ivering to the earth at
the feet of General Picton and Sir Lowry Cole, who were at their posts
at the head of the storming-parties, nine hundred and ninety nine guns
in position opened their fire from our batteries, which were answered by
a tremendous canonnade from the fort.

"Who's going to dance?" said the Doctor: "the ball's begun. Ha! there
goes poor Jack Delamere's head off! The ball chose a soft one, anyhow.
Come here, Tim, till I mend your leg. Your wife has need only knit half
as many stockings next year, Doolan my boy. Faix! there goes a big one
had wellnigh stopped my talking: bedad! it has snuffed the feather off
my cocked hat!"

In this way, with eighty-four-pounders roaring over us like hail, the
undaunted little Doctor pursued his jokes and his duty. That he had
a feeling heart, all who served with him knew, and none more so than
Philip Fogarty, the humble writer of this tale of war.

Our embrasure was luckily bomb-proof, and the detachment of the
Onety-oneth under my orders suffered comparatively little. "Be cool,
boys," I said; "it will be hot enough work for you ere long." The
honest fellows answered with an Irish cheer. I saw that it affected our
prisoner.

"Countryman," said I, "I know you; but an Irishman was never a traitor."

"Taisez-vous!" said he, putting his finger to his lip. "C'est la
fortune de la guerre: if ever you come to Paris, ask for the Marquis d'
O'Mahony, and I may render you the hospitality which your tyrannous laws
prevent me from exercising in the ancestral halls of my own race."

I shook him warmly by the hand as a tear bedimmed his eye. It was,
then, the celebrated colonel of the Irish Brigade, created a Marquis by
Napoleon on the field of Austerlitz!

"Marquis," said I, "the country which disowns you is proud of you;
but--ha! here, if I mistake not, comes our signal to advance." And in
fact, Captain Vandeleur, riding up through the shower of shot, asked for
the commander of the detachment, and bade me hold myself in readiness
to move as soon as the flank companies of the Ninety-ninth, and
Sixty-sixth, and the Grenadier Brigade of the German Legion began to
advance up the echelon. The devoted band soon arrived; Jack Bowser
heading the Ninety-ninth (when was he away and a storming-party to the
fore?), and the gallant Potztausend, with his Hanoverian veterans.

The second rocket flew up.

"Forward, Onety-oneth!" cried I, in a voice of thunder. "Killaloo boys,
follow yo