ur captain!" and with a shrill hurray, that sounded above the
tremendous fire from the fort, we sprung upon the steep; Bowser with the
brave Ninety-ninth, and the bold Potztausend, keeping well up with
us. We passed the demilune, we passed the culverin, bayoneting the
artillerymen at their guns; we advanced across the two tremendous
demilunes which flank the counterscarp, and prepared for the final
spring upon the citadel. Soult I could see quite pale on the wall; and
the scoundrel Cambaceres, who had been so nearly my prisoner that day,
trembled as he cheered his men. "On, boys, on!" I hoarsely exclaimed.
"Hurroo!" said the fighting Onety-oneth.

But there was a movement among the enemy. An officer, glittering with
orders, and another in a gray coat and a cocked hat, came to the wall,
and I recognized the Emperor Napoleon and the famous Joachim Murat.

"We are hardly pressed, methinks," Napoleon said sternly. "I must
exercise my old trade as an artilleryman;" and Murat loaded, and the
Emperor pointed the only hundred-and-twenty-four-pounder that had not
been silenced by our fire.

"Hurray, Killaloo boys!" shouted I. The next moment a sensation of
numbness and death seized me, and I lay like a corpse upon the rampart.

II.

"Hush!" said a voice, which I recognized to be that of the Marquis d'
O'Mahony. "Heaven be praised, reason has returned to you. For six weeks
those are the only sane words I have heard from you."

"Faix, and 'tis thrue for you, Colonel dear," cried another voice, with
which I was even more familiar; 'twas that of my honest and gallant
Lanty Clancy, who was blubbering at my bedside overjoyed at his master's
recovery.

"O musha, Masther Phil agrah! but this will be the great day intirely,
when I send off the news, which I would, barrin' I can't write, to
the lady your mother and your sisters at Castle Fogarty; and 'tis his
Riv'rence Father Luke will jump for joy thin, when he reads the letther!
Six weeks ravin' and roarin' as bould as a lion, and as mad as Mick
Malony's pig, that mistuck Mick's wig for a cabbage, and died of atin'
it!"

"And have I then lost my senses?" I exclaimed feebly.

"Sure, didn't ye call me your beautiful Donna Anna only yesterday,
and catch hould of me whiskers as if they were the Signora's jet-black
ringlets?" Lanty cried.

At this moment, and blushing deeply, the most beautiful young creature
I ever set my eyes upon, rose from a chair at the foot of the bed,