“He died at sea, God rest his sowl! on the second day after we left Ostend. He was badly wounded when put on board, poor fellow! and we were all, men and women, bundled into the transport like so many hounds, short of water and provisions, and in the hurry they forgot the surgeon too. Well, his wound mortified: ‘I’m oft, Phil;’ says he; ‘you’ll not forget the poor wife, for my sake, and may God look down upon the orphan! Give me your hand upon it, Phil,’ says he, and he squeezed mine with all his feeble strength. When I came down again, his wife was hanging over the dead body. They coaxed her away to see the child, and when she returned to have some comfort in crying over the corpse, it was already overboard with two others, who had dropped off the hooks that evening. From that hour Toole’s wife (we called him Toole for shortness) has pined away, and the life was barely in her when your honor, may God reward ye! let us in.”
“‘Why were you so late upon the road?” inquired the Colonel; “in the present state of things soldiers are no favourites, and the chances are considerable, had you proceeded farther, that you would have been waylaid and abused.”
“Feaks! and I believe your honor. We were delayed partly by accident, and partly through design. Our car broke down, the horse lost a shoe, and the rest of the party pushed forward, laving us at a forge to get the cart mended, and the baste shod. The smith—divil’s luck to him, the ruffin!—kept us three hours, I think on purpose, and then they directed us astray. So when I found the night falling, and the poor woman all but dead, as I heard there was a gentleman’s not far off, I heads the party here on chance, little dreaming, the Lord knows, that I had the luck of thousands and was coming to my ould Colonel’s, and no other.”
My father was a man of prompt action and few words. The bell was rung, the soldiers sent to the kitchen to refresh themselves, the child committed to the care of a female domestic, and carried to the apartment whither its dying mother had been previously removed. There, my mother and the woman-kind of the establishment used every means which simple skill suggested; but already the decree had gone forth, and within an hour after the arrival of the party the crisis came, the widow of the dead soldier was at rest, and her babe an orphan.
“The struggle was brief,” said the priest, as he re-entered the room, from which he had been so hastily summoned
‘By a dying woman to pray.’
May God receive her in mercy! She went off so gently, that though we were all about the bed, no one could tell the moment when she departed. My lady is crying over her as if she were a sister, and the baby sleeping soundly in Sibby Connor’s arms, as if it were still resting on that bosom which had been designed by God to be its pillow and support.”
My father, as was his wont when any thing particularly excited him, sprang from his chair, and strode thrice across the chamber.—“Tell me not,” he exclaimed, “that there is not an especial providence over every thing—ay, from the sparrow to the soldier’s child. That orphan has been sent to me,—mine it is,—mine it shall be. Pass the wine, Doctor. Here comes madame.”
My mother timidly approached the side of her husband’s chair, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.
“Denis,” she said, “will you be very angry with me?”