y Moses!"

"Why, sir," said the patient quietly, "what's the matter now?"

"Ah, an' ye are axin' what's the mather?" cried Garry in a still more
astonished tone. "Faith, it's wantin' to know I am how the divvle
you've iver been able to move about at all, at all, colonel, with that
thing there. Look at it now, an' till me what ye think of it yoursilf,
me darlint. May the saints presairve us, but did any one iver say such
a leg?"

It was, in truth, a fearful-looking object, being swollen to the most
abnormal proportions from the ankle joint to the thigh, while the skin
was of a dark hue, save where some extravasated blood clustered about a
small punctured orifice just above the knee.

Colonel Vereker laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

"The fortune of war," he explained. "One of those brutes shot me where
that mark is, but I think the bullet travelled all round my thigh and
lodged somewhere in the groin, I fancy, for I feel a lump there."

"Sure, I wonder you can fale anythin'!" cried Garry, who was probing for
the missile all the time. "A man that can walk about, faith, loike an
opera dancer, with a blue-mouldy leg loike that, can't have much faling
at all, at all, I'm thinkin'!"

"Ah!" groaned his patient at last, on his touching the obnoxious bullet
near the spot the colonel had indicated. "Whew! that hurts at any rate,
doctor!"

"Just be aisy a minnit, me darlint," said the other soothingly,
exchanging his probe for a pair of forceps and proceeding deftly to
extract the leaden messenger. "An' if ye can't be aisy, faith, try an'
be as aisy as ye can!"

In another second he had it out with a triumphant and gleeful shout.

"Ah!" ejaculated the colonel, the excessive pain causing him to clench
his teeth with an audible snap.

"Faith, you may say `ah' now as much as you please," said Garry, as he
held out the villainous-looking bullet gripped in his forceps. "For
there's the baste that did you all the damage, an' we'll soon pull you
up, alannah, with that ugly paice of mischief out of the way, sure!"

"Oh! dear me!" the poor colonel exclaimed as the doctor went on dressing
the wound and afterwards set-to to bandage the whole leg, swathing it
round like a mummy with lint, and then saturating it with some liniment
to allay the swelling. "Would to God all the mischief could be as
easily made good! Oh, my little Elsie, my darling little girl!"

"Cheer up, colonel, cheer up," whispered the skipper, com