got a good berth in a saloon in the Bowery, where
they used Patrick in claning out the customers whin they got noisy, and
he'd do it nately too, to the satisfaction of his employer. He did well
till a recruiting Sergeant--bad luck to him--that knew the McCarthys in
the ould country, found him out, and they drank and talked about ould
times, and the Sergeant tould him that the army was the place for
Irishmen,--that there would be lots of fightin'. The chance of a fight
took Patrick, and nixt day he left the city in a blouse, as Fourth
Corporal in an Irish Rigiment, and a prouder looking chappie, as his own
Captain tould me, niver marched down Broadway. And thin to think he was
murthered by my own Gineral."

"Who? How was that?" interrupted half a dozen at once.

"Gineral Patterson, you see, to be shure."

"Why, Terence," broke in the Lieutenant, "you shouldn't be so hard upon
General Patterson; he's of an Irish family."

"The Gineral an Irishman! Niver! Of an Irish family! must have been
hundreds of years back, and the bluid spoiled long before it got into
his veins, by bad whiskey or something worse. It takes the raal potheen,
that smacks of the smoke of the still, to keep up the bluid of an
Irishman. Rot-gut would ruin St. Patrick himself if he were alive and
could be got to taste it. Gineral Patterson an Irishman! no, sir; or
there would have been bluidy noses at Bunker's Hill or Winchester, and
that would have saved some at Bull Run."

"On with your story, Terence," said the crowd.

"Beggin' your pardon, there's no story about it,--the blissid truth,
ivery word of it.

"Will, you see, while our ould Colonel, under the Gineral's orders, had
me guarding a pratie patch--"

"Set an Irishman to guard a potato patch!" laughed the Second
Lieutenant.

"It wasn't much use," said Terence, smiling, "for they disappeared the
first night, and the slim college student that was Sergeant of that
relief was put under guard for telling the officer of the guard, next
morning, that there had been a heavy dew that night, and it evaporated
so fast that it took the praties along. We lived on praties next day,
but the poor Sergeant had to foot the bill.

"Well, as I was going on to say, while I was helping guard a pratie
patch, an ice-house, corn-crib, smoke-house, and other such things that
were near our camp ground, and that belonged to a Rebel Colonel under
Johnston;--Johnston himself was staling away with all his army to he