into a garden ready for the
seeds. As yet vegetables, although very dear, had not risen to
famine prices; for although the town had depended chiefly upon the
produce of the mainland, many of the natives had grown small
patches of vegetables in their gardens for their own use, and these
they now disposed of at prices that were highly satisfactory to
themselves.

O'Halloran's farm--as they called it, as soon as they heard, from
him, what he was doing--became quite a joke in the regiment; but
several of the other married officers, who had similar facilities
for keeping fowls, adopted the idea to some extent, and started
with a score or so of fowls.

"I wonder you didn't think of pigs, O'Halloran," one of the
captains said, laughing, as they were talking over the farm in the
mess anteroom; "pigs and potatoes. The idea of you and Burke, both
from the sod, starting a farm; and not thinking, first, of the two
chief national products."

"There is not room for praties, Sinclair; and as for pigs, there
are many reasons against it. In the first place, I doubt whether I
could buy any. In the second, there isn't room for them. In the
third, what should I give them to keep them alive? In the fourth,
pigs are illigant bastes but, in a hot country like this, I should
not care for a stye of them under my drawing room window. In the
fifth--"

"That will do, that will do, O'Halloran. We give way. We allow that
you could not keep pigs, but it is a pity."

"It is that, Sinclair. There is nothing would please me better than
to see a score of nice little pigs, with a nate stye, and a
magazine of food big enough to keep them, say, for a year."

"Three months, O'Halloran, would be ample."

"Well, we shall see, Sinclair. Teddy Burke says three years, but I
do hope it is not going to be as long as that."

"Begorra!" another Irish officer, Captain O'Moore, exclaimed; "if
it is three years we are going to be here, we had best be killed
and buried at once. I have been all the morning in the Queen's
Battery, where my company has been slaving like haythens, with the
sun coming down as if it would fry your brain in your skull pan;
and if that is to go on, day after day, for three years, I should
be dead in a month!"

"That is nothing, O'Moore. If the siege goes on, they say the
officers will have to help at the work."

"I shall protest against it. There is not a word in the articles of
war about officers working. I am willing enough to b