-that's it--Don't move your fingers.
Now, Mickey, make me a cup of coffee with a glass of brandy in it. And now,
Charley, for Sparks. I believe I told you what kind of fellows the Tenth
were,--regular out-and-outers. We hadn't three men in the regiment that
were not from the south of Ireland,--the _bocca Corkana_ on their lips, fun
and devilment in their eyes, and more drollery and humbug in their hearts
than in all the messes in the service put together. No man had any chance
among them if he wasn't a real droll one; every man wrote his own songs and
sang them too. It was no small promotion could tempt a fellow to exchange
out of the corps. You may think, then, what a prize your friend Sparks
proved to us; we held a court-martial upon him the week after he joined. It
was proved in evidence that he had never said a good thing in his life,
and had about as much notion of a joke as a Cherokee has of the Court of
Chancery; and as to singing, Lord bless you, he had a tune with wooden
turns to it,--it was most cruel to hear; and then the look of him, those
eyes, like dropsical oysters, and the hair standing every way, like a field
of insane flax, and the mouth with a curl in it like the slit in the side
of a fiddle. A pleasant fellow that for a mess that always boasted the
best-looking chaps in the service.

"'What's to be done with him?' said the major; 'shall we tell him we are
ordered to India, and terrify him about his liver?'

"'Or drill him into a hectic fever?'

"'Or drink him dry?'

"'Or get him into a fight and wing him?'

"'Oh, no,' said I, 'leave him to me; we'll laugh him out of the corps.'

"'Yes, we'll leave him to you, Maurice,' said the rest.

"And that day week you might read in the 'Gazette,' 'Pierce Flynn
O'Haygerty, to be Ensign, 10th Foot, _vice_ Sparks, exchanged.'"

"But how was it done, Maurice; you haven't told me that."

"Nothing easier. I affected great intimacy with Sparks, bemoaned our hard
fate, mutually, in being attached to such a regiment: 'A damnable corps
this,--low, vulgar fellows, practical jokes; not the kind of thing one
expects in the army. But as for me, I've joined it partly from necessity.
You, however, who might be in a crack regiment, I can't conceive your
remaining in it.'

"'But why did you join, Doctor?' said he; 'what necessity could have
induced you?'

"'Ah, my friend,' said I, '_that_ is the secret,--_that_ is the hidden
grief that must lie buried in my own bosom