w our force was
increased.

Several now regiments were with us, and the commander-in-chief and his
staff and heavy guns and siege trains accompanied the march. With the
exception of a few skirmishes, my master had yet to learn what a battle
was. We crept on, halting sometimes, and sometimes pushing on, until
one jubilant afternoon the distant walls of Lucknow appeared in sight.
Then indeed our brave fellows began to breathe again.

To-morrow would bring them to the city walls, and--what was equally
after their hearts--face to face with the enemy. We bivouacked here for
the night.

Now it happened on this particular night that my master was on sentinel
duty for the first time in his life, and mightily proud of his charge.
There he stood as stiff as a poker, with his rifle at his side, and I
verily believe would have thought nothing of running his bayonet through
the body of the commander-in-chief if he had presented himself without
the password.

Patrick was not a dreamer; and as he looked across in the direction of
Lucknow I don't suppose his meditations were of the loftiest kind. He
knew there would be a fight to-morrow, and so he was happy; he knew duty
might call him to action even to-night, and so he kept a very sharp
look-out at his post; but otherwise his mind was profoundly untroubled.
It was not so with me. On the eve of the battle I could not but feel
that in a few hours I might be ownerless, and in a dead man's pocket;
and, as I looked back upon my strangely eventful life, I sighed, and
half hoped, if he were slain, they would in mercy bury me with him, and
so end my cares once and for all. Little I knew!

It was scarcely ten o'clock when Paddy was startled by approaching
footsteps. They belonged to an officer of our force who was returning
at this hour from an outpost. Paddy eyed him suspiciously, and even
when he gave the word looked disappointed at not having the privilege of
using his bayonet upon him. Just as he was going on his way, the
officer turned and said, in a voice which startled me,--

"Is it ten yet, my man?"

Why did the voice startle me? I could not see the speaker's face, but
as he spoke I fancied myself back in the Randlebury schoolroom, and my
memory saw a bright-eyed boy I had known once whom I could almost have
believed to be the speaker of these few words. Strange what fancies
take possession of one! Patrick, as he _had_ a watch, and had by this
time learned the myst