ained his strength.
When he was gazetted out of the service, he secured a step in rank,
and retired as a major. In after years he made frequent visits to
Terence; to whom, as he always declared, he owed it that, instead
of being turned adrift on a nominal pension, he was now able to
live in comfort and ease.

When, four months later, Tim M'Manus was thrown out of his trap
when driving home late at night, and broke his neck, it was found
that he had left the whole of his property to Terence and, as the
rents of his estate amounted to 600 pounds a year, no inconsiderable
proportion of which had, for many years past, been accumulating, the
legacy placed Terence in a leading position among the gentry of Mayo.

For very many years the house was one of the most popular in the
county. It had been found necessary to make additions to it, and it
had now attained the dignity of a mansion. The three officers
followed, with the most intense interest, the bulletins and
despatches from the war and, on the day when the allies entered
Paris, the services of Tim Doolan, who had been invalided home a
year after the return of his master, and had been discharged as
unfit for further service, were called into requisition, for the
first time since his return, to assist his master back to the
house.

O'Grady, however, explained most earnestly to Mary O'Connor, the
next day, that it was not the whisky at all, at all, but his wooden
leg that had got out of order, and would not carry him straight.

Dick Ryan went through the war unscathed and, after Waterloo,
retired from the service with the rank of lieutenant colonel;
married, and settled at Athlone; and the closest intimacy, and very
frequent intercourse, were maintained between him and his comrades
of the Mayo Fusiliers.

Terence, in time, quite ceased to feel the loss of his leg; and was
able to join in all field sports, becoming in time master of the
hounds, and one of the most popular sportsmen in the county. His
wife always declared that his wound was the most fortunate thing
that ever happened to him for, had it not been for that, he would
most likely have fallen in some of the later battles in the
Peninsula.

"It is a good thing to have luck," she said, "and Terence had
plenty of it. But it does not do to tempt fortune too far. The
pitcher that goes too often to the well gets broken, in the end."

End of Project Gutenberg's Under Wellington's Command, by G. A. Henty