d hoped, perhaps, it might be so,
from the moment he got your letter; and that the moment he saw me
he felt sure that it would be so, for it must be, if you had any
eyes in your head."

When Major O'Connor came home he was greatly pleased, but he took
the news as a matter of course.

"Faith," he said, "I would have disinherited the boy, if he had
been such a fool as not to appreciate you, Mary."

O'Grady was loud in his congratulations.

"It is just like your luck, Terence," he said. "Luck is everything.
Here am I, a battered hero, who has lost an arm and a foot in the
service of me country, and divil a girl has thrown herself upon me
neck. Here are you, a mere gossoon, fifteen years my junior in the
service, mentioned a score of times in despatches, promoted over my
head; and now you have won one of the prettiest creatures in
Ireland and, what is a good deal more to the point, though you may
not think of it at present, with a handsome fortune of her own. In
faith, there is no understanding the ways of Providence."

A week afterwards the whole party went up to Dublin, as Terence and
O'Grady had to go before a medical board. A fortnight later a
notice appeared, in the Gazette, that Lieutenant Colonel Terence
O'Connor had retired from the service, on half pay, with the rank
of colonel.

The marriage did not take place for another six months, by which
time Terence had thrown away his crutches and had taken to an
artificial leg--so well constructed that, were it not for a certain
stiffness in his walk, his loss would not have been suspected by a
casual observer. For three months previous to the event, a number
of men had been employed in building a small but pretty house, some
quarter of a mile from the mansion, intended for the occupation of
Majors O'Connor and O'Grady.

"It will be better, in every way, Terence," his father insisted,
when his son and Mary remonstrated against their thus proposing to
leave them. "O'Grady and I have been comrades for twenty years, and
we shall feel more at home, in bachelor quarters, than here. I can
run in three or four times a day, if I like, and I expect I shall
be as much here as over there; whereas if I lived here, I should
often be feeling myself in the way, though I know that you would
never say so. It is better for young people to be together and,
maybe some day, the house will be none too large for you."

The house was finished by the time the wedding took place, and the