ight. It has a wall and inclosure, and they will have hard work to
turn us out of it. Yes, I call this a fine place for a battle; and we
shall have the advantage here of being able to see all over the field
and of knowing what is going on in other places, while yesterday one
couldn't see three yards before one. During the whole time one was
fighting, one felt that it might be of no use after all, for we might
be getting smashed up in some other part of the field."

"I never thought anything about it," Stapleton said. "My only idea was
that I must look as if I wasn't afraid, and must set a good example to
the men, and that it was all very unpleasant, and that probably my
turn might come next, and that I would give a good deal for something
like a gallon of beer. As far as I can remember those were my leading
ideas yesterday."

"Well, Denis, what is it?" Ralph asked his servant, who approached
with a long face.

"Have you any dry tinder about you, your honor? I have been trying to
strike a light for the last half-hour till the tinder box is full of
water, and I have knocked all the skin off my knuckles."

"That's bad, Denis; but I don't think you will get a fire anyhow. The
wood must be all too soaked to burn."

"I think it will go, sor, if I can once get it to light. I have pulled
up some pea-sticks from an old woman's garden; and the ould witch came
out and began at me as if I was robbing her of her eldest daughter. It
was lucky I had a shilling about me, or be jabbers she would have
brought down the provost's guard upon me, and then maybe I would have
had my back warmed the least taste in the world more than was
pleasant. I hid the sticks under a wagon to keep them dry, and Mike
Doolan is standing sentry over them. I promised him a stick or two for
his own kindling. The weather is too bad entirely, your honor, and the
boys are well-nigh broken-hearted at turning their backs to the
Frenchmen."

"Ah, well, they will turn their faces to-morrow, Denis; and as for the
weather, I guess you have got wet before now digging praties in the
old country."

"I have that, your honor, many and many a time; and it's little I
cared for it. But then there was a place to go into, and dry clothes
to put on, and a warm male to look forward to, with perhaps a drop of
the crater afterward; and that makes all the difference in the world.
What we are going to do to-night, sorra of me knows."

"You will have to lie down in the mud, De