Colonel O’Halloran preserved an ominous tranquillity; and Hackett, mistaking the cause, became more insolent as his speech proceeded without interruption. But the storm burst at last.
“Villain!” said my father in a voice which induced the chief butler to recede some paces backwards,—“dare you, a menial, prescribe to me, your master, who shall be received and who rejected? Tell me that a comrade shall be turned from my door, and recommend that the weary soldier be ejected from the house of him under whom he has fought and bled! Off—we part to-morrow. The roof of Knockloftie shall never cover for a second night a sneaking scoundrel who has neither welcome for a brave man nor pity for a helpless woman;—show in the sergeant!”
Without venturing to reply, Hackett shrank from the presence of his angry master; and in another minute sergeant Philip Brady made his military salaam, and, with a capacious bundle in his arms, stood full front before his former commander.
“Phil!” said the Colonel, as he examined the soldier’s outer man, “if I judge rightly, thou like myself art but lightly indebted to the Low Countries and my father held up an empty sleeve.
“Feaks! and ye may say that, Colonel,” replied the sergeant. “All that I have gained in Holland—barrin the stripes—is a slashed cheek, a threadbare jacket, and a fine child.”
“Your kit, however, seems extensive, Phil; that which you carry looks to be a well-filled bundle.”
“It’s only the child, your honor; the night was cold, the mother wake, so I wrapped the baby in this ould coat, and for its father’s sake kept it, the cratur, as snug as could be.”
“It’s not your own, then?”
“Divil a wife or child has Philip Brady,” returned the honest sergeant. “Ye may remember corporal O’Toole,—he was one of the finest men in the grenadiers, when your honor had the company.”
“Perfectly; a better or braver soldier was not in the regiment. What became of him?”