ain so for some time. The
regimental surgeon was with him, having left the other two officers at
the turn of the road leading to the village.

"I am glad to see you, Conway," Captain O'Connor said cheerfully. "I
was expecting you. The doctor said Morrison and Stapleton had gone on
to Ballyporrit. None the worse for your brush, I hope?"

"Not a bit," Ralph said. "The bump on my head caused by that musket
blow hurt me a bit the first day or two, but it's going down now. I am
glad to see you and Desmond looking so well."

"Oh, we shall soon be all right; though I am afraid I shall be kept on
my back for some little time. Desmond is rather in despair, because he
is afraid his beauty is spoiled; for the doctor says that cut on his
forehead is likely to leave a nasty scar. He would not have minded it
if it had been done by a French dragoon saber; but to have got it from
tumbling down a chimney troubles him sorely. It will be very painful
to him when a partner at a ball asks him sympathizingly in what battle
he was wounded, to have to explain that he tumbled head foremost into
a peat fire."

Desmond laughed. "Well, it is rather a nuisance; and you see Conway,
the ashes have got so ground up in the place that the doctor is afraid
it will be a black scar. O'Connor chaffs me about it, but I am sure he
wouldn't like it himself."

"Why, my dear fellow, it's a most honorable wound. You will be able to
dilate upon the desperate capture of the noted ruffian the Red
Captain, and how you and that noble officer Captain O'Connor dashed
alone into the cavern, tenanted by thirteen notorious desperadoes.
Why, properly worked up, man, there is no end of capital to be made
out of it. I foresee that I shall be quite a hero at tea-fights. A
battle is nothing to such an affair as this. Of course it will not be
necessary to say that you shot down into the middle of them like a
sack of wheat because you could not help it. You must speak of your
reckless spring of twenty feet from that upper passage into the middle
of them. Why, properly told, the dangers of the breach at Badajos
would pale before it."

"I am glad to see that you are in such high spirits," Ralph said when
the laugh had subsided. "There's no fear of your being lame after it,
I hope?"

"No, Dr. Doran says it is a clean snap of the bone, and it will, he
thinks, mend all right; and as Macpherson, who has been examining it,
says the same, I hope it is all right. It is very good