"The where?"
"Skoonder Bag, forninst the walls the Lucknow—to the left over, ye understand."
"I'm ashamed to say I don't," I answered, feeling that I was on the track of a yarn.
He looked at me pityingly.
"Ye've heard av Sir Colin?" He was not going to take anything for granted.
I replied hastily: "Sir Colin Campbell, of course."
"Well, we was followin' Sir Colin up to the belagured city when we run into the Skoonder Bag—big stone walls and windys high up, and full av min, like a jail, or a big disthillery."
Then, like a dream from the past, it came to me that he was talking of that bloody fight about and in the "Secunderabogh," where, through a breach two feet square, the men of the Ninety-third, man by man, forced their way in the face of a thousand Sepoys, mad for blood and, with their bayonets, piled high in gory heaps the bodies of their black foes, crying with every thrust, in voices hoarse with rage and dust, "Cawnpore! Cawnpore!" That tale Ould Michael would never tell till his cups had carried him far beyond the stage of dignity and reserve.
After he had helped me to picket my ponies and pitch my tent, he led me by a little gate through his garden to the side door of the cabin.