a little fellow of about
thirteen years of age, and small and slight even for that; we knew him
as 'Peter,' but whether he had any other name, or what, I was ignorant.
He was wounded by a sabre-cut across the hand, which nearly severed the
fingers from it, at the bridge of Castlebar, but, with a strip of linen
bound round it, now he trotted along as happy and careless as if nothing
ailed him.

I questioned him as we went, and learned that his father had been a herd
in the service of a certain Sir Roger Palmer, and his mother a dairymaid
in the same house, but as the patriots had sacked and burned the
'Castle,' of course they were now upon the world. He was a good deal
shocked at my asking what part his father took on the occasion of the
attack, but for a very different reason than that which I suspected.

'For the cause, of course!' replied he, almost indignantly; 'why
wouldn't he stand up for ould Ireland!'

'And your mother--what did she do?'

He hung down his head, and made no answer till I repeated the question.

'Faix,' said he slowly and sadly, 'she went and towld the young ladies
what was goin' to be done, and if it hadn't been that the "boys" caught
Tim Haynes, the groom, going off to Foxford with a letter, we'd have had
the dragoons down upon us in no time! They hanged Tim, but they let the
young ladies away, and my mother with them, and off they all went to
Dublin.'

'And where's your father now?' I asked.

'He was drowned in the bay of Killala four days ago. He went with a
party of others to take oatmeal from a sloop that was wrecked in the
bay, and an English cruiser came in at the time and fired on them; at
the second discharge the wreck and all upon it went down!'

He told all these things without any touch of sorrow in voice or manner.
They seemed to be the ordinary chances of war, and so he took them. He
had three brothers and a sister; of the former, two were missing, the
third was a scout; and the girl--she was but nine years old--was waiting
on a canteen, and mighty handy, he said, for she knew a little French
already, and understood the soldiers when they asked for a _goutte_, or
wanted _du feu_ for their pipes.

Such, then, was the credit side of the account with Fortune, and,
strange enough, the boy seemed satisfied with it; and although a few
days had made him an orphan and houseless, he appeared to feel that the
great things in store for his country were an ample recompense for
all. Wa