at ye have caught the wrong cow
by the horns, and that all your pains has been for nothing at all, at
all. By the holy pope, ye are all wrong; it's like bringing salt butter
to Cork, or coals to your Newcastle, as ye call it. Who the divil ever
heard of the officer wearing ammunition shoes?"

The men all turned their gaze on that part of the vestment of the
corpse to which their attention had been directed by this remark, when
it was at once perceived, although it had hitherto escaped the
observation even of the officers, that, not only the shoes were those
usually worn by the soldiers, and termed ammunition or store shoes, but
also, the trowsers were of the description of coarse grey, peculiar to
that class.

"By the piper that played before Moses, and ye're right, Dick Doherty,"
exclaimed another Irishman; "sure, and it isn't the officer at all!
Just look at the great black fist of him too, and never call me Phil
Shehan, if it ever was made for the handling of an officer's spit."

"Well said, Shehan," observed the man who had so warmly reproved Will
Burford, and who had formerly been servant to De Haldimar; "the
captain's hand is as white and as soft as my cross-belt, or, what's
saying a great deal more, as Miss Clara's herself, heaven bless her
sweet countenance! and Lieutenant Valletort's nigger's couldn't well be
much blacker nor this."

"What a set of hignoramuses ye must be," grunted old Mitchell, "not to
see that the captain's hand is only covered with dirt; and as for the
ammunition shoes and trowsers, why you know our officers wear any thing
since we have been cooped up in this here fort."

"Yes, by the holy poker," (and here we must beg to refer the reader to
the soldier's vocabulary for any terms that may be, in the course of
this dialogue, incomprehensible to him or her,)--"Yes, by the holy
poker, off duty, if they like it," returned Phil Shehan; "but it isn't
even the colonel's own born son that dare to do so while officer of the
guard."

"Ye are right, comrade," said Burford; "there would soon be hell and
tommy to pay if he did."

At this point of their conversation, one of the leading men at the
litter, in turning to look at its subject, stumbled over the root of a
stump that lay in his way, and fell violently forward. The sudden
action destroyed the equilibrium of the corpse, which rolled off its
temporary bier upon the earth, and disclosed, for the first time, a
face begrimmed with masses of c