The Fortunes of Hector O'Halloran, and His Man, Mark Antony O'Toole. W. H. Maxwell

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      Now Christie’s Will peep’d from the tower,

      And out at the shot-hole peeped he,

      And, “Ever unlucky,” quo’ he, “is the hour,

      When a woman comes to speer for me.”

      Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border.

      In a short time “the heavy tread of marching men” ceased, as a party of ten or twelve soldiers halted immediately in front of my father’s barricade.

      “Stand! who goes there?” was demanded from the loop-hole.

      “A friend,” replied a voice, redolent of the richness of the Shannon.

      “Advance, friend, and give the countersign,” returned my father, whose phraseology, from military habitude, still retained the parlance of the camp.

      “Countersign!” responded the leader of the belated wayfarers; “devil a countersign have I but one. If my ould Colonel’s above the sod, he’s spakin to me now fair and asy from the windy.”

      “Who are you?” demanded my father.

      “Oh! by Jakers, you’ll hardly mind me, Colonel;—Private Phil Brady of ‘number eight’ when you had the regiment; but now, glory be to God and good conduct, lance-sergeant in ‘number five.’”

      “What is your party, Brady?”

      “Upon my conscience, Colonel, a quare one, enough; tin invalids, a dyin woman, ami a fine man-child.”

      “Unclose the door, Father Dominie!”

      The priest lifted a heavy key from the side-board, and proceeded to give admission to the travellers, when Hackett, who had been hitherto an anxious listener, ventured a remonstrance. “Why not,” said he, “give them meat and whisky before the door? Every room was already crowded with idle people, whom nobody would have harmed, had they remained where they ought,—at home. If the house was to be turned into an hospital for sick trampers and their trulls, why every servant would quit a place liker a jail than a gentleman’s.”

      Colonel O’Halloran preserved an ominous tranquillity; and Hackett, mistaking the cause, became more insolent as his speech proceeded without interruption. But the storm burst at last.

      “Villain!” said my father in a voice which induced the chief butler to recede some paces backwards,—“dare you, a menial, prescribe to me, your master, who shall be received and who rejected? Tell me that a comrade shall be turned from my door, and recommend that the weary soldier be ejected from the house of him under whom he has fought and bled! Off—we part to-morrow. The roof of Knockloftie shall never cover for a second night a sneaking scoundrel who has neither welcome for a brave man nor pity for a helpless woman;—show in the sergeant!”

      Without venturing to reply, Hackett shrank from the presence of his angry master; and in another minute sergeant Philip Brady made his military salaam, and, with a capacious bundle in his arms, stood full front before his former commander.

      “Phil!” said the Colonel, as he examined the soldier’s outer man, “if I judge rightly, thou like myself art but lightly indebted to the Low Countries and my father held up an empty sleeve.

      “Feaks! and ye may say that, Colonel,” replied the sergeant. “All that I have gained in Holland—barrin the stripes—is a slashed cheek, a threadbare jacket, and a fine child.”

      “Your kit, however, seems extensive, Phil; that which you carry looks to be a well-filled bundle.”

      “It’s only the child, your honor; the night was cold, the mother wake, so I wrapped the baby in this ould coat, and for its father’s sake kept it, the cratur, as snug as could be.”

      “It’s not your own, then?”

      “Divil a wife or child has Philip Brady,” returned the honest sergeant. “Ye may remember corporal O’Toole,—he was one of the finest men in the grenadiers, when your honor had the company.”

      “Perfectly; a better or braver soldier was not in the regiment. What became of him?”

      “He died at sea, God rest his sowl! on the second day after we left Ostend. He was badly wounded when put on board, poor fellow! and we were all, men and women, bundled into the transport like so many hounds, short of water and provisions, and in the hurry they forgot the surgeon too. Well, his wound mortified: ‘I’m oft, Phil;’ says he; ‘you’ll not forget the poor wife, for my sake, and may God look down upon the orphan! Give me your hand upon it, Phil,’ says he, and he squeezed mine with all his feeble strength. When I came down again, his wife was hanging over the dead body. They coaxed her away to see the child, and when she returned to have some comfort in crying over the corpse, it was already overboard with two others, who had dropped off the hooks that evening. From that hour Toole’s wife (we called him Toole for shortness) has pined away, and the life was barely in her when your honor, may God reward ye! let us in.”

      “‘Why were you so late upon the road?” inquired the Colonel; “in the present state of things soldiers are no favourites, and the chances are considerable, had you proceeded farther, that you would have been waylaid and abused.”

      “Feaks! and I believe your honor. We were delayed partly by accident, and partly through design. Our car broke down, the horse lost a shoe, and the rest of the party pushed forward, laving us at a forge to get the cart mended, and the baste shod. The smith—divil’s luck to him, the ruffin!—kept us three hours, I think on purpose, and then they directed us astray. So when I found the night falling, and the poor woman all but dead, as I heard there was a gentleman’s not far off, I heads the party here on chance, little dreaming, the Lord knows, that I had the luck of thousands and was coming to my ould Colonel’s, and no other.”

      My father was a man of prompt action and few words. The bell was rung, the soldiers sent to the kitchen to refresh themselves, the child committed to the care of a female domestic, and carried to the apartment whither its dying mother had been previously removed. There, my mother and the woman-kind of the establishment used every means which simple skill suggested; but already the decree had gone forth, and within an hour after the arrival of the party the crisis came, the widow of the dead soldier was at rest, and her babe an orphan.

      “The struggle was brief,” said the priest, as he re-entered the room, from which he had been so hastily summoned

      ‘By a dying woman to pray.’

      May God receive her in mercy! She went off so gently, that though we were all about the bed, no one could tell the moment when she departed. My lady is crying over her as if she were a sister, and the baby sleeping soundly in Sibby Connor’s arms, as if it were still resting on that bosom which had been designed by God to be its pillow and support.”

      My father, as was his wont when any thing particularly excited him, sprang from his chair, and strode thrice across the chamber.—“Tell me not,” he exclaimed, “that there is not an especial providence over every thing—ay, from the sparrow to the soldier’s child. That orphan has been sent to me,—mine it is,—mine it shall be. Pass the wine, Doctor. Here comes madame.”

      My mother timidly approached the side of her husband’s chair, and laid her hand upon his shoulder.

      “Denis,” she said, “will you be very angry with me?”

      “Angry, love!” replied my father, reproachfully.

      “You never were angry with me yet. But—but—I have done something, upon which I should have previously obtained your sanction, love.”

      “What was it, Emily?”

      “I promised,” said my mother, “the dying woman, that her helpless child