was trying to laugh
feebly himself.

"Sure it's the fine target ye must have made with yer six feet and one
inch. How could the poor soldiers help hittin' ye? Answer me that?" and
the jovial doctor laughed again as he dexterously wound a bandage
around O'Connell's arm.

"Aisy now while I tie the bandage, me fine fellow. Ye'll live to see
the inside of an English jail yet."

He turned as he heard the door open and greeted Angela.

"Good afternoon to ye, Miss Kingsnorth. Faith, it's a blessin' ye
brought the boy here. There's no tellin' What the prison-surgeon would
have done to him. It is saltpetre, they tell me, the English doctors
rub into the Irish wounds, to kape them smartin'. And, by the like
token, they do the same too in the English House of Commons. Saltpetre
in Ireland's wounds is what they give us."

"Is he much hurt?" asked Angela.

"Well, they've broken nothin'. Just blackened his face and made a few
holes in his skin. It's buckshot they used. Buckshot! Thank the
merciful Mr. Forster for that same. 'Buckshot-Forster,' as the Irish
reverently call him."

Angela flushed with indignation as she looked at the crippled man.

"What a dastardly thing to do," she cried.

"Ye may well say that, Miss Kingsnorth," said the merry little doctor.
"But it's betther than a bullet from a Martini-Henry rifle, that's what
it is. And there's many a poor English landlord's got one of 'em in the
back for ridin' about at night on his own land. It's a fatherly
government we have, Miss Kingsnorth. 'Hurt 'em, but don't quite kill
'em,' sez they; 'and then put 'em in jail and feed them on bread and
wather. That'll take the fine talkin' and patriotism out of them,' sez
they."

"They'll never take it out of me. They may kill me, perhaps, but until
they do they'll never silence me," murmured O'Connell in a voice so
low, yet so bitter, that it startled Angela.

"Ye'll do that all in good time, me fine boy," said the busy little
doctor. "Here, take a pull at this," and he handed the patient a glass
in which he had dropped a few crystals into some water.

As O'Connell drank the mixture Dr. McGinnis said in a whisper to Angela:

"Let him have that every three hours: oftener if he wants to talk.
We've got to get his mind at rest. A good sleep'll make a new man of
him."

"There's no danger?" asked Angela in the same tone.

"None in the wurrld. He's got a fine constitution and mebbe the
buckshot was pretty clean. I've washed