But the orderly remained unmoved. Were his hands free at the moment, Herbert would have unquestionably run him through for presuming to disobey his orders, such was the irritated state of his feelings. But he could not leave the shrinking, still unconscious being that clung to him for support. Stamping his foot in a rage, he demanded what he wanted, or why he regained there?
"Pris'ner, sir," was the sergeant's laconic reply, as he mechanically touched his hat.
"What prisoner?"
"The woman, sir."
"Heavens and earth! do you mean to drive me mad, man?" and the soldier recoiled for an instant at the voice and look of his officer.
"Can't help it, sir—gen'ral's orders. Woman came to the camp three times, sir—supposed to be a spy, and ordered to be hanged."
"Hanged!" In a second his burthen was laid on the camp-bed, and the sergeant laid prostrate by a blow that would have almost felled an ox.
The guard now interposed; and from them he learned that the party in question had been several times seen to leave the city, in defiance of Sir Hardress Waller's orders. Twice already she had been flogged back, but she came out again, that day, at noon, and was by the general's orders sentenced to execution. The soldier added that an old rebel [Footnote 39] calling himself her father, when he heard of the sentence, offered himself in her stead; but Sir Hardress ordered him to be instantly flogged back. "She was to have been hanged," he continued, "at sunset, but she broke loose from them and ran toward his tent as he had seen."
[Footnote 39: A Fact. Vide "Ferrar's History of Limerick," page 64. ]
"Touch not a hair of her head, on your peril," exclaimed Herbert as the [{245}] corporal concluded, and kissing the pallid lips of his wife, he rushed out of the tent to seek the general, just as returning consciousness revealed to Eily the name of her deliverer.