“Where the devil are ye going with the lad?” exclaimed an eighty-eighth man, who was hobbling on as fast as a wounded leg would allow him, to try, as he termed it, to overtake his “darling Faugh-a-ballaghs.”
“To obtain medical assistance,” responded both my Samaritans.
“Then ye had better return,” said the Ranger. “Devil a doctor’s within a mile of you, except an assistant surgeon, who is lying under yon wall in mortal alarm.”
My humane friends at once decided upon employing the gentleman lying under the wall, and I was accordingly committed to his care. “Faint the din of battle bray’d,” and the doctor recovered his self-possession as the roll of musquetry became feebler and more distant—the ball was extracted—I was removed to the house of a gentleman immediately beside—confided to the tender mercies of any who would undertake them; while my deliverers—the greatest cowards who had ever been inflicted on a fighting regiment—considering the plundering had commenced, set out to try what industry would acquire; and, as I verily believe, the assistant surgeon “bore them company.”
Upon my conscience, into a nicer family circle an Irish ensign never contrived to drop himself. The senhor was a steady, sober, respectable gentleman, who went regularly to mass, and never drank in the morning. His lady managed him, the farm, and the domain—rent of the latter not excessive—and the daughter—oh, murder! three years have passed, and as yet I have never managed to forget Agatha’s foot and ancle! But then her eyes—St. Senanus could have never stood a second glance; her teeth would have put a foxhound’s to the blush; and, as the old song goes,—
“Her hair was as flick as the devil.”
Well, she nursed me—her mother offering at matins and vespers a prayer for my recovery and conversion, and her father spending the morning in asking after news, and putting the evening in, by giving me the result of his inquiries.
A fortnight passed—and as one wound healed, another opened. Agatha was ignorant of French, I innocent of Spanish. “With the exception of a monk or two in Salamanca, not a soul (out of the army) spoke Irish; and hence, poor girl! from a neglected education, we were rather puzzled to explain the rapid growth of mutual affection. In time we might have succeeded—but one fine morning in August, a field officer, accompanied by a staff surgeon, dropped into a neighbouring village where some sixty lazy vagabonds were malingering. Of course, they were all ordered to their regiments, and I, with a senior officer, desired to look after the scoundrels.
“Agatha!” I said, as I held her to my bosom the morning that I marched, “Agatha, would that I could remain in this sweet thraldom to eternity.—Curse that bugle! I wish to God the fellow had been shot through the lungs instead of the arm—Agatha!—”
Here sobs broke in—