head and stared into the fire, fingering his moustache
the while. From the far side of the bivouac the voice of Corbet-Nolan,
senior subaltern of B company, uplifted itself in an ancient and much
appreciated song of sentiment, the men moaning melodiously behind him.

The north wind blew coldly, she drooped from that hour,
My own little Kathleen, my sweet little Kathleen,
Kathleen, my Kathleen, Kathleen O'Moore!

With forty-five O's in the last word: even at that distance you might
have cut the soft South Irish accent with a shovel.

'For all we take we must pay, but the price is cruel high,' murmured
Mulvaney when the chorus had ceased.

'What's the trouble?' I said gently, for I knew that he was a man of
an inextinguishable sorrow.

'Hear now,' said he. 'Ye know what I am now. _I_ know what I mint to
be at the beginnin' av my service. I've tould you time an' again, an'
what I have not Dinah Shadd has. An' what am I? Oh, Mary Mother av
Hiven, an ould dhrunken, untrustable baste av a privit that has seen
the reg'ment change out from colonel to drummer-boy, not wanst or
twice, but scores av times! Ay, scores! An' me not so near gettin'
promotion as in the first! An' me livin' on an' kapin' clear av clink,
not by my own good conduck, but the kindness av some orf'cer-bhoy
young enough to be son to me! Do I not know ut? Can I not tell whin
I'm passed over at p'rade, tho' I'm rockin' full av liquor an' ready
to fall all in wan piece, such as even a suckin' child might see,
bekaze, "Oh, 'tis only ould Mulvaney!" An' whin I'm let off in
ord'ly-room through some thrick of the tongue an' a ready answer an'
the ould man's mercy, is ut smilin' I feel whin I fall away an' go
back to Dinah Shadd, thryin' to carry ut all off as a joke? Not I!
'Tis hell to me, dumb hell through ut all; an' next time whin the fit
comes I will be as bad again. Good cause the reg'ment has to know me
for the best soldier in ut. Better cause have I to know mesilf for the
worst man. I'm only fit to tache the new drafts what I'll niver learn
myself; an' I am sure, as tho' I heard ut, that the minut wan av these
pink-eyed recruities gets away from my "Mind ye now," an' "Listen to
this, Jim, bhoy,"--sure I am that the sergint houlds me up to him for
a warnin'. So I tache, as they say at musketry-instruction, by direct
and ricochet fire. Lord be good to me, for I have stud some throuble!'

'Lie down and go to sleep,' said I, not being able to c