve with pride as she recounted the deeds of her warrior kin.
But, most of all, she loved to tell of Captain Fronte, the big, fighting, devil-may-care brother who was her childish idol; and of one, James Dunnigan, the corporal, who had followed Captain Fronte through all the wars, and to whose coolness and courage her soldier brother owed his life on more than one occasion, and whose devotion and loyalty to the name of McKim was a byword throughout the regiment, and in Kerry.
"And now," thought Bill, "that I have found him, I will never lose sight of him. He needs someone to look after him in his old age."
Over the little flat-topped stove the leathern old world-rover muttered and chuckled to himself as he prodded a fork into the browning pork-chops, shooting now and then an affectionate glance toward the bunk.
"Saints be praised!" he muttered. "Oi'd av know'd um in hiven or hell, or Hong-Kong. Captain Fronte's own silf, he is, as loike as two peas. An' the age av Captain Fronte befure he was kilt, phwin he was th' besht officer in all th' British ar-rmy—or an-ny ar-rmy.