lp
fight the battle of Bull Run. Patrick--pace to his sowl--was in that
battle and fought like a tiger, barrin' that he would have done better,
as his Captain tould me, if he hadn't forgot the balls in his
cartridge-box, and took to his musket like a shelaleh all day long.
Patrick's regiment belonged to a Brigade that was ordered to keep
Johnston in check, and there stood Patrick in line, like a true lad as
he was, clubbing back the Butternuts, striking them right and
left--maybe the fellows belonged to this same Rebel Colonel's
regiment--until a round shot struck him full in the breast, knocking the
heart out of as true an Irishman as iver lived, and killing dead the
flower of the McCarthys.

"I didn't know it till we got to Baltimore, and thin whin I riflicted
how the poor boy marched up to fight the bluidy Rebels, and how they
killed him, my own brother, while I--I, who would have given my right
hand to save him,--yis," said Terence, rising, and tears streaming from
his eyes, "would have waded through fire and bluid to help the darlin',
the pride of his mother,--I was guarding a Rebel Colonel's property,
whin the whole of us, if we had fought Johnston, as we ought to have
done, might have kept him back and saved our army, and that would have
saved me my brother. And thin whin I remimbered how thick the Gineral
was with the Rebel gentry, and how fine ladies with the divil in their
eyes bowed to him in Charlestown, and spit at and cocked up their noses
at us soldiers, while their husbands were off, maybe, murthering my
brother; and how the Gineral, proud as a paycock on his prancing
chestnut sorrel, tould us in the meadow that Johnston was too strong
for us to attack, but that if he would come out from behind his big guns
the Gineral would lay his body on the sod before he'd lave it, whin he
intended his body to lie on a soft bed the rest of his life, and how he
said and did all this while our men, and my brother among them, were
being murthered by this same Johnston that he was sent to hould back,--I
couldn't keep down my Irish bluid. I cursed him and all his tribe by all
the Saints from St. Peter to St. Patrick, until good ould Father Mahan
tould me, whin I confessed, that he was afraid I would swear my own sowl
away, and keep Patrick in Purgatory; and the Father tould me that I
should lave off cursin' Patterson, for the Americans thimselves would
attend to that, and take to fighting the Rebels for revinge; and he sa